To hate the term "tax payers money"

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It is not their money. It has been taken from them. It's now the governments money.

It's been annoying me on a lot of the benefit threads where people get all haughty about how "their tax" is being spent. You don't have a say other than backing a party who's policies in how this money is spent. It always comes across as arrogant to me.

While I'm at it I also dislike the term benefits, it put across a feeling that people in receipt of them are in some way at an advantage to those who don't which IMHO just isn't the case. I think terms such as social security (although not strictly accurate given the current situation with so many) take away that implication that so many people who are fortunate enough to have never needed additional support seem to cling onto.

I've done my tin hand and fully prepared to be told otherwise.

I am also in no way implying that everyone who has never received this additional support have these opinions. Just quite a few on the recent threads.

Of course the government spends too much money otherwise we wouldn't be £1.5 Trillion in debt. This debt is £25,000 per person in the UK or £43,000 per "taxpayer". This debt can never be paid back and will just keep getting bigger unless something drastic changes.

The government should spend the money it collects from us carefully without going into debt - it is insane to get a nation into this amount of debt - it doesn't benefit the people. Who does it benefit?

Never forget who really controls our country and in fact most of the world - the bankers.

However I think taxpayers money is a useful phrase to remind people (government included) that it's not an infinite resource and that for every extra pound the government spends that is a pound that someone has not had to spend themselves

This ^. It's money that people have been paid, that they have earned, of which a portion then gets given to the governement who will spend that money, that the citizens earned. It was indeed tax payers money. If you give a portion of your income to an investor, with thw purpose of that portion being to be spent by someone else then you can dictate on what you want it spent. We do this in the form of (trying) to vote in a government that has policies on how taxpayers money is spent. On police services. On rubbish collections, street lighting, etc etc. We have no immeadiate and direct say in how our money that has been taken from us in the form of taxes can be spent, like we could if we had an investor, but we can direct it when we vote. Anyway. There are worse things in life than the terminology people use. I'

YANBU, and like a PP I also loathe 'hard-working families'. Offensive to anyone who doesn't or can't work 'hard' (however that's defined) and anyone who lives in a household that doesn't fit the standard of nuclear unit of mum, dad, kids.

It's true that people's views on the appropriate size and remit of the state seem to have polarised, increasingly so since the financial crash. Again, viewing this through the lens of conspiracy is tempting but I just don't think it gives a useful (or accurate) picture of what's happening.

You can contextualise what's happening here with some twentieth/twenty-first century trends in taxation and government spending. Firstly, the proportion of tax relative to GDP has been creeping upwards for a century. There have been some spikes and dips but overall the trend has been upwards. In a nutshell that means that over time, more and more of the total amount of money earned in this country has been handed to the government to spend. Source

Secondly, the burden of taxation has changed over time. Income inequality was very high before WW1 and WW2, then for complex reasons fell or stayed static for a while after the wars (until the late 70s). Since then income inequality has generally risen over time. Among other things, this is due to globalisation: skilled working-class jobs in the UK have been lost to mechanisation or been offshored to places with lower labour costs, while wealth and opportunity among the capital-owning class has globalised, allowing for increasing consolidation of wealth among a super-elite. There have been winners and losers from this process: on the one hand, it's lifted millions out of subsistence poverty in developing nations, but on the other hand it's left millions in former manufacturing nations stuck in hopeless welfare dependency when the jobs they used to do went overseas. (My late FIL was an example of this: he worked half his life as a skilled factory fitter, earning a decent wage, but by the time he died the factories had mostly left the UK and he was working as a self-employed gardener.)

As income inequality has widened, and the number of skilled working-class jobs has shrunk, so the need for a supportive welfare state has grown at the very time the tax base has shrunk (because those at the bottom are getting poorer so paying less and needing more help, while those at the top are getting richer so paying more.) The proportion of total tax take paid by the top earners has climbed steadily in recent years. It's hard to find decent sources on this as it's so politicised, but here for an example - top 10% in the UK paying 21% in 1999, rising to around 30% in recent years. Some figures have the bottom 60% of UK earners now being net beneficiaries of state spending, taken as a whole.

