To really resent the amount of tax we pay.

[KettleBelles]

I hate it, we pay a vast amount of tax to live in a country where we can't see a GP for a fortnight, feel criminalised every time we go to an airport, pay even more tax again to drive a car on inadequate and over crowded roads. Get squashed on crowded transport which is filthy and unreliable, where criminals seem to always be on the beneficial side of human rights.

I can't be the only one who feels like this?

I agree that the NHS is struggling Fringe but god knows it's not going to get any better if we pay less tax.

it seems to me we get all the cuts and the super rich continue to dodge their fair share
Yup. A year after the crash, someone I was at college with, a partner in a hedge fund (the people who got us into this mess), made an extra £100m. I doubt he's paid any income tax for at least 20 years.

I would question what has stopped them from making a voluntary contribution to HMRC if they are so eager to pay more; I'm sure the government would gratefully accept it

i dont object to how much but it is certainly wasted yes and i dont see the point in paying so much if services are that rubbish.

its v unfair, on the subject of nhs, that the tax burden is equal but services unequal
as we see on this thread

I think we get amazing things for the tax we pay.

My auntie who does three years ago lived in Switzerland for nearly 50 years (married to a Swiss national). When she became ill she wanted to return to England to her sisters. The NHS and then the hospice system were all bloody amazing. My auntie wanted to die at home and they did everything in their power to ensure that happens. She had district nurses visiting daily despite the snow and ice, a support worker came in to help my Uncle with cleaning and washing/ironing etc.
My Swiss cousins were open mouthed at the quality and quantity of care my auntie recieved. They are all wealthy and all have expensive private health care plans but nothing they can buy would ever support the personal and patient centred care my auntie received here in the UK.
Likewise last year when my Uncle fell ill, the NHS were amazing with him and he had superb care right up until the day he left to go home to Switzerland and where he died a month later.

I will always be grateful for the fabulous services our taxes fund for everyone. Schools, hospitals. Community health care....all things that would cost more elsewhere in the world.

Spot on kettle belles!
It makes me laugh that some ppl aren't fussed about the privatisation of the NHS but its not like the government go 'seen as how you are paying for health insurance now we will reduce the amount of tax u pay by £100! '

I don't resent the amount of tax we pay, although I am only a lowly basic rate taxpayer, and don't think it's too bad for what we receive.

Why do self employed people moan every January about their tax Bill. Why not just put aside the appropriate amount of tax when they receive each payment from their customers. I put 25% into a savings account, although I do dip into it a bit as I know I don't pay tax on the first £10k, and then have no problem paying my tax bill each January. In fact, I usually end up with some excess once I've done all my accounts and completed the return - £1k this year even though I've dipped into the funds quite a bit throughout the year

If you can earn enough to be a higher rate taxpayer then one would assume that you are bright enough to realise that your tax bill is due every January and put some money aside for it

OP, you sound like a pundit off Fox News.

If the country's in such a state then it sound like you need to pay more tax to me, were obviously not paying enough.

I don't mind at all. The medicine I get for free (have an exemption certificate) from the NHS would cost at least double the tax I pay each month. I'm not poorly paid, I just need a lot of medicine to keep me alive.

Even if that wasn't the case, I don't resent paying for the NHS, infrastructure, welfare, and most of the rest of it.

I'm surprised you are getting such a hard time, I think anybody paying high taxes does resent it. Me and dh are both high rate taxpayers, in fact he went over 100k this year and was irate when I explained he is now in the 60% marginal tax band. Any pay rise he gets from here he gets 38p to the pound after tax and Ni. I think any sane person would be pretty miffed at that. And other problems with the system, like the higher rate tax bracket having been reduced instead of raised in recent years, so that many people become higher rate taxpayers without actually getting any richer.

However, the country IS in deficit, our taxes ARE spent on public services, and we do get a lot of things for free, like the nhs, so we have to sit back and accept it.

But if you are a net contributor you need to think of it as a charitable donation to those in need- that is the whole point of the welfare state, those with more have to pay more to cover those who cant afford to contribute.

