to think that seeing our national debt might

[rottentomatoes]

stop people moaning about the government spending cuts? Aibu to think that if this timebomb was put on every computer screen as a screen saver people might be less likely to moan about the cuts being made in government spending.

Our Debt

Where it goes

Paying the same rate for everyone would certainly level the playing field, be proportionally fairer by quite a bit & make a real difference.

Tee flat rate not fair.

Using your figures if you lose 500 of your 5000 that's going to hurt a lot more losing 5000 of your 5million...

you'd be penalising the poor

Yes, because you sound so caring OP

"Paying the same rate for everyone would certainly level the playing field, be proportionally fairer by quite a bit & make a real difference."

I am honestly confused. You know that lower earner pay a lower percentage don't you?

Please come over here and see what the cuts have done, work my eighteen hour day with no hope of respite care because the cuts have removed it. No hope of nursing care because the nurse we had has retired and not been replaced. No help whatsoever. Lovely it is. Feel free.

They are already penalising the poor. And I said 10% an example, are you actually reading my posts? Or are you too wedded to the idea that people should pay a variable rate? Just like most of the politicians in the world?

The point is that everyone would pay. There'd be no loopholes or deductibles or whatever you want to call them. I know I would more cheerful pay my whatever percent if I was 100% positive Dave Cameron and his cronies and the big companies and everyone was paying. They are not. They are dodging and loopholing and not paying.

Exactly, YoniKeeper.

ItsAllgoingtobefine

I believe the government has just massively increased the tax free earning level, albeit not to a living wage but certainly a big increase.

Well, if the £5m is currently not paying anything because they have ways around it? It isn't hurting them at all.

If it's flat rate, same for all, then the £5,000 earner can budget for it and the £5m earner would actually have to pay it.

The issue isn't that it wouldn't hurt them. the issue is that they aren't currently paying it! (Not all of them. But a lot of them based on the news.)

Tee2072

I have read your posts and my post was also an example.

Please read mine
Example

The flat rate could not be more than around 15% because the lowest earners in the country simply could not afford to pay more than that (roughly). So if there was a flat rate all high earners would also pay 15% but currently they pay 45%. How is that efficient.

The vast majority of high earner don't evade tax you know!

Tee2072

The problem is you are starting from the premise that most high earners evade tax, this is simply not true.

I was speaking to someone about their relative recently.

She is close to retirement age. She has worked all her life, but in the last two years she has had to stop work due to a degenerative disease.

She is living off benefits as a result, and has £20 per week after bills to feed herself and clothe herself and pay for anything that she needs (cleaning materials, toiletries etc).

She lives in a three bedroomed house. Due to her medical condition she cannot sleep in her bed, she is sleeping on her settee, so even if she could get a lodger, it would be an uncomfortable situation for her to be sleeping in a 'public room' with someone she doesn't know well.

She would happily move to a smaller house - but there are none available.

Due to the bedroom tax, she will have £12 less per week to live off, so £8 per week.

She has paid into the system all her life, and yet now, when she needs it to support her due to circumstances that she cannot control, she is getting screwed over by the bedroom tax.

I think that some people are entirely justified in complaining about the cuts.

itsallgoing and see more people who are the ones actually paying into the system look abroad for work or to move their money?

We need earners, if someone tried to take 70% of what I worked hard for I'd be out of here faster than a rat out of a very unfair trap.

One flat rate of tax would be better and a higher personal allowance. That way everybody is on an equal playing field. High earners and those that are happy to not progress or wish to work time like students etc. Penalising hard work isnt what we want our children to see.

The cuts may not be liked by those on benefits but they are needed. Benefits were supposed to be the bare minumum as a last resort yet now they are having to be capped to £26k due to the amounts some get and thousands are on them by choice. At least UC will even up the playing field. People wont be able to work part time when the income doesnt support the household or choose to let one parent not work. People blame the government, its never their own fault or down to the choices they made.

Agree re child maintainence, it should be included in all benefit calculations. Couples who live togther have both incomes taken into account so this should be no different. Both parents should support a child though, not just the NRP. There are many double standards at the moment.

Company tax needs to be looked at, tighten up some things and crack down on evasion but we do need some slack or more will simply shift their base to another country. SE people use every loophole etc going to minimise their tax bill but its seen as wrong when a large company does the same. The large company will be employing many though and in turn they all pay tax whereas the SE is likely to be one or two people.

rottentomatoes

You're still not getting it. And I'm done explaining it as I don't think you'll ever get it as you are so wedded to your 'variable tax rate' idea. As are most people as it's all they know.

