Where do people think money comes from?

[MrsBlobbyOnLockdown]

Everyday we are hearing pay the NHS an extra 30% pay them £26 per day extra is the latest one.

I’m not disputing they deserve it of course they do & if we had an endless supply of money it’s the first place it should go.

But seriously, where do people think all this money is coming from?

What are your thoughts

I do think they employ a few people who take sadistic pleasure in making patients’ lives difficult and their care inconvenient

Substitute the words patient and care and the same is true of every consumer industry.

@BeijingBikini

That's exactly the sort of thing I mean. Behind the decision to put food in mouth is availability of food, the chemical/biological effects of different foods, the marketing of food, the emotional effect of food, lifestyle drivers...

A long time ago I worked on internal promotional stuff for a multinational junk food producer. I have no illusions about just how much investment goes into helping us make bad decisions.

Never mind where is the money is coming from, the question should be where is it going? 5th largest economy in the world - the 5th and yet all our public services, not just the NHS but the police, army, schooling, childrens services, legal aid, embassy support (I could go on and on) have been pared to the bone for over a decade. Offshore, tax free havens would be a good starting point. What do we value more, our public servants or the bloated financial sector which serves only its own ends at the expense of the rest of us.

The main difference being that I can take my custom elsewhere whereas the NHS is the only show in town (for many if not most things)

What bollocks. You know, probably better than I do, that just about the only form of medicine unavailable privately is A&E. You choose to use NHS services.

I would recommend Peak Prosperity (as well as the YouTube videos there is also a website with bite size easily understood chapters on the basics like compounding and exponential growth).

To be responsible for your own health, you need to have a certain amount of education, support and money, not all of us learned cooking skills with our parents

So thirteen years of free education isn't enough ???
Why do we need so much hand holding in the UK? Genuine question?

It is a bit of a class thing, but a lot of what is on offer is not taken advantage of. Making pupils retake a year of secondary school if they don't pass the end of year exams would be a start.

Schools provide breakfasts, free meals - some needed due to parents working long hours but a lot is poor parenting.
The buck never seems to stop anywhere.

I imagine there are huge swathes of the country that have few if any private consultants in any practice area. Not everyone lives in a city (or even near one!)

You imagine wrong. I live in a rural area 60 miles north of London, there’s private practice available here in virtually every specialty.

I live in a rural area 60 miles north of London

That's still London - sounds like London commuter belt! You won't find the same services anywhere away from London.

The buck never seems to stop anywhere.

If personal responsibility is the only issue, obesity (and other lifestyle health problems) will be evenly distributed through society. Are there?

Dammit, typo. Are they?

Speaking as a Chartered Tax Advisor, a few points:

Scandinavians pay much more income tax across the board. If you want Swedish services, you’d be looking at 30% + basic rate, not 20%. Is this still popular. Corbynomicsof getting Swedish services by just taxing higher rate tax payers is wholly unrealistic.

We live in an international business environment. We can’t do anything about that as an individual nation. We need to work with other nations to ensure Amazon / Starbucks / eBay etc pay a fair about of tax in the UK. We are working with other nations to achieve this. It takes time. Ditto fat cats with overseas bank accounts / Philip Green / Richard Branson. Until we change international taxes, working with other nations to do this (which we are doing) the only thing we can do is vote with our feet and boycott their stores / services.

I bought a house recently. Paid an absolute fortune in stamp duty from a man who had lived there 50 years. My stamp duty was from my earned income, and was equivalent from the money I earned in the first four years of my working life. The money I paid the seller was 99% profit to him due to house price inflation and was in no way taxed. It might have been a more efficient means of tax for him to be taxed on his profit rather than me being taxed for choosing to move house. We need to look at taxing wealth more.

Triple lock pension is totally unaffordable but it is politically unpopular to change it.

None of the doctors I know work full time as they are paid well enough to live nicely off part time earnings. I don’t think increasing their pay will help the NHS. Nurses, care workers etc though surely deserve more.

It is wrong to think the wealthy in our big banks etc dodge tax. They pay PAYE like the rest of us. Boutique hedge funds etc are a different matter.

I’d like to pay more tax for better services but no political party offers a realistic means of achieving this. Hopefully a more “centre ground” Labour Party might work towards this.

It’s not London commuter belt. HTH.

Rishi Sunak found a magic money tree for furlough etc because it HAD to be found. He had no alternative. That’s not to say it is in anyway sustainable in the long term. We are going to be paying for it for a long time.

And if your total earnings are in the basic rate tax bracket but you are being charged 40% get in touch with HMRC for a refund!

In this case, spending money on furlough will be the cheapest thing for the government to do. The real magic money tree would have to exist if they did nothing.

The NHS is paying a fortune for PFI deals. It pays for “consultants” who were formerly employees that they made redundant and gave big pay offs to. They pay management well. They have doctors who retire early because their pension pots are too big and they don’t want to pay the tax due. We pay extra for their pensions. The whole love fest regarding the NHS stops review of what it does, who pays for it and what it should do. We need a big review. But it’s a sacred cow.

We need the financial sector. Anyone who thinks we can exist without them is bonkers! The whole of business and the economy relies on them as does everyone with a mortgage or a bank account or savings. We truly need to understand that the banking sector is vital and not optional. That’s why it was critical to bail it out in 2008.

Cayroll
@TheWordWomanIsTaken - I’m glad you admit that shareholders who take dividends rather than salaries are avoiding tax. This does all add up to quite a substantial amount I would think

What is your basis tho for claiming it’s “pretty negligible compared to the avoidance around transfer pricing by big companies who register in tax friendly jurisdictions”? Also please clarify what you mean by that

Please restrict your response to just facts rather than rants/personal attacks

Oh dear - show me the personal attack or rant?
I am not your personal google - look up transfer pricing. It is widely accepted that billions are lost to HMRC from corporations who use this mechanism to reduce their tax bills.
Also, in terms of equating the difference between those billions lost and the £32 per week which would be the approximate difference between someone on PAYE and a sole director/employee of a ltd company both on £40000 per annum - I maintain it is pretty negligible.
By shareholders, I assume you mean a single shareholder which is what a sole director/employer of a ltd company would be.
If I could be arsed, I'd ask you to provide your basis for your first paragraph - but I really actually can't.
And cut out the nonsense that I have somehow personally insulted you or attacked you. Or show me where I have.

Transfer Pricing

A multinational company is operating throughout Europe. It sets up a ‘head office’ in a low tax country (Ireland, Luxembourg). It makes lots of money in the UK, but before corporation tax is paid it has to pay virtually all of this profit over to the head office in the low tax country in charges for admin / HR / intellectual property etc etc. Result, profits arise in the low tax country, minimal profit in the UK.

OK - on my team I will have the producers with useful skills and the carers with useful skills and the service workers with useful skills to ensure survival.

You can have the financial managers and estate agents and all managers with no useful skills. Because ... remind me why they are needed?

The whole love fest regarding the NHS stops review of what it does, who pays for it and what it should do. We need a big review. But it’s a sacred cow

It definitely needs review and the spotlight that’s being shone it highlights that. PHE has been revealed to be a joke and so has the procurement arm. We need an independent review of both health and social care.