The Super Rich

[malificent7]

I watched two tv programmes on them last week. Many living in one of their many opulent palaces all saying they didnt think they should be taxed more.
Then all the news about off shore tax evasion. If i dont pay my taxes i get a court order from the council while i sit in my tiny rental.
Aibu to feel a tinsy bit annoyed? Nothing will change though will it?
Perhaps i nedx to work harder.

"The statistics don't lie."

Did I miss something? What statistics?

Bunny - yes absolutely in theory, but in practice if it's not financially appealing to practice here, the newly trained doctors and dentists will simply take the skills elsewhere. A lot of medical students do so already. Another flaw in corbyn's proposal to hand out free degrees like sweeties IMO.

The problem with tax is that cut the cake however you like, you are taking someone else's money to put into a pot for everyone else. If you are a higher rate tax payer, calls for you to pay even more may well sound infuriating, especially given that even £100k doesn't necessarily go all that far after tax if you live somewhere expensive and have children and a stay at home partner, for example. If you are super rich, you might feel that you pay enough as it is, or you might just not give a shit.

This is why I think changing the rhetoric around it would be more successful. Show people where their taxes go. I might be happier to pay more if I hadn't felt that first Blair, then brown, then the coalition, then Cameron and now May had all pissed my money up the wall in many respects. Make people feel a social conscience; demonstrate the need for schools and hospitals - as an approach it surely can't be worse than simply baldly demanding YOU LOOK RICH, GIMME MOAR MONEY anyway!

Badbadbunny. Also I am finding it hard to build up sympathy for someone deciding not to work the extra day because it would mean they would be working for a take home of only £200 on that day.

Richmal - but why do they get paid that? It's because they have a skill that not many people have, and one for which they worked extremely hard. A medical degree takes many years of study and the junior doctors get worked to a shadow. Plus it's an enormous amount of tuition fees etc to pay off for most people.

So yeah, I do sympathise with them under those circumstances. Bankers and massive bonuses perhaps not quite so much!!

I agree withthe points on the extra day. My doctor brother decided not to work as much on Sundays when it means more than 50% of that went to the state when balanced against a day with the children for example - balancing money v time with family (a balance all of us on here have every day of course if we work). Now you might say it is better for families and indeed the NHS if doctors work a few short days a week. In the 1960s Harold Wilson was telling us all the the white hot heat of technology would mean when I was grown up everyone in the Uk would just work a few hours a day for the same lifestyle as machines would do the work. It has not quite happened like that although in work benefits have at time incentivised people to work shorter hours.

Many very high paid tax paying people are under PAYE of course - most of thse in the City of London. Others pay loads of tax even though self employed like a lot of partners in accountancy practices etc. It is not the case that all those earning over £100k are evading tax left right and centre even if they have the chance to do so.

Also if you have income abroad you pay UK tax on it which is why HMRC were so pleased to get their hands on details of people from the UK who had put money in Jersey bank accounts as they have spent 10 years going through those lists of people writing to them and demanding all the back interest plus penalties from them.

I am not against the state changing its laws to a tax system which is fairer. I don't think upper tax rates of about 50% (and more in some brackets) are fair nor encourage people to pay all their tax. If instead we all paid a straight 33.3% tax/NI combined, corporation tax and CGT it would be simpler and people might be more than happy to work that extra Sunday when they knew they would keep 2/3rds of the money and the state one.

I am saying they are well paid if they are turning down £200 for a day's work. Very few people are in a position to do that.

When I was paying 62% tax, I stopped doing the extra hours to earn a bonus because it simply wasn't worth it. I was missing out on too much for not enough. At 45% or even 50% it would have been different. So instead of getting say £10,000 out of me in extra tax, the government got nothing, because I didn't want to make the extra effort and miss all those evenings and weekends for just 38% of what I had earned.

But WHY are they so well paid? Are you saying that skills and hard work to acquire them shouldn't be fairly rewarded? Who would bother acquiring them then?!

Also I am finding it hard to build up sympathy for someone deciding not to work the extra day because it would mean they would be working for a take home of only £200 on that day.

