In thinking it's not "YOUR" tax?

[Dillydaydreaming]

Am I?

.

All these threads regarding benefits etc filled with people saying "my tax going to support the feckless blah blah".

Surely the whole point is that it's not YOUR tax - it's what your employer pays to the Govt. I pay tax and have never thought of it as "mine", in fact I rarely consider it as money I ever had, what I am interested in is the net amount left over and can I live on it + play all bills for the month (sometimes that's the scary bit ).
If you earn enough to pay higher tax rate then your take home pay (which, let's be honest is the bit wot matters) is going to be pretty good and certainly good enough for you to stop fretting about the single parent up the road having baby number 8 on benefits. I mean would you really want her life - honestly?

Or am I BU?

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YABU for all the reasons all ready outlined.

HMRC would love us to think that our earnings are in fact theirs, and they graciously allow us to keep some of it. They've done a good job on you OP.

Of course it is my tax and not my employers. What a strange notion.

I see it as my tax and am incredibly proud that from doing a job I love I get the chance to not only support my famiy but possibly others .

I don't object to paying tax, never have.
We don't avoid, or use accountants for tax dodges. It is the price of a fair society.
But I do object to some of the shit they spend it on. Oh yes I do.

I would object less to how much of my money went in tax if I agreed more with what it was spent on.

Hmm

I know exactly what you mean. I worked PAYE up until very recently and never saw the tax amount as money that had ever been mine, money that I had ever had, I didn't see it as my money. When my colleagues used to open their wage slips every month and bemoan how much tax they had paid and say wouldn't it be better if they didn't have to - I thought well if there was no taxation being taken by some magical mechanism, your salary would just be proportionately less!

Anyway

Then I've been self employed for a couple of years - and it is a very different feeling. I work for my hourly rate, I invoice, I get the money, I spend it. I get a tax bill at the end of the year and think Oh Fuck!!!!

In a way I wish there were PAYE for self employed that would help. But I think that there might be a divide in how PAYE and self employed view this money. PAYE have never had it in their bank so for some (many?) it's more easy come/easy go. I never even looked at my gross pay when I was paye, teh figure I looked at was the net.

I get paid a wage

I get tax taken out of that wage

Ergo it is my tax

YABU and not very bright either

Its convenient to think that the tax is not yours because then you don't get depressed at how much you work for and earn but how little of it you get to spend. i am self employed in a vat registered business with business rates. it is my money that pays the tax, vat and business rates. Because i feel strongly about how it should be spent i do lobby my MP and local councillors to make sure i get best value. I was in the public sector for 20 years and have been self employed for the last 11. i felt very differently about money when i worked in Local govt than i do now. perhaps all of us should try working in both public and private sector - i think you would see some different debates on MN then.

I suspect many of us have worked in both sectors. In fact it is much more likely to be true that if you currently work in the public sector that you have at some point worked in the private sector than the other way around .

YABU. The PAYE system is such an effective & non-negotiable way of collecting tax that it almost feels like it's coming from somewhere else and not out of our own pockets but, ask any self-employed person, anyone completing a tax-return, and anyone that gets a nasty letter from HMRC saying that they've underpaid.... it's definitely us that pay it. Not the employer

We should always think of tax money as 'our money' because then we are more likely to demand that it is spent wisely, not wasted, embezzled or used to buy the wrong things.

I think 'my tax' is just short for 'my tax contribution'
So YABU

YABU.

And I do mind how my tax contribution is spent. OK I vote for my party of choice but no governments spend money particularly smartly (ie they waste a lot, however good their intentions).

I don't resent the amount I pay towards a decent society ATM. I do resent waste.

if its not my tax, whose is it?

FYI: unless you earn over £26k pa, you are only paying for the services that you, on average, use in a single year.

MollyTheMole you called me "not that bright"

YES FOLKS IABU - I GET IT!!!!!

That doesn't matter, dilly

You posted in AIBU.

Your acknowledgement will be ignored and people will carry on kicking you until you bleed.

Do you know nothing about these things?

[nods]

People won't read that you have changed your mind. You are a dog to be whipped now.

"people will carry on kicking you until you bleed"

Isn't it a bit of an overstatement?

Oi Dilly, you useless, thick moo, come here for a kicking. Right now.

Your retraction cuts no ice with me.

It is my tax

However, it is not my right to use that to beat some unfortunate, down on their luck person round the head with.

Well when people talk about "my taxes" I always think that the actual proportion paid by you is tiny. Your individual tax bill would not, in any way, shape or form, pay for all of the benefits that "scroungers" receive. (The usual complaint). Tax collected is around £500 billion ish.

The tax you pay comes out of your gross salary, but once you've handed it over, it's not yours any more. IMO it becomes public money, the price we pay for living in this society under this government. If don't like how it is spent, go to your MP, your local councillor or better still vote

It certainly is my tax. DH and I are both self-employed. I suppose we are fortunate in that we have to pay a shed load of tax. However, while I am 100% behind my tax monies going towards hospitals and schools (and having lived in the USA fully realise how bloody lucky we are in the UK to have the NHS and good free schools), it is hard to stomach seeing your hard earned cash going to bail out banks that failed to self-regulate AND still paid some of their staff whopping great bonuses.

If you're self-employed, while one's NI contributions are smaller, you get very little back in the way of tax credits etc. Moreover, you pay your tax a year upfront, and have to wait a year (or more) for the HMRC to give you back YOUR money (that you could have earned interest on) if you have overpaid.

I couldn't give two shits about someone who has eight children - and anyway, doesn't Child Benefit get limited to two kids? They're only getting a fraction of MY tax money, and anyway, I like children and would like all kids to get a start in life so if it's my money going towards someone else's child, so be it. However, I very much resent MY money going towards wars I think are morally wrong, and on MPs fucking ridiculous expenses. Teenage mums, immigrants, asylum seekers - they're all a smoke screen to distract people from where the worst misappropriation of tax monies is happening.

Perhaps if we all considered our tax OUR money, we might wake up and collectively lobby for where our money is going. We vote these fuckers in, we should take more direct action on what they're doing with our dosh.

That is all.

YABU - I would go one step further. The gross amount that hits my payslip is all MY MONEY - the amount my employer is legally obliged to deduct by HMRC comprises a set percentage of my money which is paid to the government. This contribution is called tax. I am happy to contribute some of my money providing it is spent sensibly but I will take all legal steps to minimise the amount I am obliged to pay.

Well, clearly they won't actually physically kick you, this being the internet and all. So clearly you won't actually lose any blood, since the kicking is indeed, only virtual.

But yes. people do go on and on and on and on and on and on and on, sometimes in quite vile terms, long after the poor OP has agreed they were being unreasonable.

So no. kicking them until they bleed, while not a statement of fact in so far as there is neither kicking nor bleeding, is in no way an overstatement.

However, I was being lighthearted anyway, making a joke, playing on the above fact that people do go on at you even after you've said fine, you're right.

so take your humpy face and stick it up your arse.

at hec

Yet...