So a smaller proportion of people today earns more of the total income, and society as a whole is asking that shrinking group of people to chip in more for the general social pot. As a result, the debate is naturally getting polarised - and both sides have a view that is understandable. Those whose incomes are declining in relative terms sense their relative spending power falling and understandably feel this is unfair, so want fairer income distribution. Naturally they turn to the government for help with this and provide an impetus for progressive taxation and redistributive policies. Meanwhile, those whose relative incomes are climbing or static resent the steady incursion of redistributive tax-and-spend into their pay packets, and start to turn against the people to whom their money is being given. And so we end up with the situation we're starting to see, where people are increasingly divided into 'strivers' and 'skivers', or net beneficiaries and net contributors.

This is the result of global trends spanning decades. It is emphatically not a conspiracy by the elite to divide and conquer. What we do about it is another discussion; it is clear that things can't go on getting more and more polarised without something snapping.

As a footnote to the above, I think part of the difficulty is that people treat the post-war welfare settlement as the norm, from which we are gradually and harmfully diverging. I think that's an understandable view (especially as there aren't many people alive any more who remember what it was like 100 years ago) but that it's more accurate to see the post-war settlement (relative income equality, economic growth and opportunity) as a flash in the pan brought about by the massive destruction of value in the wars, as well as the disruption to established power structures and opportunity to create new ones caused by swathes of the established elite being killed in the war.

Piketty has argued that the two world wars were a brief disruption in the steady polarisation of wealth distribution, which otherwise has been steady over centuries. But in conversations about the welfare state, people tend only to cite data going back to the mid-twentieth century, and compare the situation we have negatively with that era, rather than taking into consideration the bigger historical picture.

I prefer taxpayers' money to government money because it comes from the taxpayers and not from the government.

The best expression is public money.

Broadchurch I am very pleased for you being an accountant and writing for accountancy age. You said "And this was Ina time when taxes were being cut. Thatchers first claim to fame was saving the taxpayers money by cutting school milk."

And I just pointed out that in fact, Thatcher didn't cut taxes - I assume you aren't arguing with your fellow contributor on that point of fact? Beyond that we could get into a really complex debate about how she moved the burdens around - mostly onto poorer people, but it would take a long time. Really the thing I took exception to was what I perceived in your post as a characterisation of Mrs Thatcher as someone who in some way saved taxpayers money when in fact she did not; she just spent the money in different ways.

Roses explained clearly just how the deception works. Income tax was never our money. It went directly from our emoyer to the government. But just so that we hate those less fortunate than us we are put through the pretence of having the money given to us and then taken from us again due to those scivers, single mums, NEETs, immigrants or whichever scapegoat is currently in fashion.

Couldn't agree more social security. The people who are on benefits are those that have inherited vast amount of money.

A picture of a hard-working British family at home.

(Don't think the story mentions their tax/benefits status)

It's like me shopping exclusively in any supermarket chain and thinking they will pay one iota of attention to how I personally think they should spend their profit

The difference is that you are not giving money to Tesco, you are choosing to swap it for goods to that value.

One reson the USA is more right wing is that they do not have PAYE, so everyone completes a tax return and pays taxes at the end of the year. If you are writing a cheque for 25%ish of your annual earnings, you will notice.

also, the US add sales tax at the till, not in the price, so the amount of VAT equivalent is also obvious.

Stop fucking moaning.

YANBU - 'I don't pay my tax for x, y or z' translates as I don't want to pay for anything that doesn't benefit me at this precise moment in time.

A woman I work with is always mouthing off about this, spongers and people standing on their own two feet, til someone pointed out that the tax we pay didn't cover all the services we use let alone anyone else's.

I think people use the expression "tax-payers' money" to remind the government/councils that the money came from the public and they should use it wisely, it didn't just magically appear in their bank accounts. I certainly prefer it to calling it the government's money. It certainly is not the government's money.

