The tax system in this country is unfair and penalises hard work

[renouncefifty]

I have just finished an assignment working 20 days straight and put in nearly 300 hours. Im exhausted but have a week off to recuperate.

I get overtime for every hour over 8 hours a day I work and overtime for weekends all day. I just realised I've "earnt" £9000 this month which sounds fantastic BUT over £3000 is going in Tax and god knows how much in NI. I dont get a full personal tax allowance as im taxed on my private health insurance premium. I will be lucky to see 5.5k of that money. Oh im in scotland so we pay a penny more per pound in tax also.

I just think sometimes why bother ?

I agree with you OP. I hate the tax system in this country. DH is a very high earner and many people are a bit open-mouthed when I say how much he makes BUT he is taxed at 45% of his income so it's basically half of what he makes goes straight to the tax man. I do think though there is a "social contract" we all abide by and that's fine when tax pounds are being spent with the tax payer in mind. What fucks me off is the sheer WASTE of tax payers money in this county on vanity projects or projects and infrastructure that go way over budget and over time with no concern to the tax payer.

Just to add I'm an average earner but with tax NI 15% student loan repayments and pension I loose around 50% too.

YABU. I think we should have higher taxes and better health care, better free education and a more equal society. Our household
Income is in the top % and we pay a shed load of tax and I honestly don’t care because I know we are better off than many, many people. We both came from families living in the breadline so I know what that’s like.

Agree wholeheartedly with Eddie and Op. People who work long and hard often do so at the expense of their health.

It's just disheartening to see so much being taken and so little in return

Education for your children? A free to use health system? Roads? Police, fire and ambulance services? A professional army, navy and Air Force? Guarded borders? A welfare system that will keep a roof over your head and provide for you long term if you are unable to work?

What more do you want?

I just don’t think about my gross pay: it’s irrelevant - it’s not mine. I either look at my net pay or I work out how much extra I can add to my pension for x amount of net pay lost.

Overall it probably hasn’t encouraged me to work more hours - I actually worked out the net pay cost of going part time was so limited I decided to just go for it. That and it hugely encourages my pension contributions. Every £59 lost from net pay gets £100 in my pension even at mid rate tax (20%+12% NI + 9% student loan = 41%) so it’s like getting 66% extra free on my contributions. It really encourages me to max them out.

You lose more on tax than I earn in a month... I work 50hrs a week. Just think of it that way.

What fucks me off is the sheer WASTE of tax payers money in this county on vanity projects or projects and infrastructure that go way over budget and over time with no concern to the tax payer.

Spot on. Don't forget disgraceful things like "Help to buy" (line housebuilders profits, shareholders making out like bandits - while ordinary people paying over the odds for a shitbox), interest payments on a national debt caused by utter mismanagement, and idiotic bungs to pensioners (winter fuel allowance, no NI, free bus pass, free TV license) to keep them voting 'the right way' whilst coining it in with final salary pensions anyway. And then tax credits to subsidise corporate profits on top of allowing corporations to basically dictate the rules on how much tax they pay because pretty much every nation is now run by kleptocrats.

Nah, everyone has a duty to pay as little tax as possible until and unless things change at the top.

You’re going to get a lot of ‘Aww poor you’ comments from people who work on supermarket checkouts and envy the amount you earn.

You’ll also get guilted with the ‘don’t you know half the country lives on 50p a day!!!’ Outrage.

People like to forget that salary ‘usually’ reflects chosen career and level of education.

So....whilst Karen who works on the Asda checkouts for £7.50 an hour part time and gets £300 a months in child benefit/ CB thinks you’re an entitled douche bag, Alexander the General Surgeon who’s trained/ studied for the last 10 years whilst being eligible for 0 help or benefit TOTALLY sees your point.

We don’t live in communist England, if you’d be ‘grateful’ to earn 5.5k a month perhaps you should have pushed yourself a bit harder and got a career that pays it.

Don’t be sour, seeing a huge chunk of your hard earnings taken away each month would make ANYONE feel shitty. Especially when you’ve worked crazy hard to be a high earner.

‘Carers and shop workers work JUST as hard’ I hear you cry. They also have super low entry requirements so the majority of UK could do those jobs, which is why they’re rarely in demand and don’t pay well.
Unless you’d want Kelly the carer to have built the plane you fly to your next holiday on maybe we need to accept that salaries are proportionate to skill!!!

