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.

Capital Gains Tax will double in the next budget i bet

Cap BBC salaries which will have the effect of getting rid of some deadwood and allow younger less greedy talent through

And to finish where I started, any rises shouldn’t be a wealth tax, it really would be a total false economy :)

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.

I think people who say stuff like this have lived a very charmed life. Most people who've never saved a penny, have never had a penny to save. I know a lot of poor people, none of them are poor because they spent all their money on champagne. Some of them are poor because they work in the care homes you don't want to pay for. And as for 'give that up' (your house) perhaps you could expand a bit on what you mean by this? Given that you wouldn't be living in the house, the house would no longer serve its purpose of providing a roof over your head, you would NEVER be going back to live in it.

I don’t think a wealth tax would hit enough people.

Those that are super-wealthy already have ways to disguise their assets.

It wouldn’t even hit people like me - I am a high earner but I have a mortgage. My net assets are practically zero, but I should be taxed a lot more than I currently am to help out more. I don’t do any kind of tax avoidance - I just don’t think I am taxed enough.

If you are genuinely ‘happy’ to pay more why not jump ahead and send that cheque to the treasury?

I've actually tried to do this before!
I think it was in the late 90s, I was accumulating all this money, I'm not really a materialistic person, in that, I don't like shopping, can't stand 'stuff' etc. I had somewhere to live, I had everything I needed. I've always been of the opinion that we need better public services and infrastructure so phoned the local tax office to ask if I could pay more tax. They said 'no'.
They seemed completely bewildered by they question but also said that I wasn't the only person to have asked that. They said to just donate to a hospital or something. I didn't want to do that because I don't agree with charity's funding essential services.

Tax avoidance baffles me. Especially by billionaires. Why would they bother?

@KenDodd

Tax avoidance baffles me. Especially by billionaires. Why would they bother?

Because they see it as a game. Whoever dies with the most money wins.

Everyone pays 1% - the wealthier pay more and the poor still contribute. We all need to take a collective responsibility for this.

I have worked everyday through COVID - NHS and am fucked if I should pay for corrupt companies who furoughed their staff and still made them work - sorry.

Out of the bulging pockets and off shore accounts of Boris and his ilk.

@KenDodd you could have donated to the efforts to raise a fund to clear the national debt! Won't happen now though and efforts are being made to move the money into other things.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheNationall_Fund

“Tax avoidance baffles me. Especially by billionaires. Why would they bother?“

@KenDoddReally? You don’t have a pension? Or an isa?

My DMIL has advanced dementia, and a house she will never live in again independently, so to pay for the care she needs, it's being sold. Her care, which isn't full on nursing, is costing £4k a month, and full nursing for dementia is going to be nearer £6k monthly. If she lives another4 years, there will be nothing for anyone to inherit, and nothing to be taxed on. If she should make another five years after that, the care home will want us to pay. Who can deny their parent's care? Which will eat the 40 years of contributions we've put aside for our own retirements very fast.

I am sorry abuot your mother in law. My father used his life savings on at home dementia care (£130k in his final year) and he died at home. There was some equity in his house although as he died soon after our mother inheritance tax was due.

Most however do not need care in old age nor a care home or at most just need someone to pop round to get them lunch. I was chatting to my 85 year old neighbour who called yesterday - she manages very well and I hope she lives alone there until 100 at least.

Anyway the main thing is how to reduce state expenditure and also if taxes have to go up to find something that raises a lot of money. Eg abolishing all foreign aid which I think costs us about £14 bn
Tax credits cost us £23bn
Housing benefit about £14bn
Child benefit £12bn
State pension £95bn

What is the better that by the time I reach 67 years there won't be a state pension? I have already been stripped of child benefit as a single mother of 5 working full time.... althoujgh the youngest are students now so not relevant but even there massive change from teh high tax 1970s my father suffered in that I am spending £50k a year on the twins' higher education. I did the sums compared with 2 sets of school fees in the 1990s I was paying and today I am paying MORE for 21 year olds (who don't have student loans) than I used to pay in school fees then allowing for inflation. So we have been getting less and less and less from the state particularly those who contribute most by way of income tax and all the old allowances for mortgagte interest tax relief, huge married man's allowance, large pension tax relief, big tax break for covenanting money to your family - all gone and yet we still have 47% upper rate of tax/NI plus 9% if you have a student loan.

In the 1940s my doctor uncle go a council house as the plan was you all paid in and you all took out. Now we seem to be moving to most people don't pay any income tax and those who pay the most income tax get very little back - no free university, no child benefit, not even a single person tax allowance, no mortgage interest tax relief. Never in British history have so few people paid so much of the tax bill of the UK.

Interesting thread. With a couple of notable exceptions, the answer to "Who should pay?" is universally "Not me!"

