Quite a lot of better off people would be happy to pay more tax?

[Echobelly]

Provided it was channeled towards things like NHS, social care, education.

It seems weirdly outdated to me that mainstream political parties find raising taxes on the wealthy anathema. We've been living in such a low-tax society for so long, but households like mine (I'd say it's a 6-figure annual income between us) could easily afford to pay more in tax and still enjoy our lives.

But instead parties are obsessed with recouping money by removing benefits for the poorest people, which is stupid as the difficulties resulting from plunging people into greater poverty, as well as being cruel, will ultimately cost more money than it saves.

Take that money off people like me in taxes! We won't become homeless or sick or suffer mental distress for the sake of a bit more tax. Year after year I see budgets that will apparently save people like me £500 a year, as if this is supposed to be an incentive to vote for the Tories but tbh, I won't even notice being better off by £500 a year. Give that saving to someone for whom it'll make an impact!

Yabu. Just donate your excess cash to cancer charities, homeless charities or hmrc themselves via the government link.

Yabvu to expect others to pay more too, the highest income tax rate is 50%, that is plenty.

@user1497207191

Talking about “rich” people, Labour had to do sweetheart deals with some non resident Olympic athletes as they threatened not to come to the London Olympics if they had to pay UK tax under normal rules.

The London Olympics were under the Tories, who had been in for 2 years.

[quote 1dayatatime]@Alexandra2001

"We have some of the lowest taxes for the wealthy in Europe"

++++

You may feel this way except the hard evidence shows it's not true.
[/quote]
Well we are lower than 14 other countries inc all comparable economies plus we have lower vat, more tax loop holes, far less bandings and tax property less - oh and VAT free private schools...

No, sorry, I pay enough tax.

I work all the hours God sends in a highly skilled job that not many people could do. I had to train for 3 years after uni to in order to qualify into my profession. I hardly get to see my children, and am very stressed most of the time doing I job I really dislike (for those wondering why I do it, I have a child with special needs that I need to provide for). Well over half of my income goes in tax (when you factor in a 45% tax rate, no Personal Allowance, VAT, council tax and SDLT). I'm well off but I don't have enough money left after bills are paid in order to pay for all the therapy my DS could really do with.

Why do people feel entitled to more of my hard-earned money? If you want to give more of your money away, go ahead - but don't try to say I should be giving more of mine.

If your paying 45% income tax, you are only paying it on earnings above 150k, 40% on 113k and 20% on 37k.

what about the poorly children whose parents do not earn 150k plus they have to rely on the NHS or most likely go without.... because people dont pay enough tax....

what about the poorly children whose parents do not earn 150k plus they have to rely on the NHS or most likely go without.... because people dont pay enough tax....

What about people who choose lower paid jobs for a low stress life who don't pay the tax they would had they chosen to take a higher paying job?

People at the top 45% rates pay more than enough even at a progressive rate. Many of these people are based in London which has some of the highest cost of housing. It is not much change after tax and mortgages are taken into account. Someone has got to take on these high stress jobs otherwise they would kick back like others do and move out of London in a lower cost housing part of the country with a public sector job and utilise more public services.

@blueshoes

what about the poorly children whose parents do not earn 150k plus they have to rely on the NHS or most likely go without.... because people dont pay enough tax....

What about people who choose lower paid jobs for a low stress life who don't pay the tax they would had they chosen to take a higher paying job?

People at the top 45% rates pay more than enough even at a progressive rate. Many of these people are based in London which has some of the highest cost of housing. It is not much change after tax and mortgages are taken into account. Someone has got to take on these high stress jobs otherwise they would kick back like others do and move out of London in a lower cost housing part of the country with a public sector job and utilise more public services.

Hear hear.

Absolutely NO way would we agree to pay more tax. DP and I have paid well over £250k (quarter of a million!!!) in tax over the last 3 years. We get no benefits for our DS. Nothing from the state. We are absolute NET contributors already.

Remember between £100-£125k people are taxed at an effective 60% PAYE tax rate. In addition to the new rate of NI - we’re already paying 63.5% in tax and NI. In addition to pension contributions we’re keeping less than 30p in the £1!!

When does the magic middle class money tree end?!

@Sussex89

Absolutely NO way would we agree to pay more tax. DP and I have paid well over £250k (quarter of a million!!!) in tax over the last 3 years. We get no benefits for our DS. Nothing from the state. We are absolute NET contributors already.

Remember between £100-£125k people are taxed at an effective 60% PAYE tax rate. In addition to the new rate of NI - we’re already paying 63.5% in tax and NI. In addition to pension contributions we’re keeping less than 30p in the £1!!

