Tax should not be paid for working over time

[Dssen]

Me and ds were chatting the other day . He's done some over time but he said sometimes it feels pointless because the tax man takes quite a bit of it . We were thinking that if someone works over time that person should not be taxed. It should be a kind of reward that if you work overtime it's tax free .

Not going to happen but wishful thinking.

Erm, it would be a pretty obvious way to avoid tax: give all your employees a one-hour contract and 39 hours of “over time”.

How does that work for those on salaries?

I agree due to freezing of thresholds + student loans + autoenrolment, at various thresholds working extra hours is fairly pointless.

I remember at one point being advised I should get a second job to help save for a house deposit - bar work or something. I was paying a 51% tax rate at the time, so would have ended up with about £5 an hour. Not really worth it given the stress of trying to do it on top of a full time job!

Oh never thought of that .

I think those who work in an actual workplace should get a tax break/premium payment

WFH is not an option for many

Yes totally. For example you always have to find childcare, rather than shove them in front of a tablet or tv, to save money on childcare costs.

Taxman takes just the normal amount unless it is pushing you into the upper tax bracket.
I have heard people saying similar, that OT is not worthwhile as the taxman takes "most of it" but of course that is a load of rubbish. Of course it is quite possible that along with tax & NI his pension contributions have also gone up but that can only be a good thing.

Why should my 55 year old boss with no kids get a premium for working in the office? He lives ten minutes down the road. He hired me because I am a hard worker and because I wfh he can leave me doing all the out-of-hours work, late into the night, whilst he goes home and enjoys a bottle of wine with his wife.

Im salaried so I don’t get paid overtime.

I guess I'm just jealous of those who can stay at home and choose their hours. I don't really think it's a sensible idea though.

Whaaat?! That sounds like a crazy idea. Why should tax on overtime be different from tax on core hours. People already generally get paid at a higher rate for overtime. Why on earth should they get the additional bonus of not having to make a fair contribution to public services?

I thought they would have already made their fair contribution when working their normal hours? If they refused that over time there would be no extra money for the tax many anyway.

I already pay tax on my earnings (very little but still some), DH pays higher rate tax. So we’ve made “fair contribution”. Neither of us gets paid overtime (just good old fashioned unpaid overtime) but we still pay yet more tax on interest from savings. Lots of people think the tax system is unfair but it is what it is.

It might work if everyone got a salary for a 40 hour week in the office and got paid for extra hours which were non-taxable, but lots of people have a very different arrangement nowadays.

People on high salaries often work long hours, and in fact their marginal tax rate keeps going up because they have the “broadest shoulders”. You’re suggesting that if someone works full time (say 49 hours) then additional hours shouldn’t be taxed. So if I regularly work 70 hours a week because my highly paid job demands it, should a slice of my income be tax free

Or be off sick/ on holiday/ unpaid leave all week but then work 40 hours overtime

I'm self-employed with no fixed hours.
Would it all be overtime, or none of it?

I earn very high salary.

Should I stop paying tax after I work 10 hours each week because I’ve already made more than my fair contribution?

Yes, obviously…

In some circumstances when I’ve been offered overtime it’s been because the project was badly managed in the first place, or people didn’t get the work done in normal working hours. Now we don’t get overtime in my current workplace because people were slacking to get the extra hours.

I am one of those boring people who really hates giving any more of my money than necessary to the tax man. But even I think this is a bad idea, wont we all just get the lowest hours contracts we can, say 10 hours a week and the other 20+ as overtime?

I'd end up working 90 hour weeks to make the most of it.
But no, not the best idea, if your son doesn't want to pay the extra tax, he doesnt have to do the hours.
And at one point I had 4 jobs and paid a shit load until I realised just one job with longer hours would bring more money in.

But then that work would be done by someone else who would pay tax so there would still be money for the tax man. So in your view someone earning £50k made up of their salary try plus overtime should pay less tax then someone earning £50k without overtime? How is that fair?

If someone else does the work eg a temp cover, then they're paying tax

of course if no one does it, no tax

I don't really understand why people post ideas they haven't thought about for more than two seconds.

Just no.

Income is taxed. It's the only fair way to fund society.

Rather than thinking up unworkable ideas why doesn't he look into why his overtime hours are being taxed more than the regular hours as that's not right

When I do overtime over the weekend I get paid for a full 8hour day…even if I only do 2hours (which is normally what I do) i can’t complain really. It works for me
, taxed or not.

It bothered me more that my overtime pay wasn't pensionable.