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 ?

@baum
Superiority? I’m not even a high earner I’m a middle earner but wrong to point out that the system is flawed and unfair often to higher earning families and the children of?

Or perhaps it’s my style of using blunt examples, unfortunately not doing so generally leads to a thousand off point interpretations of what I’m trying to say.

A system will always have flaws...

Presumably you had a choice to work 15 hour days?? You presumably could have calculated this before you agreed.

At least you are paid overtime. My partner has sometimes done simailr hours. (techy stuff). He's in a senior role. He gets NO pay at all for these additional hours... It appears to be expected... So gets exact same pay when doing no 'overtime'... It's normal in his industry. He's supposed to take some time off in lieu... He can never do this. I also didn't get paid for any time I worked over my contracted hours in the NHS...

You are lucky you re paid at all and at an enhanced rate...

Your normal salary is in the top 10% of UK earners (this was 2016 figures.) www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax

In a salaried job with no paid overtime it is up to you, the individual to make sure the piss isn't taken out of you.

In a previous role I worked out that despite being on the lowest salary in the office (there were people notionally getting 4x my pay) I was probably ending up with the highest net pay per hour, because I avoided the presenteeism, worked less hours, wasn't in big tax bands and put extra money in the pension back then (prior to kids). The others working double their contracted hours for free were welcome to that life.

It’s not those on PAYE - even those on relatively high income that should be paying more. The system should be amended to ensure the very rich pay taxes and the use of business accounts to launder living costs should be stopped. That is where the injustice sits.

The government has hammered the public sector hard enough with worsening working conditions and frozen pay - yes, even surgeons who are mainly middle earners rather than super rich now. What makes them richer is registering ‘businesses’ which their private work is paid into and where all sorts of things (including their house) can be claimed.

Our neighbours have a huge great House as their weekend place that is theoretically ‘owned’ by an offshore company. He owns an investment bank and is very, very, rich. He doesn’t pay income tax and hasn’t since he was in the Guards many years ago. That’s where injustice in our tax system lies.

As my partner continually reminds me... This is usual...mumti million dollar deals balance on his teams' heads...

I point out... It won't once they're dead from overwork.

I think its a massive piss take... And to cap it all... Many hours are needed at last minute... So given up booking anything during week. Or he comes home and is charing teleconferences with California til midnight....

No work life balance...

He's filling others pockets.

I used to get paid a lot of money in one hit and then get much less money the rest of the year. Averages out to average uk salary. I’d get absolutely done for tax in summer and then get a rebate between £500 to £3k every Jan.

The system doesn’t “punish success” ffs. It ensures the richest give the most back to society which is absolutely fair and right. The greed on this thread is astounding.

Assessing tax by ‘household income’ is a terrible idea, what if you live with a friend or several housemates? Tax is calculated on an individual basis for good reason

meteor

Not so much blunt examples, more dishonest ones and whataboutery.

Listen to yourself. Impact on high earners?

If you've never lived in poverty you have no idea.

Shut the fuck up.

NZ highest tax rate is 33% which kicks in when you reach around £35000. Plus we don't have any personal allowance so EVERY cent we earn is taxed.
It is disheartening when you work hard to pay tax so that's when you have to establish if overtime is worth the extra hours etc.
Personally I think tax credits should be abolished. Just lower tax and cut the bureaucratic nonsense. Actual money in your account that you have earnt not 'entitled' to is a great motivator. Just my two cents worth!

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.

Do people not realise how tax works? There are thresholds. So this DH will only be paying 45% tax on what he earns after a certain threshold, not on his entire salary.

Meteor what a horrible snobbish post.
Had to be a karen and Kelly as the low paid workers and of course the regal Alexander as the surgeon.
Snobbery at its finest.

I really dislike household income as a form of assessment. The benefits system shows it is often very unfair and creates odd situations with blended families.

This ridiculous argument that we should be thankful for thresholds gets my goat, or that we don't understand how progressive taxation works.

Do the people who argue for it not understand marginal tax rates?

I have a 73% effective marginal tax rate. Every pound more I earn loses

20p in income tax
12p in Ni
41p in tapered child tax credits.

This makes working more (unless I make it a pension contribution) close to pointless, and Im a basic rate tax payer!