*Tax credits/ CB

Can you imagine if they change the tax banding, high payers wont cause uproar.... ( and there arent that many percentage wise)

I don't think I've ever seen more than £1000 in my life

Unless you’d want Kelly the carer to have built the plane you fly to your next holiday on maybe we need to accept that salaries are proportionate to skill

I sincerely hope you never need ‘Kelly the carer’ and never have to experience the difference in quality of a carer who gives a damn and one who doesn’t.

Are these going to be your regular hours and earnings per month? If so, then put more into a pension, etc. If not, and these are unusual levels of earnings then it will even out over the year, you'll pay less Tax/NI on your Monthly Gross - that's what PAYE does.

I totally agree with the OP - I don't begrudge helping people but when you see how much just disappears it's massively depressing. Surely we can all see both sides of a coin?

Meteor - well put. I try to put those thoughts aside but yes you really did hit the nail on the head there !

Today I was helping an acquaintance's daughter write a CV (lives at home) and I was quite depressed. She has a liberal arts degree (philosophy and History of Art) and is wondering why she can only fain employment part time at Costa. She hasn't had any meaningful employment in 8 years and has spent years at a time doing precisely nothing. Seemingly bright enough to gain a degree ( I maxed out at a few GCSEs and a ONC) she feels that society has let HER down.

Unless you’d want Kelly the carer to have built the plane you fly to your next holiday on maybe we need to accept that salaries are proportionate to skill

That’s actually bullshit.

Salaries are not in proportion to skill - not all salaries and let’s not pretend that they are. Yes, low skilled labour tends to be lower paid but I don’t think we can say that higher salaries = more skill.
It’s about demand. Not skill. And even then the demand and associated salaries are not controlled by workers. Those with less power tend to get paid less.

OP, you'll find taxation a lot easier to accept if you stop thinking of it as the Government nicking your money and instead think of it as a service charge for living in a reasonably civilised country with infrastructure that works reasonably well. There are places in the world where there's no such thing as income tax, but I can't say that any of them appeal to me particularly.

Or alternatively: good brag.

Unless you’d want Kelly the carer to have built the plane you fly to your next holiday on maybe we need to accept that salaries are proportionate to skill!!!

Nah I don't think it's good to think like this - Kelly the carer deserves a good wage as does John the shop assistant. it's only partially true anyway in the world of salaried jobs. Not many companies today are truly meritocratic like that - salaries are more proportional to your skill in negotiating rather than skill at the job. That's the primary factor.

Op tax system is harsh in UK.. This is when dubai and Switzerland would be fun to stay in.

Believeitornot

Its a mix of skill and supply and demand.

Rarity of skill if you like.

On paper most able bodied/minded people could work a checkout at Tesco.

Not many people could climb a 500 metre tower and fix a radio beacon.

There is a reason the latter person makes more money.

I’m just going to leave this comic here for people who think people on low wages just aren’t working hard enough: slowrobot.com/i/70925

Meteor that’s a very unpleasant attitude. I don’t earn 5k a month - quite a bit less - but I earn enough to live on and have plenty left over to save and treat myself, and I have a job I enjoy and find fulfilling. I’m not super rich by any means but I’m still grateful because I know I’m a lot luckier than many people. Are you really suggesting nobody should ever take stock and feel thankful for what they have, and instead keep striving to get richer (and greedier?)

There are certainly those who get away paying minimal tax who are very wealthy. We have a friend from a farming family who has never paid any income tax at all. They have five children they paid independent school fees for throughout. All costs associated with their house are put through as business costs. Cars are business cars. They have four holiday let’s which they were given grants to convert from farm buildings. Even the children’s weddings were offset as business costs- Marquee hire for a ‘business event’ with catering etc.

They’re absolutely lovely but it does seem unfair they live tax free.
Several other very wealthy families offset all sorts of costs against their ‘business’ which make it look like they have no income, so no tax is paid.

I think those on PAYE - mainly public sector workers bear a disproportionate tax burden.

You obviously haven't been working very long then - Income Tax thresholds for the low-middle paid have never been better. Only about 10 years ago the Tax Free Income Threshold was just over 5k, now it's 12k. Low-Middle earnings haven't doubled in that time.