To think a national insurance increase is fair?

[postingfortraffichere]

Just that really - who else should pay for social care if we do not collectively pay for it ourselves.

I am highly likely to need care (currently fit and healthy and young but who knows what the future holds) Or someone in my family surely so why shouldn't we pay for it?

People seem to think there is endless money available to cover everything that is wrong with the country and there just isn't.

I feel like those expecting not to pay the cost are being somewhat entitled.

AIBU

@FrangipaniBlue I agree income tax would be preferable but I don't set the rules - and it is what it is.

@Revertion £325,000 is far from wealthy, that doesn't even cover average cost of property in the UK it's really not that generous of a threshold

You can throw as much money as you like at a system but there aren't enough staff on the ground nor can you get them. We struggled to get cover for holidays this year ..a couple of years ago no issues. 9 years ago 55 applications for a GP post now one or two it's horrendous

To be fair many posters have raised valid points and I'm actually starting to think maybe IABU 😂

Yes, it should be via income tax, not NI, which means burden falls proportionately. I guess it will cost me about £40 a month in my salary bracket (above national average, but not loads), which I'm not going to be thrilled about but which also won't actually have any impact on me. Though it would if I were still paying full time childcare fees.

TBH, though, anyone earning as much as me or above without FT childcare costs doesn't have any reason to whinge especially. But it's not fair on lower earners and the young.

[quote postingfortraffichere]@FrangipaniBlue I agree income tax would be preferable but I don't set the rules - and it is what it is.

[/quote]
...and this is what most of the commentary from people against the NI hike is about. If it had been a proposal to raise income tax there wouldn't have been as many complaints about it. To raise NI, however, is an injustice. Which you seem to agree with, at least on some level

£325,000 is far from wealthy, that doesn't even cover average cost of property in the UK it's really not that generous of a threshold
If you're giving your home to your children, then the threshold is £500K

£325k of free money seems pretty generous to me...considering it is based on complete chance that your parents had that much wealth to begin with and then decided to give it to you...

I think the issue with raising inheritance tax is that it is practically challenging to actually raise a lot of money from - the higher it is the more likely people are to take measures to avoid it (i.e. giving their assets/money away while they can, using trusts, etc). And in a lot of cases the wealthy are more able to do that.

HMRC publishes figures where they estimate the impact of changing various tax rates. To give an idea - figure in million - the most recent estimates look like this
1p on basic rate tax - 4700
1p on higher rate income tax - 1000
NI class 1 employee 1p up - 4350
NI class 1 employer - 6500
NI class 4 - 345

Inheritance tax up 1% - 55

And that's only looking at 1%, obviously if you siddenly chucked 10% on IHT you wouldn't increase it by 550 as you'd get more legal tax avoidance behaviour. But even if you put IHT to 100% you still wouldn't get anywhere near the impact of putting it NI.

They've done NI because it allows a lower headline number - because employers take a hit too. If they did it through tax it would have to be probably 2.5-3 times as high to get the same result.

It's not fair.

The bulk of the burden falls on the young and the lower earners, and the bulk of the benefit goes to well off older people i.e. Tory voters.

@AlexaShutUp

I don't understand the issue with raising inheritance tax. Nobody needs money when they're dead. Inheritance isn't a right, lots of people don't get anything, and some people will lose out on any of the inheritance that they might have had due to care costs anyway. Why not just pool the risk by taxing inheritance much more heavily?

The Daily Mail and middle England will become apoplectic. And Pants-on-Fire Johnson won't even be able to blame the EU.

When dead you pay 40% and you think that's not enough?

Wrong.
Only about 5% of estates pay any inheritance tax at all. So 95% pay nothing. I reckon this top richest 5% have done a brilliant job convincing the 95% that the government is out to grab all their money.
Besides, I can't imagine what it must be like to receive hundreds of thousands of pounds that I've done absolutely nothing at all for and then being outraged that I didn't get even more because some tax was taken from it. And this is while living in a country with more food banks than Macdonald's because so many people are living with that level of poverty.

