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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

So people earning over £80k are wealthy, unless they are JC??

321 replies

usernamealreadytaken · 15/05/2017 13:53

In an interview with Julie Etchingham, JC apparently said he's not wealthy, despite earning over £130k p/a, because of WHERE HE PUTS HIS MONEY (but he's not going in to that!). AIBU to think this is the most ridiculous statement he has managed to put out in recent weeks?

Given that Labour want the wealthiest in our society (earning over £80k) to pay more taxes, what Good Reason could he possibly have to not include himself in that bracket? Discuss :-)

OP posts:
AllThePrettySeahorses · 15/05/2017 21:11

Re expenses - of course Corbyn can't claim travel etc. This is reserved for MPs who live more than certain distance from Westminster. His expenses have historically been higher than average for a London MP.

BeaderBird · 15/05/2017 21:18

Surely your not stupid enough to not be able to work it out? He agrees he is well paid but does not consider himself wealthy because he gifts a large portion of his wage away. That may mean that he is not wealthy despite being paid a handsome sum.

poshme · 15/05/2017 21:19

Dawndonna no MPs claim breakfast/ loo seats/ wallpaper etc.

They're not allowed to any more.
He's not allowed to claim for accommodation cos he lives in London.

Headofthehive55 · 15/05/2017 21:20

I'm still wondering whether using a tax rule to minimise your tax take, if you are in minimum wage is reasonable?

JamieXeed74 · 15/05/2017 21:45

Honestly, how can anyone justify voting for the nasty party and sleep at night?
For the same reason why I dont give all my money to my 6 year old child. They would spend it all on sweets. When your an adult you have to have a budget and you cant just spend it willy nilly with no thought to how you can afford the debt.

MaggieLightBlue · 15/05/2017 21:47

You're not your JamieX

HTH

usernamealreadytaken · 15/05/2017 21:49

Head of course it's reasonable, but far less likely than somebody on h/r tax. The point I'm trying to get across is that if you are trying to raise as much tax for public services as possible, it appears hypocritical to then minimise your own tax payments, however legal that might be.

OP posts:
PeterhouseMS · 15/05/2017 21:58

Corbyn would cause great harm to the economy if he got in. He wants to run a high tax and heavily regulated economy. This combined with the country leaving the Single Market would lead us to become a basket case in 5 years as we would so uncompetitive.

We'll be a basket case either way.

At least Corbyn will make some effort to try and stop the poor suffering inordinately.

Theresa May, who has little or no interest in the economy, will divert resources to ensure the Tory heartlands are spared the pain.

sleepyowl12 · 15/05/2017 22:03

@Headofthehive55, that as well but I was responding to Acquiescence's comment to Janet about healthcare protection and income protection under a small State structure. A structure I am not a fan of preferring pooling risk across all society as our country developed fully after the 2WW with universal benefits such as National Health Service.

sleepyowl12 · 15/05/2017 22:11

Regarding is someone who is on minimum wage equally immoral if they legally minimise tax as large corporations and high net worth individuals do, I would say it's not on an individual level wrong to minimise tax legally. However, I would support political parties that don't allow such tax loopholes that allow corporations and high worth individuals to avoid paying large amounts of tax.

Biker47 · 15/05/2017 22:13

I don't think that it is unreasonable to think more than THREE TIMES the average salary is among the wealthiest and therefore should pay more tax.

Which is how it currently works. Someone on £27,600 pays £5,550.52 in tax and national insurance. Someone on £80,000 pays £25,819.22.

AtSea1979 · 15/05/2017 22:15

Oh, you didn't mean Jesus.
Nothing to add to politics so quietly slipping back out...

acquiescence · 15/05/2017 22:16

russetbella well said.

Headofthehive55 · 15/05/2017 23:04

I'm not sure it would be fair to stop a wealthy person using the same rule to minimise tax as a person on minimum wage.
I object to the demonisation of someone, using the same rule to minimise tax just because they earn more.
Nurses and HCAs can use tax legislation - and do- as well as surgeons to minimise tax lability.
It's not fair to demonise one group but not the other for doing the same thing. Using the expression tax dodging implies illegality, corruption but often really is used to describe legal ways to avoid tax.

brasty · 15/05/2017 23:06

How do you minimise tax if you are on paye? Genuine question as I have no idea how you can do this.

LapdanceShoeshine · 15/05/2017 23:32

Annual salary on min wage is less than £15000

I can't imagine tax avoidance on that would save enough to pay for the financial advice necessary to find the savings in the first place Confused

Oliversmumsarmy · 16/05/2017 01:14

does not consider himself wealthy because he gifts a large portion of his wage away

The fact remains that in order to gift those sums of money away you had to have them in the first place. So he is rich/wealthy whatever you want to call it he just pays lot of money out to charities

JanetBrown2015 · 16/05/2017 07:22

Minimum wage person uses their £11k tax allowance - tax avoidance. Or two in a couple both work part time so they pay no tax rather than only one working and just using one tax allowance.
Or they pay into an auto enrolment pension (and you then get tax relief on that). Load of ways those not well off use the tax views legally. They might if they have any savings at all use an ISA too although probably not if they are living from hand to mouth.