When does the magic middle class money tree end?!

£125k salary in 21/22 pays £42,428 income tax and £6,379 in National Insurance, and takes home £76,193. Taxation is 39.0%.

For comparison:
62.5k salary pays £12,428 income tax and £5,129 in National Insurance and takes home £44,943 - taxation is 28.1%
40k salary pays £5,484 income tax and £3,652 in National Insurance, and takes home £30,864 - taxation is 22.8%.
25k salary pays £2,484 income tax and £1,852 in National Insurance and takes home £20,664 - taxation is 17.3%

From the tax calculator www.moneysavingexpert.com/tax-calculator/ excludes pension and student loans. Scotland will be different.

jcyclops. I know the overall effective tax rate will always be lower than the top rate of tax an individual pays on their last £1 earnt.

What I’m saying is that the effective tax rate for income earnt between £100-£125k is 63.5%. DP and I contribute 14.5% into our pensions. So for every £1 we earn between £100-125k we will pay 74% in PAYE+NI+pension contributions. So from the remaining 24p in the £1 how much more do you think we should pay?!

It only gets marginally better at over £125k when the effective PAYE+NI+pensions rate is 61%

Correction 78% effective rate

Just out of interest, how much harder does the person on 125 work than the person on 40? I earn around the lower figure and regularly work around 50- 60 hours a week in a stressful job, with responsibility. If I were to be paid 125 for doing that, I'd happily pay more tax.

DP and I are senior NHS doctors. We have trained for 6 years at Med School and have been working nearly 15 years in the NHS. We are both in acute specialties. So make life/limb decisions on a daily basis. Are responsible for a team of “juniors” (who by the way are highly trained in their own right). Are the ones before coroners if something goes wrong under our names care - even if we didn’t have anything physically to do with it. Deal with piles of paperwork/complaints/needless DoD directives. Is that enough to justify our pay? And reluctance to pay anymore into the system?

[quote Echobelly]@lfailed - i think the top 10% of people, which includes us, generally pay a fairly small % of our earnings into tax nonetheless.[/quote]
What percentage tax do you pay?

If a higher salaried rate taxpayer it would be close to 50%.

How much more do you want people to pay??

Totally agree. You can’t build a decent society with such low taxation.

DH earns about £250k. Works about 70-80 hours a week. Top rate taxpayer and he always votes for parties who would increase taxation.

He works ina very specialised area of accountancy. He is also very clear on how much could be down to reduce corruption, tax evasion and tax avoidance with relatively little effort in relation to how much money could be brought in.

@Sussex89 What I’m saying is that the effective tax rate for income earnt between £100-£125k is 63.5%. DP and I contribute 14.5% into our pensions. So for every £1 we earn between £100-125k we will pay 74% in PAYE+NI+pension contributions. So from the remaining 24p in the £1 how much more do you think we should pay?!

Is the 14.5% into your pension really a tax, meaning that you will never, ever get anything extra back for that 14.5%? Or is it really deferred savings, meaning that it gets added to a pension pot with your name on it or at least adds to your DB benefit eligibility if you have a defined benefit pension, meaning that you will get it back in the future, plus accumulated investment earnings, less income tax that will be paid on it in the future because pension contributions are made out of pretax income?

Also, while it may be true that each individual £1 from £100k to £125k is taxed at a marginal rate of 63.5%, would you not agree that any £1 above £125k is taxed at a meaningfully lower rate, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 47-49%? and furthermore that anyone with income falling right between £100k and £125k likely has access to certain deductions (such as additional pension contributions or even charitable contributions) to bring their taxable income right down to or at least towards £100k?

While I have been arguing that increasing taxes on unearned income and gains would be the fairest way to increase tax revenue to HMRC, I also think that focussing on the anomalous 63.5% effective tax band in UK is not a good argument against income tax increases for high earners. One could, for example, eliminate the phaseout of the personal allowance, but also raise the additional rate from 45% to 50% and start the threshhold for that rate at £100k instead of £125k. A person on £100k-125k would see a tax cut, a person on £125k-150k would see a smaller tax cut, a person at £150k would pay exactly what they pay now, and only a person earning more than £150k would see a tax increase.

The highest marginal tax rate would be 50% for income tax or 53.5% including NI, and it would apply from £100k on up. As a bonus, the tax calculation would become simpler.

@THisbackwithavengeance I so agree with you. One of my absolute big bears is people talking about the lack of funding to NHS etc when they've never been given as much cash! The issue is how it's spent!
I've spent 30 years dealing with Govt and the wastage at grass roots level in procurement, admin, people taking the piss is shocking.
The management needs sorting our not the funding! You can't keep throwing cash down a massive black hole and expecting different results.

