50% tax rate - unexpected consequence

if the OP wants this to be about the 50% tax bracket - it's useless window-dressing.

if you earn in this bracket, you can probably arrange your finances to avoid it. That is why accountants get work from HNW individuals - it's worth paying £200 per hour for someone to reduce your tax bil. They more than get that back..

part of the machinery of avoiding it might be not to pay tax in this country at all...

or you can do like this GP and decide you can't be bothered earning it in the first place.

(now, think how many people would slam me if i said i CBA to work for more, given i pay an effective 33% tax and lose a further 33% in tax credits ...)

sorting out the felt pens in the stationery cupboard..

you know, i think this would be DDs dream job...

DH would like it too.

(strike out doesn't C&P)

Getting a bit dull sorting out the felt pens in the stationery cupboard being a high powered City financier Coolfonz?

i think 50pc is a bad idea too, just confiscate all the wealth (bar £1mn or so) from the top 0.02pc of earners and natioanlise banking including the channel islands money laundering scams...

GP Pay :-" However, a full time GMS or PMS practice partner can now expect to earn around £110,000 before tax, while a salaried GP earns on average £74,000"

So the Doctors at your surgery are doing pretty well already. They are making about twice the average for their profession.

Average salary for a Solicitor is 40-50k depending on which survey you look at.

The main problem is the pisspoor job that was done of renegotiating GP's contracts.

I like my GP
I like the 50% band
But smallwhitecat I do agree with you that they are paid too much

Worth pointing out that at that level of income people are over the maximum level for employee National Insurance contributions - so instead of (like most of us) paying 11% employees NI, they only pay 1%.

So although they pay 10% more tax, they pay 10% less NI . . .

Admittedly, the drop in NI kicks in well below the £150,000 mark, can't recall exactly where.

To be blunt, I can't imagine that anyone earning £150K is going to be that bothered about extra money that they are earning for doing overtime - either they do it because of a sense of responsibility, or not.

EdgarAllenPoll

As I said on the Evan Harris thread, the reason that GPs get elected so easily is not hard to fathom.

They have massive local name recognition, and they are are actually trusted by local people.

Spare a thought for people in that tax bracket who don't have the option of not working "out of hours".

Lots of people earn over £150k pa and travel abroad extensively meaning they're on planes at weekends, in meetings in the evenings, etc. I doubt that anyone earns that sort of money by doing a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job.

Coolfonz your experience is clearly limited and unfortunate. Yes there are some bad doctors as there are bad everything, but the vast proportion work very hard and deserve every penny.

it's hardly an unexpected consequence is it?!

It happened in the 1970s when the government put up the marginal tax rate to well over 50% and pretty much crippled the British economy.

"i could not do a job that kept me awake at night worrying about patients etc - let alone getting up on xmas morning to see to them at 5am - but some folk do"

completely agree - i don't know what GPs some of you are seeing but the one's at my practice deserve the money they earn and then some!

They might only see patients during certain hours, but they do paperwork and followup that encroaches onto their weekends already never mind when they're on OOH rotation.

Because of my complicated mecial history I have received calls late at night and on weekends/bank holidays from my GPs .

an awful lot of MPs are GPs...

Because, of course, he's working - so can only see the GP "out of hours".

It is odd about the GP deal ... .

My bf is in the highest tax band. He doesn't get the choice about clocking off to bring his earnings down. And I'm not sure he would, anyway.

He would be seething about that GP.

Actually, the GP deal wasn't odd. It was just a piece of very poor negotiation by Labour.

Regardless of the marginal tax rate, it's really the absolute figures that matter on this.

If you ask someone on £20k if they'd like to do extra hours for another £20k p/a, you'd get a different answer than if you asked someone on £120k.

the majority of salaried professions require people to do overtime for free where appropriate (if you are in management in some areas, this can mean working more than double your contracted hours free, gratis, and for nothing..).

i very much doubt a local solicitor ticking away from 9-5 during the week and staying late to get stuff done earns £100k (there simply isn't enough money involved in the kind of work they do). And yet the average GP clocks £130k.

what i think this highlights is that GP are just ridiclously highly paid...

because of a deal done in order (ironically) to get them to take on saturday/evening surgeries.

our local surgery still doesn't open saturday...bet they still benefitted from the pay rise though.

OP - i think his highlights that GPs run their surgeries to suit themselves, not the needs of patients (who, after all, still get sick at weekends, or, if they work, may want non-urgent appointments outside woking hours)

Litchick - Quite. Brown played such a clever trick giving (some) labour voters the impression that 'taxing the rich' is a realistic alternative to cutting public services.

Coolfonz It's going the other way. Every bright A'level student I've met lately wants to go into medicine (they are not interested in banking).

In my experience British Doctors are a load of self important scroungers in the main.

"Someone is ill"

"But i get taxed at 50pc, can't be arsed"

Nice. Go work in banking. My doctors has Spanish and German docs, i only see them, wont see a British one....they are dangerous for your health.