I do think people do not understand business costs however. I spent about £400 yesterday on stamps. Tyhat is not to send my granny post cards in some kind of tax scam. It is to stick them on work letters! So it is not a tax avoidance scam to say the profit I earn is the money that comes in less my costs. Although MPs are not running a business they do have costs like that which are lawfully relating to their work and they are allowed to claim as work expenses under the special MP rules. There is nothing wrong with that just as my stamp buying yesterday was not a tax dodge. Someone has paid me over night from abroad and my bank (the rotters) takes £7 off for that payment just to receive it, so this morning I have put that £7 into my accounts as it is a business expense. That is not tax cheating. Instead I am doing all the extra admin we self employed have to do to work out what tax we owe and its just part of business. Corbyn will have expenses of running an office as an MP which is not some tax con but is perfectly lawful.

Witchend · 16/05/2017 07:32

The working class can kiss my arse
I've got the foreman's job at last...
(Sung by df to the tune of The Red Flag/Oh Christmas tree)

acquiescence · 16/05/2017 07:39

I can't believe I am reading posters comparing health care professionals claiming tax back for their union payments to big businesses and millionaires using tax loopholes and investing money overseas. These two things couldn't be more different.

Badbadbunny · 16/05/2017 08:21

The fact remains that in order to gift those sums of money away you had to have them in the first place. So he is rich/wealthy whatever you want to call it he just pays lot of money out to charities

No he doesn't. The tax return that he published shows gift aid payments of only £6,775. That's not "a lot" for someone who's total income is over £100k!

PeterhouseMS · 16/05/2017 08:21

I think it is morally good to pay the lowest amount of tax due under the law as small states benefit people, encourage self reliance and make people happier.

I think this is what many Tories want - a small state - to turn back time a century or so to an era when all education and healthcare was either private or a charitable institution.

For those earning well over £80,000, it may even make sense to vote Tory
(provided they don't lose their job or cannot work due to ill health. )

-No need to pay more tax and they can probably afford to pay for private education and private healthcare.

For thos earning less than £80,000, it is madness to vote Tory.

-As they are unlikely to be able to afford private education and private healthcare, they need well-funded education and a well-funded NHS.

Badbadbunny · 16/05/2017 08:26

Annual salary on min wage is less than £15000.....I can't imagine tax avoidance on that would save enough to pay for the financial advice necessary to find the savings in the first place

Lots of things.

Invest any savings into an ISA to avoid income tax and capital gains tax.

Invest in a stakeholder pension, so that they can put £2,800 in, and HMRC top it up with a further £700 so the actual investment is £3,500.

If their earnings are really low, they could voluntarily pay NIC to guarantee a state pension.

They can reduce their working hours/earnings to qualify for higher tax credits, free prescriptions, etc.

The lower earner could transfer some of their unused personal allowance to their higher earning spouse.

They could start a small business and claim tax relief on any initial investment/losses against their tax taken via PAYE.

Badbadbunny · 16/05/2017 08:37

I think this is what many Tories want - a small state - to turn back time a century or so to an era when all education and healthcare was either private or a charitable institution.

At least private or charitable funded services are more likely to be efficient and cater for what people actually want.

A huge amount of public spending is wasted on waste and inefficiency and on projects/services that few (if any) people actually want, such as political vanity projects.

Take diabetic eyecare. Used to be done by High Street opticians. I could phone up and make an appointment of my choosing within a few days and I'd be in and out within 20 minutes. The NHS paid the optician for their time. Now, it's been taken in-house by our NHS trust. Trying to make an appointment is a joke - even though they have a dedicated admin office for our county. They never answer the phone, they send out letters with a communist style "allocation" of an appointment at a time and place of their choosing, which you have to endure phone queues and answerphones to try to change to something more convenient, and the only appointments are usually months away. When you get there, there's a dedicated receptionist checking in one person every 15 minutes (gossiping for the other 14 minutes), then someone takes you from the reception area to outside a surgery door (gossiping between patients), then someone takes you in one room to put in the eye drops (2 minutes per 15!), then 10 minutes later another person takes you into another room to take photos (3 minutes per 15), and finally you're free to go after about 30-40 minutes because the whole process never runs on time, even when there's only 1 person every 15 minutes (presumably because the gossiping between patients goes over-time!) and after all that, the photos are emailed to a real optician to review - so a total of 5 people involved, 4 of whom are the old union loved "one person one job". Compare that to a single receptionist and a single optician in a High Street opticians! That's a classic example of how privatisation works really well under the NHS - heaven knows why they took it back in-house as it can't possibly be cheaper having all those staff for so long compared with an efficient opticians.

Same with hearing aids these days thank goodness. It took me best part of a year to get a hearing aid, due to having to get a referral from a GP, then an eye test in one NHS hospital, an ENT consultant appointment at another and finally a fitting at a third different hospital, there being a gap of several weeks/months between appointments due to inefficiency, waiting lists, etc - not to mention lost referral letters! When my wife needed one, it was all done within a couple of weeks via our High Street specsavers who managed to do the hearing tests, fitting etc all in a single appointment with minimal bureacracy and fuss!

brasty · 16/05/2017 10:08

Badbadbunny Your post is laughable. You obviously know nothing about being a low earner, but NOT being entitled to benefits.

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