The thing is we also have high indirect taxation in this country. Not just high income tax

Personally I don't think tax is the problem, or the solution (except V rich companies and tax avoidance). I think the problem is low pay. I remember hearing on R4 a few years ago a programme analyzing growth in the economy over the last 25 years. There has been a lot of growth in that time but every single penny of it has been sucked up by the super rich, ordinary people (including the op) have not gained.

I see the resentment towards the middle class on the Brexit threads and think wtf? The middle class are just that, in the middle (and loads voted Leave anyway), what's the problem? Why are they resented so much? I think the solution is for the super rich to stop being so greedy, pay their employees more, and stop avoiding tax and I just can't see that happening. I read once that the price of Philip Greens latest super yacht was the same amount his employees at BHS had claimed in tax credits over the last couple of years to top up low pay to an amount they could feed their families with. Philip Green already had one super yacht btw, this was another one.

@TaxCredits

Income tax is separate to benefits. If you are so concerned about losing your child benefit, feel free to refuse any payrise or take a paycut. Is your solution that any benefit you have ever been eligible for should remain with you despite how much you may earn in the future?

I'm all for the maximum in legal tax avoidance, but if HMRC ever see through this claim they will be lucky if they are let off with tax and penalties, rather than a criminal conviction:-

Even the children’s weddings were offset as business costs- Marquee hire for a ‘business event’ with catering etc.

Some of the best stories of tax evasion are generated by farmers, my favourite is the cost claimed for a water storage facility that turned out to be a swimming pool.

Probably too late now, but my advice to OP would have been to salary sacrifice all the extra money into a pension, if possible.

My personal comfort zone for tax ends at deductions of about 30%. Above that level, I'd rather work less than pay the tax, as long as I don't need the extra money to pay my bills. Since I have to pay my own employer NI, even the basic rate tax band is more than I'm happy to pay. I'm taxed at something like 38% on income above the personal allowance. (Obviously I couldn't live on an income of just the personal allowance, so if there had been no other options, I'd have had to go out of my comfort zone.)

Despite being on a daily rate that would equate to roughly 80K if I work full time, for the past 20 years, there's only been one or two years where I been in a higher rate tax band. All avenues but one for avoiding that have now closed down. I now work very reduced hours. (Admittedly it's not just the desire not to be taxed at a high rate that makes me work as few hours as possible, I also don't really need to work, due to saving past earnings.)

Next year HMRC will be tighening up further, and I will probably have no choice but to pay 38% on money falling in the basic rate band. I will continue to keep my hours as low as possible, but will have to just try not to think about the marginal rate of tax on any earnings that fall into the basic rate band.

I'm sure some posters will want to castigate me for my attitude. But before you work yourself into a frenzy, remember no-one is under an obligation to work for money they don't need, and plenty of women work less than they could, just because they want to and they can.

I know what you meant in your OP, OP. It's a bit pathetic how nasty some
Posters are trying to be. Fair enough if they disagree but why do they have to be so snide and nasty. It's pathetic.

OP, I think it's depressing too. We pay 45% tax and if you look how much it is it seems like a lot of money. We are grateful to be in our position but it's still a bummer when you see how much disappears. 😂. It's especially depressing when you see certain public services being stripped to their bare bones.

I'm all for everyone getting a fair wage. We have Kelly's in our family too.

I have no problem paying tax if it is spent effectively. I do not want it wasted on Brexit no-deal preparations and an alternative to Trident.

I would prefer it to be spent on education eg getting rid of tuition fees and sorting out social care. For example.

1st world problems....

Did you not know how much tax you would pay? never tried to calculate beforehand? That would be odd.

No, I disagree with you and think it is fair that the higher earner pays more tax. So I'm with the people who said just that, although I wouldn't go as far as calling you names, as this is a demonstration of rather poor communication skills.

The real problem is big companies avoiding tax, so the little prim people starts squabbling over who and what gets treated on NHS, for example, who is "deserving".

I also take a huge issue with equating hard work with high pay. Most hard work is done by people on shit salaries and their efforts are creamed off by CEOs and other important busybodies "with a vision". I used to work in the civil service for pigshit, so I know what I'm on about.

@RedneckStumpy @SpringSnow

So you actually believe no-one should ever pay any tax ever? I take it you also believe in the complete privatisation of healthcare, the police, infrastructure, the military etc?