I just watched it again to make sure I wasn't making it up.
Fiona: IFS claim that the tax increases needed to implement labours manifesto will need to be “widely shared”, rather than pretending it will be raised from companies and the rich.
Labour: shrugs. Well that is the IFS view but our figs were checked by other experts. 95% of people won’t pay any more (and in the same sentence) the people who are getting away without paying tax need to pay their fair share.
I must admit at this point I was thinking they were going for the “super rich”. The billionaires, the ltd companies, the inheritance tax etc. The people who are “getting away without paying tax”.
Conservative: Corbyn wants you to believe it’s the billionaires who will be paying but the IFS says figures don’t stack up. It will be the people in this room paying the price. Paraphrasing here but basically it’s the pub landlords, shopkeepers etc who create jobs and wealth and we shouldn’t be going after them.
80k Guy: I’d like to call out labour because I am nowhere near the richest 5%. You’re going to income tax me as an employee. You’re not going after the billionaires, you’re going after the employees where it’s easy money, it’s PAYE and we have no choice.
Now to me what he’s saying is, the ltds can fiddle with their 20% and dividends, the billionaires can avoid, but ultimately it’s the PAYE people who are already paying HRT.
They then had an argument where I genuinely think the guy was getting confused and claiming that he wasn’t in the top 5% of wealthy people. He makes his point better when he says “the top 5% aren’t even getting income taxed”.
If you look at the figures for wealth, rather than income tax, the top 10% have a wealth of at least £671,200 per adult. I would imagine the 5% is somewhere around the £800,000 to 1mil mark?
So even if the person on £80k was spending nothing on housing, food, childcare, clothing etc, it would still take them roughly 16 years on that income to amass the type of wealth the top 5% have.
But honestly I don’t actually disagree with paying more tax — like I said I happily pay the extra 1% in Scotland because I realise being on £25k + is a pretty decent wage here. If they brought in a 30% @ £30k rate up here I wouldn’t complain either.
I just don’t think it’s fair the guy is being slated like he is, when politicians DO have form for spinning this stuff on both sides.
The tories spin it so that “hard working people won’t be affected by benefits cuts” and then proceed to cut tax credits.
Labour spins it so it’s the super rich who will pay for their large state and then proceed to tax arguably the people who are already paying the most, more than people who are wealthier than them but who hide the wealth in property, ltd companies, or who don’t work at all.
I think if labour just came out and said “listen, we all want more money specifically to deal with the mess of austerity. We’re proposing an extra 2% - whatever percent tax on anyone earning over £25k, and this will go ONLY to the NHS, Schools, and Police.” I don’t think people would be massively annoyed. In fact I think they’d probably respect them a whole lot more for dealing with it head on. I worked in a company where the vast majority of people got the 1% tax and never heard a soul complain. It’s the sneaky way that Labour go about it that annoys me, by calling them “the elite” “the richest in society” “the top 5%” it’s just othering. It’s creating a “them and us”. When the reality is in this country, if you are on the PAYE system you are already getting taxed pretty fairly, and pretty proportionally with regards to your income. There are so many other factors that determine someones wealth — student debt, inheritance, renting versus a lower mortgage, where you actually started from, besides income. The man is correct, the richest in society cannot be taxed via PAYE and this is just easy pickings rather than dealing with the real issue.