How should covid be paid for?

[KenDodd]

I think there should be a small wealth tax (up to 1%) and before anyone starts saying I'm just jealous or whatever, I would be in for thousands of pounds that I don't have and would have to owe. I feel really strongly that we can't just load yet more debt onto the young, they have it much worse than my generation did already (I'm 51).

Yabu - No to wealth tax
Yanbu - Yes to wealth tax

If you vote No, please suggest an alternative that you think would be fairer.

Borrowing is currently almost as cheap as it has ever been in history. I remember locking into a 13% interest rate for 10 years because that was less than our other home loan for example. That is one reason Sunak is borrowing like there is no tomorrow. However that may not always remain the case and taxes on capital much of which has already been taxed eg a lot of people with equity in their house have paid off mortgage early through income already taxed at their highest income tax rate and others have chosen to spend spend spend so have nothing saved and would get off scot free - the state would be saying we are rewarding those who wasted money and put nothing aside and punishing those who did. Given lots of other countries have abandoned confiscatory capital taxes on savings in the bank, your house, your pension and other assets it is not a good move if the Government brings one in.

The very very rich don’t necessarily object to giving money to good causes of their choice and helping others. What many of those very very rich object to is giving money to governments as they see it as inefficient. So they would rather do a deal with a Swiss canton where they do end up paying an agreed tax rate but they then use remaining cash to support good causes of their choice. The world’s problem is not necessarily with a few super rich billionaires who pick and choose where they live and made money through legitimate businesses such as Zuckermann or Bill Gates. The world’s biggest problem is the fact that there are some very rich people who got rich through horrific crimes. Successful normal middle class people in this country are already taxed at a very high rate and some of them are actually pretty mobile, think specialist surgeons/IT/investment bankers etc. - they should not be encouraged to leave as happened last time when income tax rates went through the roof. Government have to raise taxes in small amounts everywhere so as not to upset anyone in particular, otherwise you end up with less cash and a greater deficit.

We could get rid of child benefit altogether.
That would save £11 billion a year.

Coffee mornings
Comic Relief for Covid
Britain in Need
Covid Appeal - like the Poppy Appeal
Increases in national insurance and VAT
100% property purchase tax for non-nationals
Sell Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland

Get all the government computers to mine for bitcoins.

[quote LampGenie]@VinylDetective and your sarcasm contributes little[/quote]
So does your blatant wealth boast.

@VinylDetective are you going to argue with any of the points I make? I would really welcome some proper debate

Reduce the amount we pay out in working age benefits? No one should ever choose to not work or to have more kids than you can pay for.

Have incentives/sanctions to lead healthier lifestyle choices to reduce the burden on the NHS budget.

Charge GP &A&E visits at a nominal amount E.g. £10 per visit. Brings some money in, stops people going to a&e with a cold or a sore toe.

Don't take from people that are hard working.

That demography can start by accepting that selling your house to pay for your residential care in old age is completely legitimate & reasonable
I totally agree with this.

Absolutely categorically no. Both my husband and I were the first people to go to university in our families, we both did PhDs whilst working full time. We bought and sold a string of houses doing them up, whilst working and studying!!!! We finally on our 5th house purchase bought a lovely old farmhouse that we could afford because of the backbreaking work we have done, doing up properties and studying our backsides off.

Why should I have to give that up to pay for my care when someone else that's lived on a council house and never saved a penny gets their care paid for. Just no.

Why should I have to give that up to pay for my care when someone else that's lived on a council house and never saved a penny gets their care paid for. Just no.

Alas, the same paradox. If no one can afford it then everyone should get it for free? You don’t have to sell your house, you could be saving up now. Why should the state pay for your residential care (should you need it) if Gladys down the road is quite fine living by herself?

Yes, I am going to argue with the points you make.

Freeing up a handful of school places is less than a drop in the ocean. If all parents who pay for education took state places and used their sharp elbows and influence to improve the standard of state education every child would benefit.

Equally the price of private healthcare in no way reflects its cost to the NHS. I paid for my cataract surgery because I was rapidly going blind and the waiting list was interminable. It cost me £5k, it costs the NHS a fraction of that. Nobody on the NHS waiting list benefitted from it. I had a long hard battle with my conscience as it went against all my principles.

By all means buy privilege but don’t try and dress it up as socially responsible altruism. It just makes people who will never have those choices angry.

Why should I have to give that up to pay for my care when someone else that's lived on a council house and never saved a penny gets their care paid for. Just no

Why should someone who’s never had a pot to piss in through no fault of their own and never had a penny to save pay for your care? That’s a damn sight more unjust.

Punitive taxation rates won't raise the massive sum needed to pay off the COVID bill, but they would drive high-earners out of the UK very quickly.

The answer is dull as ditchwater: 1% extra taxation on just about every transaction, and the issue of COVID bonds that pay both interest and a fraction of the debt annually. There probably aren't any deft little tax tricks left to try. As a 17th century French finance minister (Colbert?) wrote "A good tax is like plucking geese: you want the most feathers and the least hissing".

I don't a wealth tax is a good idea. The value on many pension funds has gone down significantly and would hit older people who don't have the means to top it back up again.

I think they should bring back the very top rate of tax again for a few years. (That would hit us too - but the pandemic needs to be paid for somehow!).

@VinylDetective

Well, total spending on schools in 2017 - 18 was £42bn, excluding special needs care. Translating that, if all the kids that went private flooded the system that would add on almost another £3bn onto an already stretched budget (7% of £42bn).