I'd favour an increase and expansion of VAT/Purchase Tax. Introduce some form of VAT on processed food, increase the rates on luxury goods. People don't moan as much about paying VAT, because the decision to spend/not spend that money is in their hands.

People don't moan as much about paying VAT, because the decision to spend/not spend that money is in their hands.
I moan about paying it on Tampons, clothes for my 12 year old and heating fuel - noen of those are really optional. Wouldn't object to it increasing on actual luxuries.

Now we seem to be moving to most people don't pay any income tax and those who pay the most income tax get very little back - no free university, no child benefit, not even a single person tax allowance, no mortgage interest tax relief. Never in British history have so few people paid so much of the tax bill of the UK.
This is utter drivel.
Everyone gets a personal tax allowance unless they are very high earner.
It also conveniently sidesteps how Thatcher shifted the burden of tax from income to expenditure, ensuring the poorest paid the highest and most regressive taxes.
As for
Never in British history have so few people paid so much of the tax bill of the UK.
That is simply a lie, no other word for it.

I think it’s just generally part of being a decent, moral human being that if you have more you should contribute more.

Surely this debate needs to start by identifying where the wealth actually resides in the UK? This is one of the reasons why I didn’t vote for Scottish independence. So much of the country’s wealth is generated in the City (at least pre Brexit!)
A slight digression - In the context of the (first pre Brexit) debate on Scottish independence I had a look at the Institute for Fiscal Studies statistics. Way less than 50% of the Scottish population pay tax at all; one in eight people in Greater Glasgow area is on invalidity benefit and the number of higher rate taxpayers is between 6 and 8 per cent of the population. Of that 6-8 per cent, it was estimated that 5 per cent at least were ‘highly mobile’ in the sense that they could decamp to and work in England / possibly overseas very easily - already working for cross border/ international firms etc. This influences the Scottish government’s attitude to setting tax rates. They aim for that sweet spot where people are happy to stay put in Scotland and pay more tax, rather than moving to save. It’s important to bear in mind too that the population of Greater London is far larger (8 ish million) than the entire Scottish population (c5.05 million) .

"Everyone gets a personal tax allowance unless they are very high earner." Yes, that is what I said - the personal allowance has been stripped from the higher earners along with many of the previous tax breaks that made things fair.

On regional issues childcare costs a lot in the SE as do houses and rent so I would support lower tax and lower stamp duty in the SE as people there have to spend so muc more of their salary just to buy a house compared with say shte NE where I am from.

By the way New Zealand put VAT on everything except rent which perhaps we should particularly if it makes food much more expensive is the one thing most people need in the UK is to eat a lot less food. It would also help the NHS too.

"Everyone gets a personal tax allowance unless they are very high earner." Yes, that is what I said - the personal allowance has been stripped from the higher earners along with many of the previous tax breaks that made things fair.

I think the idea is that once we get over a couple of hundred thousand a year we don’t really need the personal tax allowance @Xenia. That’s what makes it fair. Relative need.

Or we could keep the personal tax allowance and put top rate tax up to 55% plus. I’d be in favour of that actually. It would earn more tax income overall.

Way less than 50% of the Scottish population pay tax at all
You are skewing the debate by limiting your comments to income tax.
People pay a lot in various consumption taxes - those affect the poor disproportionately.
You also seem to have forgotten about Nation Insurance.

the one thing most people need in the UK is to eat a lot less food.
More generalised unsubstantiated populist arse.

I’m fed up of the squeezed middle being stuck with ‘you should pay for everything because you’re a high earner’ BULL!

Our household income is around 90k (less than our combined student loans btw) and we are tied to an expensive area for work, where just owning an average family home is a struggle.

We’ve just had to massively pull in our belts and have a ‘oh shit’ reevaluation because I’m pregnant with a second child (oh the luxury!)

DH has no job security, works 6 month contracts atm and I’m on mat leave (granted being paid but less than normal)

Between mortgage, (£250pm council tax!!), utilities, student loans, professional fees, running 2 cars (both needed to commute) and childcare we will JUST about get by. We receive no help not even child benefit.

If they up tax on us (already higher payers) we are going to sell up and both drastically reduce our hours to a level we barely pay tax at all and live a much simpler life (with quality time together). Doesn’t really matter for me but DH works a very niche medical specialty in the NHS they would find challenging to replace him.

We are just fed up of this crappy attitude that we should only be entitled to the same disposable Income as people on NMW despite doing completely different jobs requiring different levels of skill!

(Granted our home is actually a bit bigger than an ‘average’ family home but that was largely down to there being NOTHING on the market at the time and we went as far away from the expensive city as possible whilst still being able to commute. The price of our current house would have got us a 2 bed semi in another suburb)

£250pm council tax!!

Same as ours. Our income is a fraction of yours.