It is true that you don't notice income tax going out as you never get that money, although I do notice with a bonus - say you get told you are getting a £500 bonus and you only see a fraction of that in your paypacket once tax and NI has gone out.

Agree Serial
I'm in the Police and the sheer amount of 'tax payer' comments we get day to day is in the dozens. What people seem to fail to realize is all of us pay taxes as well.

Sorry been a bit MIA from this thread. I still can't get on board with "the payers money" it never belonged to that person. The rights to how that money is spent is transferred.

If less was spent on benefits, Trident, HS2 etc then I would have more of my hard earned money to spend every month. It is essential that the government spends it wisely. I object to money I have earnt being wasted.

It's comments like the above that I find the most bizarre. If less money was spent on the above you would not have more money. Do you think that if this country was to magically pay off all their debt and reduce their costs they would all of a sudden decide to reduce the amount of tax you pay? And then we have the phrase "hard earned money".

Again as I have said I'm not saying for one second people are not entitled to an opinion. Everyone is but phrases such as "tax payers money" have come far away from being used to remind the Government where that money came from and that they should use it to better the lives of the public and it's become far too common place to be used as a stick to beat others with. Especially where benefits (can I just start calling it Social Security?) are concerned.

I would like to live in a country where it isn't viewed as acceptable to plunge already struggling families into further poverty. Clearly I'm unlikely to get that wish at this time, you only have to view the recent threads regarding the cuts and exactly who it's hitting hardest.

Possibly taxed money would sound better to me. It's semantics on the outside but underneath there are people who believe that they are entitled to throw it around as an insult and have an attitude that they should be entitled to make decisions about how this money is spent (specifically) benefits when the reality is - outwith voting is the party you think is the best to represent our country - there is very little say to be had.

Personally I think we have some of the worst people in charge of our country now. I've heard a lot of "it's typical of the Tories, taking from the poor and giving to the rich". It makes me sad that this is what the majority of the country wanted.

tax not the

So you disagree with the government's spending priorities. Many of us do. If all debt were paid off, there would be £50bn a year less spending required (interest on debt) which could be put into other benefits or they could take £50bn less off taxpayers.
Do you genuinely believe the govt and civil service would be as cavalier with thier own money as they are with the taxpayers?
I work in a large company and rfeminding people that the money they are planing to spend would fund thier wages for a few years, makes them think twice about whether it is a good investment.

The money did belong to the taxpayer before they paid VAT, fuel duty, stamp duty, insurance tax, etc.

I think that 'taxpayer's money' can focus payers too much on their own personal needs, but tax is an arbitrary amount and has often been paid for by money that has been sitting in the taxpayer's bank account.

Good posts - OTheHugeManatee.

I am I suppose the "squeezed middle" - we only have a PAYE salary - no inheritance, no wealthy background etc - and our income is constantly being eroded. If 50% of your year is spent putting money into the tax system then I think it only reasonable to feel a bit aggrieved when you see waste or inappropriate spending. The middle-ranking PAYE group will be increasingly targeted to raise funds even though, as Manatee points out, their numbers are shrinking.

Is the "Entitled To" name still going for the benefits calculator? I can't stand that. It's so, well, entitled . I don't mean people should have to beg for assistance, but it would seem to be better titled, "Helping you out" or "Tiding you over' .

I think it's good as pp have said. It's not the govts money it's our money.
Actually it's not our money anymore is it- it's money borrowed from our children and grandchildren.
Maybe that's what should be said instead.

Depends how you pay tax surely

If you are self employed the money is yours til you pay it at the end of the tax year

If you are Paye the yes, you never actually have it

Moved on lots since my post. I'm no economist so can't quote Accountancy Age etc. I was just pointing out that the Government's money comes from taxes. If anyone wants the Govt to spend more money on x,y,z then they need to collect more in some kind of tax or take it from another pot. It all comes from some sort tax. So it is taxpayers money.