Then it's estimated that 15.2% in private schools have special needs care. So, that's 95,760 children of the 630k kids educated privately. The Govt have recommended the cost spent by a school on SEN kids per year should be £6,000. So that makes up another £0.5 bn a year.

So an extra £3.5 bn in all. Without thought as to what that number of extra kids would do to the central schools budget (which again this doesn't include but covers things like teachers costs, buildings and heating) but yes, something that the education budget could absolutely handle. Not.

On healthcare, the cost of a cateract operation to the NHS is almost £1,000 - so not the £5,000 you paid but still, you saved the NHS money - and at the end of the day, you did it.

So you preach at others, and yet you would do it yourself. In the same way I guess you would increase others taxes through wealth tax or whatever but I bet you are perfectly happy to make use of your personal allowance, the ISA allowance, pension allowance, dividends allowance which are all ways of reducing your tax bill.

Fine, I am as you say on the wealthier side. I have no issue with being called that, it's a fact. But there is also a benefit to others when you take the strain off the system by paying for yourself, and that covers every single budget in every single department.

And least I own what I do, and am not a hypocrite when it comes to making decisions. Unlike you.

And least I own what I do, and am not a hypocrite when it comes to making decisions. Unlike you

You didn’t read my post properly, did you? I freely admitted to being a hypocrite over my surgery. Strangely, I didn’t fancy going blind when I didn’t have to.

And I’m hardly a hypocrite when it comes to taxation, I’d willingly pay more tax - which is just as well because we’re all going to have pay a lot more in the years to come.

If you accept the basic premise that there is only a finite supply of money, then you should be able to deduce that if the balance tips too far, then it’s difficult for those with less to have enough.

That premise is utterly wrong. What money is, quite literally, is a way of keeping score of how much a person has put in, or taken out. For every pound of positive balance in one persons account there is a pound of debt somewhere else in the economy. If all debt were repaid, there would be no money, because money is created by the act of creating debt.

Read this fascinating explanation from the Bank of England.

www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy

If a bunch of people landed on a desert island, knew they were going to be there for some time, had no money from the world outside, they could all start working on fishing, building shelters, collecting coconuts, or whatever, and trade with each other by giving IOU's written on paper. In a small communitt where everyone knows each other and anyone who didn't pay their debts would be ostracised, the IOU from person A to person B could be used by B to get something from C, i.e. it would be money. In a bigger society where it's not possible for one person to keep track of the credit-worthiness of everyone else, you have banks to act as intermediaries, performing that function.

The limit on the amount of money in existence is what credit-worthy borrowers are willing to borrow. The more borrowing that goes on, the more money there is in circulation. Every time a new loan is made, the banks (who are the lenders in our economy) create the money they pay into the borrowers account out of thin air. The idea that money has to exist before it can be loaned is wrong, banks create money by the act of lending.

Furlough scheme should be paid back by those who took it.
Over the next 5 years through their tax code and split 50% with the employer. Even if they took the full six months at full salary (12k) that would £100pm for employee and £100pm for employer.

As a tax payer I refuse to repay for this furlough pandemic scheme when I have not received a single penny of it and worked the entire thing.
All these idiots out spreading it for 6 months and bull buying toilet rolls on a jolly should pay the money back they took.

Unpopular opinion it may be but it's the fact. No money is free money.

As a tax payer I refuse to repay for this furlough pandemic scheme when I have not received a single penny of it and worked the entire thing

As a taxpayer, you won’t have any choice.

This thread illustrates why Governments never do make radical changes to tax. it is such a complicated balance that changing anything often ends up being even more unjust than the current system.

*Vinyl" there are choices though for many tax payers which is what Labour has found int he past when it put taxes up - often the tax take then goes down as when people feel tax is unfair they do things that are lawful - eg husband and wife both work part time so each get at £12k+ personal allowance rather than just one of them working full time.

@VinylDetective

Well, considering that when push comes to shove you actually made the decision that helped you first, until you calculate all the tax you would owe if you didn’t make use of all allowances and pay it back to the Treasury, I will put your ‘happiness’ to pay such a tax in the same category as when someone says they would be ‘happy’ to share an unexpected windfall and changes their mind when it actually happened. After all, actions prove who someone is. Not words on an online anonymous forum where you can be as much of a keyboard warrior as you like.

Why would making use of my tax allowance make me a hypocrite? I pay every penny of tax I’m required to and expect it to rise exponentially. I won’t complain either.

And, unlike you, I’m honest about my reluctance to pay for my surgery, not dressing it up as being a sacrifice for the common good.

Because when it comes to it, you make the decisions that put you first and pay ‘what’s required’ not the maximum. So when it comes down to it, you will - as is human nature - find a way to offload these hikes into people who you feel deserve to pay more than you.

If you are genuinely ‘happy’ to pay more why not jump ahead and send that cheque to the treasury? You will get that lovely smug, fuzzy feeling right now. Why wait?

@LampGenie

Because when it comes to it, you make the decisions that put you first and pay ‘what’s required’ not the maximum. So when it comes down to it, you will - as is human nature - find a way to offload these hikes into people who you feel deserve to pay more than you.

If you are genuinely ‘happy’ to pay more why not jump ahead and send that cheque to the treasury? You will get that lovely smug, fuzzy feeling right now. Why wait?

Fuzzy, warm, smug feelings seem to be more your bag than mine. I don’t need them. I’ll be paying my share of the hike, just like everyone else.