To think every single person in the country actually a tax person.

[ClementineKelandra]

When you buy food you pay tax.

When you buy clothes you pay tax.

Even if all you buy is vodca and fags you still pay tax.

Sick of hearing taxpayers this and taxpayers that. We're all tax payers!

a tax payer

Feel better now? Funny how people get so incensed about others' tax avoidance when most of them would do everything possible to avoid tax if they could - not refering to you OP, that's just my bugbear.

Not really. If you work in the public sector or are on benefits you are not a net tax payer as you don't pay more into the treasury than you take out.

In reality net taxpayers are people who work in the private sector and have no children or those who have children but have reasonably high wages. And companies themselves.

They are what keeps the public purse ticking over, those who work in the public sector or are supported by the state are just in a merrygo round of paying money into the state then pulling it back out again. They generate no new revenue for the state.

seasick you sound quite prejorative about people who work in the public sector.

I can see what you mean OP but I think you are nitpicking slightly. I think there is a baseline of basic tax that we all pay (food, clothes etc) but what politicians etc mean are those people who contribute above that level.

But whatever the amount we are all still contributing.

You can't say it only counts if its over a certain level. And surely all those little amounts add up to a lot.

Very few of us are net contributors, I know I'm not, maybe I will be over a lifetime (I hope so) but right now I'm not.

taxpayer and net contributor are different things. We all pay taxes - even if not income tax, there's VAT, duty, loads of other stuff.

Public sector workers do contribute, they provide something in return for their pay - care of NHS patients, tuition and care of schoolchildren, whatever. Their pay isn't just a gratis amount of money for sod-all. And they do pay taxes. (Am not public sector myself and never have been, just object to misleading statements.)

Heh. Friend of mine meets SeaSickSal's criteria: Higher Rate Taxpayer, no children, employed in the private sector.

Just one snag: he works for a public sector client, doing a job that used to be done by a civil servant. The work's been contracted out to a profit-making company, which takes a cut but doesn't even have enough desk space for its staff. Friend actually sits at a desk in the client's premises, next to civil servants paid half what he is.

There's nothing magical about "private sector".

Meanwhile a public sector teacher or doctor does in fact "create wealth" - or at least preserve it - you can actually measure the loss to an economy of losing literate, highly educated people to illness/accidents (and countries with high HIV burdens have had to do exactly those sums) or of not creating that literate, highly educated workforce in the first place.

I am currently on benefits but I also get maintainance from DS Dad...when. I use that money I pay tax. Simples.

Yep. Pretty uncontroversial position, I'd have thought. Doubt even any Telegraph readers would argue with it. The truth is, we are all taxed constantly.

delaytactic, come now, seasick didn't say "public sector parasites."

You're very right about paying tax on vodka and fags. Winds me up no end when people complain about people on benefits smoking - the government hands out the cash and the smoker gives most of it straight back!

My Dad works in the public sector and is taxed the same as me. He's also had years of being told he could lose his apparent cushy job while facing abuse from service users every day. Not having a go at you op, just don't get this idea that public sector have it easy.

• sorry didn't mean op, meant whoever said about public sector.

I think it's generally meant as tax on income, rather than spending when people talk about "tax payers money"

Yes, we are all taxpayers.

Seasick, public sector workers don't just get handed cash for nowt - they are remunerated for the work they do and the service they provide.

The private sector is not the only positive contributor, especially given the lengths many companies go to to avoid paying any kind of corporation tax.

Er seasick, the government is an important part of the economy. Those who work in the public sector might save you life, they might teach your children, they might build the infrastructure which you use.
What a simplistic argument you make.

We are borg drones.. All of us. If him in charge gets his own way we will work for the collective and regenerate at night. Nothing else.

That's how I see it anyroad

I don't really understand this thread. What's your point? That we're all equally contributing?
People who pay income tax also pay tax on all the things you've listed above...

Seasick Sal

That's an ignorant and damaging post about public sector workers.

Seasick's idea that the private sector is the ultimate source of all wealth is common, but wrong. Everyone who works is contributing, the value of their output is the same whether the government or a corporation owns/runs the organisation they happen to work for. Just imagine a school which converts from state to private (or goes the other way) without anything changing in the way it delivers education to pupils. The school's contribution to GDP is the same whether it happens to be in the public or private sector at any given moment.

Can't work out if you're joking kim