Doesn't matter whether you have sympathy or not. They're not looking for sympathy are they? They're simply working shorter hours to avoid the 62% penal marginal tax rate. The people who suffer are their patients who have to wait longer for appointments. A typical unforeseen (but entirely foreseeable) consequence of a media headline grabbing ill thought through politically motivated idea.

But WHY are they so well paid? Are you saying that skills and hard work to acquire them shouldn't be fairly rewarded? Who would bother acquiring them then?!

I do agree, they should be well paid and someone who is turning down £200 for a day's work, because it is so much less than what they get for the other days, is well paid.

To have more people on high wages and only working 4 days a week and getting more family time seems good to me.

Badbadbunny, the answer is then to train up more doctors and dentists.

Richmal - and how are we going to pay for that? If you want the doctors and dentists to pay, you have to persuade them that it's enough. If you want the state to pay, well, we sort of need that tax that the older ones have stopped paying. Catch 22!!

the answer is then to train up more doctors and dentists

No one will disagree with that. Shame that successive governments for the last few decades have failed to do it, isn't it??

Alternatively, you could argue they're too well paid if they can afford to work less than a full working week? Same conclusion really - if more were trained up, there would be more workers and basic economics means wages would fall.

What do doctors have to do with the super rich?

Ah ok - a conversation must never evolve. It must follow strict rules as set out by 1950's soviet government

Doctors and dentists don't have much to do with the super rich. It's just trying to say that taxing people highly can rebound and cause them to reduce their working hours. But the super rich aren't really people who do a proper job day in day out - nor are they in the main the Bill Gates of the world, who did put in loads and loads of hours to get where is is today. They are people whose wealth has been handed down to them and not earned by their own efforts.

Depends on your definition of super rich. Doctors and dentists are in the top percentage or two of the UK population as regards earnings, so compared to the vast majority of workers, they are "super rich".

By comparison some Drs and Dentists certainly are rich, but IMO super rich is reserved for people who are in receipt of at least 7 figure incomes, and not just the odd million, but that times a number.

I thought the comments about doctors and dentists originated as a way to illustrate how raising taxes can have unintended and unwanted consequences, when people feel that their tax burden is unfair or unwarranted, they amend their behaviour accordingly.

God, I'd love an odd million. I wouldn't care how odd it was!!

I think we have moved to discussing the top 1% earnings which I think I am in for the UK, but I am not super rich but I am certainly very well paid and I appreciate it and know how hard most people have to work to earn £200 after tax which for most people is £300 before tax which is about 30 hours at £10 an hour - 3 ten hour days.

(...thinking of doctor sibling who just bought flat for over £1m....... cash...)

If you're interested, click to sign this open letter to leaders of the G20 for concerted action: www.avaaz.org/en/paradise_papers_fb_ta/

Dear President Mauricio Macri and leaders of the G20,

The level of global inequality is appalling -- 8 people own as much wealth as half the planet.

And the gap is growing, thanks in part to the shadowy world of tax havens which lets trillions be syphoned offshore from our economies. Right now, the rich get richer, and the rest of us pay.

Eight years ago the G20 agreed it would shut down these practices. It's time to deliver. We call on you to act immediately to end tax havens and ensure that those that run and exploit them are held to account.

Nobody should be able to evade their duty to pay tax for the public good. It is your responsibility to make that so. As citizens from around the world, we demand action.

Sincerely,

Gordon Brown is supporting the letter:

"The G20 is the right home for this issue -- and has already made real progress in forcing tax havens to clean up their act. So there’s already momentum, and now the Paradise Papers give us the chance we’ve been waiting for to finish the job.

"As someone who was the target of Avaaz campaigns when I was Prime Minister, I can tell you that they make a powerful difference. This movement is driving forward the idealism of the world. This scandal gives us the chance to tackle one of the biggest challenges we face head-on -- let’s not waste it.

"With hope and determination,
"Gordon Brown, with the Avaaz team"

Gordon Brown is supporting the letter:

Priceless. The guy who did sweet FA about it, during 13 years in power, and over which period tax evasion/fraud massively increased. You really couldn't make it up.

Well, Brown's statement begins "Eight years ago as UK Prime Minister and chair of the G20, I tried to end the injustice of global tax havens"

He might be lying of course. Or he might have tried and not got far enough.

I was more interested in the fact he said such campaigns did indeed have an impact.