The Daily Mail and middle England will become apoplectic. And Pants-on-Fire Johnson won't even be able to blame the EU.

Yes, you're probably right @MurielSpriggs, but I don't really understand it. I didn't earn my parents' money so I don't really see that I have any inherent right to it. Even if I only get 10% or 20% of it when they die, it would still be a privilege to get something. Lots of people get nothing at all.

I've been saying this one every thread on this topic:

Why aren't we taxing unearned capital gains on homes bought decades ago and benefitted from the biggest house price growth in centuries to fund social care? I'm not taking about selling your property and having all the proceeds gobbled up, but say a cap at 25% of its value/or the capital gain. So someone with a £10m house will still pay more than someone with a £100k house, but both contribute 25%.

But hey, let's just tax the young working poor shall we?

Yes, yabu, the way this being done is unfair.

Need to tax wealthy as well as low earners.

It hits low earners.

I agree, and am willing to pay more to fund it.
But- I am in the fortunate position where at this point in time it won't make a huge difference for me.
Some people are really going to feel it.
An income tax rise would have been fairer.

Yabu, putting it on national insurance is incredibly regressive. It should be funded through increases in taxes like inheritance tax, capital gains and maybe income tax, not just taxes that are paid by working people. I’m already paying 20% income tax, 15% student loan repayment (ie graduate tax) and NI. Old people never had to pay for university and have benefited from house price rises at the expense of people my age, they have more wealth and need to take on more of the burden.

@postingfortraffichere

Just that really - who else should pay for social care if we do not collectively pay for it ourselves.

I am highly likely to need care (currently fit and healthy and young but who knows what the future holds) Or someone in my family surely so why shouldn't we pay for it?

People seem to think there is endless money available to cover everything that is wrong with the country and there just isn't.

I feel like those expecting not to pay the cost are being somewhat entitled.

AIBU

YABU

A lot of wealth is held in assets. That needs taxing.

Very few [pensioners] are well off and not working by choice.

What does this even mean?

They have the lowest rates of absolute poverty across all of the demographics.

Children - 22%
Working age adults - 18%
Lone mothers - 39%
Pensioners - 12%

It's not 1997 anymore when 53% of pensioners lived in absolute poverty.

Surely the stereotype from 1997 of the little old lady counting her 5ps for a pint of milk is just as harmful and disingenuous as the current boomers who rattle around big ex council houses when they're not cruising the med one is.

I don't know if your very few pensioners are well off statement is true but I do know that in proportion to the rest of society, they're the least worse off.

I mean we're all pretty fucked so does it even matter 🤷🏻‍♀️ that's why I'd vote to TAX THE DEAD!!!

I completely disagree with increasing NI.

My boomer relatives won't pay a penny extra. They bloody should. They are all pensioners paying higher rate tax.

Meanwhile my sister who is still starting out with a big mortgage etc. is paying extra.

TBH I actually think the notion that people should get care and not pay for it themselves is mad. Increase inheritance tax. Make people use their assets. It's why they have accumulated them!

£325,000 is far from wealthy, that doesn't even cover average cost of property in the UK it's really not that generous of a threshold

Okay cool... forgetting the fact it could buy me a 5 bedroom detached house because the UK is so absolutely warped -

If £325,000 is far from wealthy than can you please define what £9568 would be in relation to it?

What really pisses me off about it being done like this is the overarching result that the wealthier you are the more likely you are to benefit from the cap and the less likely you are to be contributing to pay for it via this NI increase.

That's the long and short of it.

Absolutely piss boiling, isn't it.

that's why I'd vote to TAX THE DEAD!!!
I agree.

When I die, let's say I leave £1,000,000 (for ease of maths) and I pay say, 10% on the first £300,000 and 40% on the rest. That leaves an inheritance of £690,000 for my children £230,000 each. If they think its unfair that they didn't get even more free money and resent the fact they had to pay any tax on this free unearned money they get then I've done a really shit job for raising such money grappling, greedy people.