[quote Snakeplisskensmum]@THisbackwithavengeance I so agree with you. One of my absolute big bears is people talking about the lack of funding to NHS etc when they've never been given as much cash! The issue is how it's spent!
I've spent 30 years dealing with Govt and the wastage at grass roots level in procurement, admin, people taking the piss is shocking.
The management needs sorting our not the funding! You can't keep throwing cash down a massive black hole and expecting different results. [/quote]
The problem with this argument (usually made by people who don't want to fund public services) is that the NHS scores very highly on efficiency, low on staff numbers and outcomes... on Doctors, the NHS has the 3rd lowest per 10,000 pop. of any european country.... to get more Doctors/Nurses and scanners etc takes money, no matter how you move it around, remember the Tories re organised the NHS under Thatcher and by Cameron - yet did not improve.

The NHS isn't getting all this record funding, it is getting a little extra money that will go someway to correcting 11 years of underfunding since 2010, where it got around 1% extra per year, compared to the 4% it was getting under Labour, where the NHS finally began to catch up with european HC systems and had its highest ever satisfaction ratings.

For those that say "we have private health, we don't use the NHS" the vast majority of Doctors and other private HC staff were trained by the NHS plus keep their skills up via their NHS work, so you are getting a direct benefit plus private often uses NHS facilities.

@FridaRose

Also we are not driven by taxes going on nhs, as we have private healthcare. *
*
Good luck if you have a premature baby need a kidney transplant or heart bypass surgery done in a private hospital, the best your insurance will do is speed up seeing a consultant at the start.

It's unbelievably naive to think that having private health insurance comes any where near what the NHS provides, or negates your responsibility to pay towards it.

I don't want to pay more tax because I believe the government is totally inept at distributing them appropriately. I don't think any amount of tax will save the NHS and can never understand why we can't move to one of the better European healthcare models. I feel taxes every which way I go, I couldn't get a school place in a school where my dc would speak the same language as everyone else (English) and my friend who's a teacher said my dc would most likely be isolated because all the dc were from a different background it meant culturally they'd had to change the way they taught as well ie ban Christmas/Easter celebrations/acknowledgement of most things British so I went private because those things are important to me, I could have moved to a much more expensive area but that's another tax already isn't it and tbh I tried and my house didn't sell on time.

I can never get an appointment to see a doctor so I go private, I can't see a dentist for me or my dc again have to pay privately.

Just such a massive pain and I really don't see how much tax I'd have to pay before this is all sorted out. We pay about £70k a year in taxes and have never claimed or been entitled to any benefits. I imagine if you pay less and can see a doctor/dentist get a good school place have dc benefit you're probably imagining yay let's pay more taxes. Not for me!!

The UK is not a low tax economy.
You obviously don't remember the early 70s when the top rate was over 90%... those who could do so left the country.
Corporation tax in the UK is considered high compared to eg Ireland

So op are you now going to voluntarily pay more tax in now you have seen its possible and the others who said they would or use the excuse oh well its not used properly
The nhs is actually pretty well funded compared to other countries, its often how the money is used
Charities will always exist to the poster who said they shouldn't feel the gap, as some will always spend money on wrong things or make the wrong financial decision etc
But i bet none of the people on here have now gone and signed up to pay more tax

Fumblingbee. I entirely agree with you. Collectively DP and I pay anything between £80-90k a year in income tax alone. That doesn’t include the NI we pay or the VAT we pay on the spending from our post tax income.

We get absolutely no benefits for our DS as we both earn over £100k. We won’t get free childcare. Both have private health and dental cover. So what exactly are we getting for our money a year?!

Reallyasecretmillionaire - you clearly don’t understand public sector pensions. Our contributions aren’t linked to a pot in our own name. We are on CaREs now and the contributions simply go back into HMRCs massive pot. We contribute 14.5% the employer pays in a notional 20%. So very easily you reach your £40k annual allowance triggering MORE tax.

Whilst I’m not asking for anyone to pity us. I’m merely asking what more can you squeeze from the middle earners? Focus imho needs to be taken to means test more benefits - eg free tv licensing/free travel/green home grants for more wealthy pensioners/households.

Well I said I would but that's provided that it was linked to good public services. Paying for Dido Harding to get £37 billion for a failed Test and Trace, not so much. If Labour published a manifesto withhighertax rates, it wouldn’t put me off at all.
Then maybe the root of the problem is not the absolute amounts harvested through taxation as such, but rather mismanagement and incompetency? Can't fill up a leaking bucket, even if you open the tap further.