Well, obviously paying taxes is bollocks, but we have to do it. We all fantasise about how nice it would be to have the extra cash for ourselves I'm sure.

But we need to do it to pay for the Airports

In fact dh has just paid ours and is currently vehemently blaming the dog for it. She doesn't seem to mind shouldering the blame.

Op, perhaps you should get a labrador?

Any pay rise he gets from here he gets 38p to the pound after tax and Ni. I think any sane person would be pretty miffed at that.

No, not at all. He (and you) just need to stop thinking of the pound as his. It was never his. He didn't have a pound and 62p was taken away, he only ever had 38p.

Bloody awful

YABVU. The comparison with the US doesn't work once you factor in state taxes and property taxes - it's a myth that it's a low-tax jurisdiction. And that's before you get to all the people who have health insurance and are still bankrupted by medical bills.

The way in which the public finances are spent is not perfect - I resent, for instance, the waste of public money involved in reorganising the NHS every three years since about 1990. But that doesn't affect the principle that paying tax is a social good, because it enables us to buy collectively the things that either can't be bought by individuals (e.g. public order and policing) or that can be arranged more efficiently collectively (e.g benefits - if I need benefits, I want a state entitlement: I don't want to be reliant on one individual's goodwill).

There are plenty of places in the world where you won't have to pay any tax, either because there isn't any or because the government doesn't have the means to collect it efficiently. I don't, on the whole, see people rushing to live in those places.

I'm a higher-rate taxpayer, by the way.

FatherReboola - why do you doubt the hedge fund manager has paid any tax?

YABU

I don't want to pay tax (who does) but I think we get a pretty good deal for what we get. I would choose for the government to spend the money slightly differently but then I am crossing my fingers for a positive change in May.

If you don't like it (and want to do something about it) you can either leave the country or try and vote for change.

NB I am self employed - did you know you can DD money to HMRC each month so that the bill in Jan is not a massive shock? In fact you might get money back which is a nice surprise.

I think anybody paying high taxes does resent it.

Nope. As I am on a good salary, of cause I expect to pay more in tax. I might resent the amount of unpaid overtime I'm having to work, but I don't resent the tax on the pay I earn. I like that I live in a country where health are is free at the point of delivery, where there is a social care safety net, where provision of education is considered the right of every child, and where I (largely) trust the police.

There are many many worse places in the world to live.

My husband had a heart operation a few years ago. I remember standing in the cardiac ICU watching him wired up to many machines, having one-to-one care, and trying to work out how many years of my tax payment would cover one day of that.

No-one likes paying tax - but sometimes it's worth while reminding yourself what you get for it.

I think companies should pay their taxes and pay a living wage and see if they did, we might not need to pay quite as much personal tax.

I'd pay more, though I'd rather the rich would just pay their share and the corporations pay a living wage.

This. I don't resent paying tax at all. As for the NHS, my mother died in a hospice after several bouts of hospitalisation. The care she received was gob-smackingly brilliant but I dread to think what would have happened without the NHS as we would never have had the kind of money or level of insurance to afford what was provided for her. I'm not that bothered if I have to wait a bit longer than I might like for non-urgent appointments with my GP - it's still worlds better than countries without a health system free at the point of use. Tax-dodging corporations and individuals give me the rage, and the 'efficiency' I want to see in our system is the efficiency to tighten up the loopholes and collect the missing tax. But they don't make me want to avoid paying my own share.

We are one of the most unequal countries in the developed world - that is that there is a huge gap between the richest and poorest, because of the lack of redistribution of wealth through taxation.

Countries that are more equal, and therefore pay more tax, have far fewer social problems and the overall feeling of wellbeing is much greater.

Read a book called The Spirit Level, it sets it out pretty clearly there. Interestingly the only country more unequal than us is the usa, so if it's happiness you're after you might want to rethink moving there.

Dapplegrey because I understand that he paid someone rather a lot of money to get him out of doing so. I haven't spoken to him in a good few years, so perhaps he's decided to start paying UK income tax since we last met, but I'd be surprised.