Your tax

[LuisSuarezFangs]

That's how it's spent.

Fill your boots.

George

I wish they weren't spending my taxes on useless gimmicks like this, how much is this twattery going to cost to administer?

Probably not that much, given that the info will accompany something else?

I'd be interested to know how they decide who gets the information and who doesn't.

Oh and Welfare Spending is all lumped together. Such a shock.

Well it doesn't say Too. But it's 24 million people.

It's a waste of money, and a horrible bit of political points-scoring masquerading as transparency.

It wouldn't be so terrible to be open about this, if it was done as a means of dispelling some false impressions people have -- for example by breaking welfare spending down into pensions / in-work benefits / out-of-work benefits or something.

Even so, this is 2014. If you want to be transparent about something that doesn't have to mean spending millions on printing glossy booklets and distributing them around the country!

A total waste of money. All it will achieve is horror at the amount spent on "benefits" (which will probably include state pensions), and thus give fresh impetus to drive the poor to a life of crime.

"Of course the tax summaries do not break down the welfare payments into their constituent parts such as unemployment, child benefit, winter fuel allowance, in-work tax credit etc.
Critics will say that is a deliberate omission."

Yep, I'd say it's deliberate. I'm sure someone who is good with pie charts will come up with a better breakdown of welfare spending.

Have they included MPs expenses and pensions in there?

It wouldn't be so terrible to be open about this, if it was done as a means of dispelling some false impressions people have -- for example by breaking welfare spending down into pensions / in-work benefits / out-of-work benefits or something.

Amen. I can't believe they've had the nerve to pull that particular stunt again and call the whole thing transparency.

Also funny that we get these noe a few months before the next election.

I don't remember one from last year.

Or the year before

I do remember a wanky letter supposedly from David Cameron about how he's made things better for me. Shame it was a blanket letter and didn't apply to me.

The sad thing is, some people fall for this shit.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't NI specifically for pensions, unemployment and disability payments anyway? You know, insurance policy for when you need it? (I've been wondering if there would be the same legal ramification doodahs of the government cutting welfare payments as there would be to any other insurance company that defaulted on contractual/statutory payouts but probably not!).

As for the rest of it - I'm more than happy to pay NI and taxes to get the benefit of this insurance if I ever need it, the NHS, roads, police, binmen and -women etc. I don't want my taxes to be cut. But I wouldn't mind the option to refuse to pay NI if my insurance policy is with a deadbeat provider.

Collectively, we can afford all these services together if we all pay according to ability. Individually, if tax cuts result in them being taken away, we can't.

It's a bit like the energy bills with the breakdown of where your money goes to try and justify the price increases whilst trying to minimise their massive profits! I'm not sure what the point of this is other than to waste money that could be put into the emergency services instead which would help the general public more than the information would.

orrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't NI specifically for pensions, unemployment and disability payments anyway?

No. It all goes into one pot along with tax.

I did a bit of digging on this last night. As far as I can see the "Welfare" figure includes

• Working tax credits (i.e. a subsidy paid to cheapskate employers so they don't have to pay a living wage)
• Child benefit (yep),
• Disability and sickness payments (formerly included under "Pensions")

In other words, the Welfare figure has been padded to within an inch of it's life to make a particular political point. This stinks of Duncan-Smith's kind of mendacity.

16million people are going to get this letter, thats 16million * 2 bits of paper with coloured ink on, 16million envelopes and 16sodding million postage costs.....!!!

FFS - a simple webite with a calculation on it to say "put in your earnings"/tax code etc if you give a shit and then see a breakdown would have been a sodding lot cheaper!!!

They have put state pensions separately from welfare. (Which does align with how most people see them, whatever their legal status, people believe they've earned their state pension. There was something in the papers over the last week that government departments are going to stop referring to pensions as benefits because people get so annoyed by it.)

It's interesting that state pensions look like they are only a third of the total benefits bill ("welfare" + "state pensions".) People frequently post that they make up most of it. (And I thought so as well.)

It's to help support an ethos of downsizing the state by giving people data so they can start talking shit about 'my tax money'. Notice it doesn't come with a personal breakdown of how you benefitted from those taxes.

People should get annoyed about sickness and disability benefits, in addition to carer's allowance too, referred to as "welfare".

It's disgraceful.

YesIDidMeanToBeSoRudeActually Isn't it welfare?

I'm personally not bothered by this. I don't thik it goes far enough really - insofar as I do believe it should be more detailed (and I like the idea that it's personalised - to an extent) The next logical step though, is for a government to look at the other side of the coin (what does each citizen 'cost') and that would make me uncomfortable.

As a general principal though, the government should be made to account for what it spends my/our money on. This is what most of us do in respect of our own households - why should the government be any different?

I am currently running up a huge phone bill waiting for a human to speak to me to sort out my wildly incorrect tax code -

What a revolting way to stir up yet more bad feeling against anyone who claims any benefits. Heaven forbid they should be transparent about it and show individual figures for things child benefit and fuel allowance, so that people can see where the money really goes. Far better for them to imply that the country is in a crap state due to all the fifty inch tellies.

If I had even the remotest shred of confidence that my tax money was being spent wisely then maybe I wouldn't pay accountants so much to look for every possible (legal) way of reducing my tax bill!

For now, I'll carry on trying my best to keep as much as possible out of the chancellors revolting little hands!

Complete waste of money.

I know how much tax I've paid and I already know where to find a breakdown of spending. Publishing a web based calculator would have given all the same info and cost much less.