What tax do you most hate

[Taxta]

I’m torn between stamp duty and inheritance tax.

Well said

It wouldn’t really make much difference to call it call income tax, they’d just still take the same amount and split it afterwards?

VAT in all its forms, don’t want to pay it on fags, fashion or school fees. Surely Labour will add it to private medicine soon.

Inheritance is despicable.

Inheritance tax is evil.

1. It is double (or triple) taxation. You already paid income tax, National Insurance, VAT, corporation tax, capital gains tax, stamp duty, and countless other levies on every pound you earned and saved during your lifetime.

This is not taxation - it is confiscation of assets that have already been taxed multiple times.

1. It violates the fundamental right to property. The right to own property and dispose of it as you see fit - including giving it to your children - is one of the most basic human rights. Inheritance tax directly attacks this. It treats your wealth not as yours, but as the state's, which you are merely "allowed" to keep until death.

1. It punishes virtue and rewards consumption. Inheritance tax penalises people who work hard, save, invest, and build something to pass on. It rewards those who blow their money on luxury cars, holidays and consumption before death.

1. It destroys families, farms and businesses. Family businesses, farms and homes are frequently broken up or sold simply to pay the tax bill. Children who grew up in a family enterprise often cannot afford to keep it running after the 40% hit.

1. It is rooted in envy, not justice. The emotional fuel behind inheritance tax is rarely compassion for the poor - it’s resentment toward the successful. And what's more - the truly rich never pay it, they have schemes in place to stop it. It only hurts middle class people typically living in the south east whose homes have gone up in value.

1. It reduces overall wealth creation: High inheritance taxes discourage capital accumulation.

1. The state has no moral claim on your children’s inheritance. Your duty is first to your family, not to the Treasury.

Those on here who support it should then want inheritance tax to be 100% with no minimum threshold.

Not zero on anything in my country, even have to pay it on medicine

Same principle with fuel tax: you pay for the fuel, then the government add a hefty tax on top, and then they charge VAT on the fuel price AND on the tax. You're being taxed for the luxury of paying tax. Not to mention the fiendishly clever (albeit very non-green) stealth tax with E10 petrol.

Then the government have the audacity to blame rising fuel prices on the 'greedy' fuel retailers - whose key job is actually not selling fuel, but as tax collectors for the government.

This!!

And the additional taxes on my pint at the pub.

I would say that stamp duty creates the biggest hurdles to people making rational decisions and so that is the one that I dislike the most. It incentivises older people to stay in houses that are too big rather than encouraging a more fluid housing market where people can move to more appropriate housing without paying punitive taxes for the privilege.

Inheritance tax is one that I find frustrating but I can see the societal benefits of encouraging the older population to use their cash in their lifetime rather than sitting on large sums of cash indefinitely.

I say both of these as someone who is nearing retirement age so both are part of my financial plans for the medium term.

Not only that, they gained that wealth at the expense of others being priced out of the market.

And the people that were priced out of the market will be collectively repsonsible for paying the tax they didn't pay on their housing gains that could have ensured a better national debt balance, so they get hit twice.

We're now in a situation where we cannot borrow more money because the national debt is too big. We can either a) squeeze workers with higher taxation and the consequences of that for productivity or b) tax unearned wealth like house price gains through inheritance tax ?

I wonder which one the government with go for ...

I dislike stamp duty.
I dislike council tax.
I dislike VAT.
I dislike tax credits.
I dislike self employed people paying less than PAYE

Stamp duty because it feels like a form of theft.
Council tax because it is so flawed. And unfair for so many. But nobody seems to have any gumption to try to change it. And I think it costs Councils a lot of money.
I dislike VAT on basic things that poorer people have to purchase as well as those who buy without thinking twice.
Tax credits are a massive employer subsidy. And keep wages for modest jobs at a set rate, along with the NMW.
Self employed people will often say they don’t get paid for holidays, sick etc. I don’t agree. I know those who have calculated such costs into quotes. They want the fire engine to turn up but don’t want to pay for it as PAYE have to. They often get paid cash in hand and do very well indeed. But pay less tax than they should. Not okay.

This

Maybe VAT - we should offer a vat relief programme for essentials

Grains, cheap meat, veg, staples - things are only going to get tougher after all

Yes, I agree with the taxes not collected from those who defraud the HMRC. The published list is appalling. The amounts on it dreadful.
And billionaires who should and could pay more than they often do.

You know VAT isn’t charged on these right?

I didnt! Wow 🙈🙈

Dumb moment there.

Could you explain this a bit more please? I don't really understand it

Yes especially from the money laundering of dodgy shops right under our noses and the criminal gangs

Seconded.

It’s overly complicated and I’m not sure that in reality entitlement to benefits and pension is that tied to it. There are so many credits available now anyway.

The higher income tax levels in Scotland especially the higher tax rate which overlaps with still paying standard NI. It means I have a marginal tax rate of 50% and makes my small business unviable. I absolutely hate it.

It’s nonsense

They are saying that if we tax people’s gambling winnings then we also have to give people “credit” for their gambling losses - ie they could deduct their losses from any tax they have to pay on their winnings (or even from other taxes)

But there is no rule that says we would have to do it that way. We tax people on their income without allowing them to deduct the money they have “lost” in earning that income (train ticket, work clothes costs, childcare). We could absolutely tax gambling winnings without allowing deduction of gambling losses.

It would be fairer as everyone earning the same amount of income would pay the same tax on it. It's a disincentive to work if you pay more tax than someone who has the same income but doesn't work. The differential has been a pain in the arse for decades with people trying to organise their affairs so that the income is "NIC free" meaning huge amounts of Parliamentary, Court and HMRC time and monies to counter tax planning involving NIC. If NIC was scrapped, it would save millions in time and cost and at a stroke would remove the "behavioural" problems in having one type of income liable to NIC and other types not.

I have absolutely no problem with IHT (and my mother’s estate will likely pay a lot of it). I think it should be changed to another form of capital gains tax instead though.

At the moment it’s the deceased (well, their estate) who pays IHT and you get the “I’ve paid my taxes all my life” moan, whereas if it was paid by the recipient/s instead, it would be more difficult to argue about being taxed on unearned income.

Stamp duty is different though and I don’t think it should be paid on a home you’re buying to live and house your family in. Just another reason why we wouldn’t be able to move easily.

Stamp duty, it is a serious drag on people’s ability & willingness to move when they want to, whether that is for work, retirement, because they want to try a new area.

It's horrendously unfair. Elderly people can't downsize and free up large family homes for those who need them, as well as the pure nastiness of people who become disabled being taxed for their disability, if they have to move to a bungalow - which will likely be smaller than the house that they had no alternative but to leave.

It's also heavily skewed to benefit well-off people, who can afford to buy their 'forever home' immediately, rather than having to slog and save up and move up the property ladder gradually.

If we MUST have stamp duty, then after your first home, it should only ever be payable on the difference of the value of the more expensive home that you move to compared to the one that you leave. It's grossly unfair to charge somebody a tax for moving to an equivalent-value - or even lower-value - home for whatever reasons. This is for first/only homes, of course; if you can afford a second home, it's fair enough to pay a hefty tax on it.

Nail on the head. There's absolutely nothing to say Parliament would have to allow betting losses to be set against other income. There is precedent for losses to be set against profits of the same source, i.e. you could set it up that gambling losses could be set against gambling gains, but again, nothing to force Parliament to do that either.