The real issue is that cutting benefits? Isn't doing fuck all. We are still in massive debt. It's going to increase without decent rates thanks to losing our AAA rating a few weeks ago. The pound is devaluing. We need radical action.

But we don't get it. Because politicians are in the same mind set you are.

Bored now.

A decent country requires the rich to help the poor the strongest to help the week.

As within the current tax system a super high earner wouldn't lose 70% of their income to be taxed, only 70percent of whatever part of their income falls into that band.

Of course it is fairer to say people who earn more should pay proportionally more, everyone should pay what they can afford.

The trouble is that the rich have options. If tax increases too much, they will simply 'officially' move to another country and become non resident, thereby paying no bloody tax at all! Which helps no one.
Ditto all those companies who get away with blue murder on their corporation tax. Governments of all colours have been reluctant to act as they are scared of making the country uncompetitive. If that happens the companies just take their money and their jobs elsewhere.
Depressingly I can't see an answer as our job costs and taxes are already much higher than some other countries and we have no way of levelling the playing field

Tee2072

Perhaps if you actually explained how your system might be beneficial it would help.
You have used an example with miscalculations (10% of 5 million is not 5 thousand) and have used incorrect assumptions (that most high earners evade tax) which is simply not true.
You also have not replied to my post in regard to the fact that some earners simply do not earn enough to warrant paying tax.

The fiscal deficit seems scary because it is debt. Cameron argues that within five years the national debt will rise to "some £22,000 for every man, woman and child in the country". This may be true, but what he doesn't tell us is that it is money the government owes to us - not money that we owe to anyone else. That's right: 80% of our government debt is owed to the British people.

What is called "national debt" is our own savings, looked at from the other side of the balance sheet. Given that most of us do not knowingly buy government debt, how do our savings end up as the fiscal deficit? We put our savings in banks and pensions funds. But they are just intermediaries: they invest our savings by buying bonds and other securities that pay interest. Some of these bonds will be from private sector companies that want to borrow for investment.

But when private companies do not want to invest as much as we, the people, want to save in a given year, then the only alternative is to invest the money in government bonds, i.e. public debt. The fiscal deficit is just the lending that we make to the government. The fiscal deficit is so high because we are demanding more bonds - that is, we want to save more - than the private sector is willing to invest.

Cameron's claim that "for every single pound you pay in tax, 10p would be spent on interest" is frankly dishonest: 8p of the 10p is cashback for us!

The idea that attacking the welfare state will make a positive contribution to the fiscal debt has already been demonstrated as false, what has happened through cutting services, welfare, infrastructure is the fiscal deficit has increased and will continue to do so. The conditions for the best off 10% have improved at the expense of the rest of us and most of all at the expense of those on the lowest incomes.

This is nonsense anyway, the debt is not going down. It's going up.
factcheck

Foreign Secretary Hague dismissed the £10million we are paying for Mrs T's funeral as if it were pocket money. If he's not worried about our debt than neither am I.

I hate the cuts but I think a flat rate of tax would penalise the poor too.

If you only earn a small amount paying 10% (or x%) could stop you from buying enough food to survive, whereas paying 10% out of millions and you wouldn't even notice. A "variable" tax rate benefits those with a lower income.

Cutting tax evasion/avoidance is a completely different issue. Why not keep the proportional tax rate and improve enforcement.

I also think its untrue that lowering taxes for the very wealthy would significantly decrease tax avoidance/evasion either. If you're greedy enough to avoid paying £10m in taxes you are greedy enough to avoid paying £5m in taxes.

I agree Tarka.

I just wonder what the solution is?

I usually get flamed when I suggest including child support in the assessment of benefits. But if the NRP is supporting the child the benefit system doesn't need to (on a sliding scale according to amount paid obviously) . We both work and have had our tax credits cut by £45 a week with no warning. It's due to me being on maternity in the year 11 - 12. Last years disregard was higher so going back to work will have more impact on our money this year now the disregard has reduced again. We will have to make cuts and cope but it sucks that people who work and try to do the right thing but don't have the advantages of a high salary are being screwed as are the disabled. Meanwhile millionaires get tax cuts.

If i ruled the uk

1. stop funding the Royla family

2. lower the wage and expensives of MPs and EMPs

3. stop all forgine aid

4. stop all none essessal spending in govenment departments

5. stop funding chariy

6. stop all tax loopholes and avidance

7. increase all vat and tax - more so on fags and booze and takeouts/sugar foods

8. support small business, manufcaturing and exports

9. stop nhs/housing for none nationalise untill they have been here for two years.

10. stricter immagration rules

11. means test every benefit