To feel that having nearly half of your salary taken away is just not right?

[WinnieTheWho]

I don't earn enough to pay tax & NI but my DH has a pretty good job & salary for which he works BLOODY hard. I was horrified to work out after last pay day that for EVERY £1 he earned, he only kept 60 pence. This is due to a combination of paying very high income tax and NI, as well losing all of his personal allowance because he might get a bonus at the end of the year! It just seems that if you work hard to get paid well and you are a PAYE taxpayer, the Government & HMRC will just shaft you from all angles. It just makes me wonder why we bother? So... AM I BEING UNREASONABLE?

Manic - what part of 'you would pay less overall' aren't you understanding? That is the benefit.

Roof over head
Food in cupboard
Clothes to keep warm
Bills paid

Anything else is a bonus. There are plenty of people out there in both the north and south of the country, struggling to achieve those 4 things.

High earners would pay less. No one else would be better off.

Catgirl, you could have two parents working and paying tax in reasonable or lowish paid jobs or one parent working in a higher paid job and one parent sah. Amount of tax paid is much of a much - it doesn't make any difference who in the couple actually earns the wage or pays the tax because it is still money coming in/going out of the family.

A family is a unit - I don't think you can really view a sahp as having third party support (although in the strictest sense of the word you are not wrong). It's more about division of labour. A high earner is imo paying enough tax for the both of them (which is why my main problem isn't my dh paying tax, but the way in which the government spends it).

Plus, if there are less taxes paid overall, then there is less in the coffers for health/education and all those other things that tax pays for.

It's not about me, personally, paying less. It's about paying what is fair. Leaving everyone with enough to live on - you know 'the greater good'.

It can be hard to muster sympathy for someone fortunate enough to be in a position to pay 40% tax when you are struggling to pay a mortgage, bills, council tax, shool meals and feed and clothe a family of four on less than a quater of what a HE's weekly income would be.

Especially when people like the op come along and make out that they somehow work harder and are therefore more deserving.

Like a poster further up the thread, DH works full time. I work nights, but sill have to get up in the mornings to provide childcare to allow DH to work.

Don't get me wrong, we are not skint, but that is because we are fortunate enough to have a low mortgage and no childcare costs. WE would be skint if I didn't work, but I chose to do that so we can have our luxeries.

I don't begrudge what tax we do pay. I am fucking relieved that we are on a position to be able to pay tax when so many others are not.

Karma - it wasn't a SAHP / WOHM comment

The posts I was responding to have been deleted. A poster called another poster a "scounger". I felt that was rude and pointed out that as both posters were financially depenedent on a source other than themselves it was a bit rich (as well as hideously rude) to call someone a scrounger.

Nothing more than that

Manic - don't you think it's a scandal though that for ANYONE working full time anything over and above the essentials is a bonus?

I really don't know how we have come to this point. In the 1970's my dad, as a manual worker, was able to buy a house, support a family AND we had some luxuries (i.e day trips, the occasional UK holiday...)

Today someone like my dad would have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder, would be reliant on tax credits to meet bills and have no way out of the mire.

Yes, I do, alistron1, but we're in a double dip recession and that is how it is with the cost of living going up so quickly.

Karma- what you state is factually correct, but you cant really compare a family with one HR tax payer/ one non earner, with a family where both adults earn a medium amount. You aren't comparing like with like. Income tax is tax on an individual's job. It's not the family being taxed , but the individual. It's up to famiilies of couse to decide on the way they want to run things, and if having one adult earning who then has to earn more to offset the other not working, then that's up to couples to decide for themselves. I just think if you're not happy with the financial consequences of that, it's up to families to rearrange things differently.

We are in a double dip recession where tax dodgers and the very wealthy are not feeling the pain/increase in cost of living...

I'm just grateful that DP and I can work, have reasonably secure jobs and if in april we pay more tax/lose CB then so be it. If the economic conditions when we began our family in '97 were like they are now we'd have been relying on food banks.

It makes me angry though that things have come to this. I am 2 years away from my kids beginning university and TBH the thought of what the future might hold for them terrifies me.

Manic, the personal allowance goes up to 10k and NIC is combined with income tax at 30%. You can do the calculations yourself using those online calculators - it does work out better. People always forget to factor in what they pay in NIC.

I don't think anyone would mind paying the high levels of tax that we pay if we could see that the money was being used for worthwhile things. But it isn't. So much of it goes into the pockets of public sector people, or to fund the lifestyles of people.

public sector people?????

you mean like doctors, nurses, teachers, bin collectors, police, prison staff, etc etc?

and exactly how much of a "lifestyle" do you think someone has on £71 per week?

Katie, you are forgetting that Jo Bloggs down t'road is a benefits claimant and he has a flat screen, two holidays a year a BMW and his own private Yacht and a free goat.

T'was in the Mail and everyfink, how much these scroungers get. So of course it's all true

That's what us hardworking tax payers are funding. Not for someone to exist on £71 a week. Because on that amount all you can do is exist, really. It's hardly living, is it?

...or you could consider DPs workshy DB who has claimed benefits for the last 10 years and says he doesnt want a job.

Sorry dooin, forgot about the goat.....

And I am the one who gives out the goats too......

Don't see too many people who frequent my employment establishment enjoying any kind of lifestyle, far less having any feckin choice in the matter.

Yawn.

I pay high tax. DH pays high tax. Society functions because decent people pay tax - multi millionaires/Tory cabinet members often don't.

I like goats.

...Or you could consider my sister who has worked since was 15 years old until she was 25 years old when circumstances lead her to having to move and now she cannot find a job despite firing out about 25 applications per day.

The vast majority of people on benefits want to work but cannot find work. But don't let that stop you tarring them all with the same brush because of the few eejits who have no intentions of working.

Clearly that is NOT what he tells the Jobcentre Wasabi.

If he did, he'd get NO money.

If he's not on JSA then he has other conditions which mean he doesn't have to be looking for work.

No one is saying they don't want to pay tax puffin...

Bumbley, you don't get the bit about how there would be less in the coffers do you?

How would you propose less money coming in would fund the NHS and state education? Or do we not deserve those things?

Not mention funding the benefits bill which is rising because of rising unemployment figures and lack of vacant jobs.

I for one, would worry about what would happen to those lower down the chain than myself, if the tax were to be cut, because I am not arrogant enough to believe that it will never me or mine one day, that needs that help.

What would you cut out bumbley

katie - yes showing how lax the current system is how it can be a lifestyle choice.