To think this is the WHOLE POINT of tax?

[wheresmymojo]

Daily Fail are frothing today that higher earners pay more tax, and lower earners get more out in various benefits than they pay in.

I thought even the DF understood that the entire point of tax, it's whole reason for existing, is to re-distribute wealth to some extent with the wealthier paying more so that the less wealthy can benefit from a better standard of living?

Have I missed something - are there people who don't know this is what tax is fundamentally supposed to do?

I mean, I'm being fairly genuine...are there actually people who think it's like a bank account and you 'pay in' to 'get out'?

Would you call it fair if you had to pay higher mortgage rates or prices in shops because you earn more than their average customers?
I suspect not.

Migrant labour is great for this equation. Most come only to earn money (and therefore pay taxes), the state hasn't paid to educate them when they were children and leave when they when they are done doing so (so no long term costs for pension and healthcare). I would think the loss of EU labour will have an impact.

State pension is not a benefit, unless you have never worked in your life and at pension age you swap your UC for a pension, which is what is going to happen in the future!

It’s only comparatively recently that state pensions became labelled “benefits”. It’s political rhetoric.

You're right, those poor fabulously wealthy rich people. I bet they'd trade places with the benefit scroungers in a hartbeat if they could.

Back in the 80s a woman who lived next door to me on benefits with two kids told me she had an annual holiday paid for to visit her family in Trinidad and Tobago, she came back once pregnant with a 3rd child she started to get benefits for… explain this!

Until a standard full-time wage doesn't require top-up benefits or a food bank, people will be taking far more from taxes than they put in. The issue here is a low-wage economy where the average person cannot be a net contributor.

Here is link for those upset benefits is looking high due to inclusion and it doesn’t fit their view.

If it’s an issue they’ll have to set up own source as ONS has a good reputation.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2021

I've done minimum wage jobs when I was 19/20 and doing my degree, I had a room in a shared halls then lived at home. I didn't expect that minimum wage job to support a family which is what is happening with universal credit top ups etc.

Yes, but there are too many minimum wage / low paid jobs that need doing. There isn't enough young people to do them all - particularly care work. So either those jobs become higher paid or the people doing them get government top ups.

The explanation is that it never happened.

You will never not have 'the poor' as a section of society.
Even if you gave everyone £1m tomorrow, you would still have a class of 'poor' people after a year.

Taxing the rich is pointless as an endeavour. You could confiscate the assets of the entire Times rich list and it wouldn't change anything in the long run - the sums of money p*ssed up the wall every year by governments are just too massive.

Society runs on many people contributing.

It’s stupid to try to make being a higher payer unattractive enough to go though.

Really basic - the tax burden needs payers. People happy when they go are really shooting themselves in the foot as pp put it.

sadly its the middle earners who pay the most tax, not the rich. £65k is not a high income, its a middle income in London where it buys you a 2/3 bed flat (with a partner). If your partner earns a similar amount, you can afford childcare for 1 kid.

Here you go. Information here

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2021

@orangeoyster

Richer people generally already pay less in those circumstances.

You certainly have easier and cheaper credit and, you can buy better stuff which lasts.

Commander Vimes school of economics!

Also, you are paying for the society which enabled you to earn what you do.

Yes, because there's a housing crisis and childcare is ridiculously expensive. But the peole who tend to use terms like 'politics of envy' also tend not to give a shit about those two issues, and the government certainly doesn't.

True. I also think a massive thing he did was changing the official rate of inflation from RPI to CPI. RPI includes house prices so because prices in shops weren't soaring the interest rates were kept low. Guaranteed huge house price inflation.

That makes the exact opposite of sense.

The reason these things were called benefits in the first place is that they're things you get from being part of the National Insurance scheme (not that you get a choice, obviously). That language is used because a payout you get from insurance — like, from an insurance company — is often called a benefit. True, National Insurance isn't really like being signed up with a private insurance company, but the word "benefits" (rather than something like "welfare") is chosen because we're meant to think of it as being a bit like insurance — we all pay in, so that if we're unlucky enough to get ill or be out of work, or if we live long into old age, we can claim for the benefits we're entitled to as part of our membership. The whole point of that language is that it's something you get because you paid in, or would've been required to pay in if you were in a position to do so. The name itself implies that this is not charity or a handout, it's a payout from a scheme you are entitled to make a claim on, that you can request and receive without loss of dignity.

You've been conditioned by years of tabloid crap to think of "benefits" differently, but the intent of the word is for people to think of it as the flipside of paying in.

There would always be 'poorer people', but there is a big difference between 'poor people' who cannot afford food or heating and 'poor people' who live in subsidized government housing or who own their own houses , who have access to quality education and healthcare so that they have the tools to access better jobs if they wish to.

the state of society is such that there is a dwindling middle class. People earn very low incomes and they don't realize it.

Exactly. People see ‘benefits’ and treat it as a loaded term.

Using it as part of statistics is not an issue (unless easily affronted by facts)

Benefits is a loaded term. “Benefit scroungers” and “Benefit Street” anyone?

There is an earnings crisis. Outside of finance, tech and corporate law, no one is being paid a living wage (unless they are senior). I had this realization when i was discussing budgeting for a baby with a friend that I thought would be above my income level (cambridge educated civil servant). She recently bought a house in my area (with her older husband who is an academic) so I incorrectly assumed she was doing ok. She thought our household income was very high (DH and I are on the lower end of incomes in our industry). It was embarrassing.

Its no surprise the very poorest need handouts from the government to survive. I do the math AND THEY CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT IT! Even when working fulltime.

Its why Martin Lewis has switched from advising on credit cards switches and mortgages to waging war on the government. There is nothing left to cut. there is only one thing for low wage workers (predominantly in the public sector) to do and that is to strike.

People need to spend more time with better quality information and ONS using the term benefits in their analysis won’t upset them.

‘Reductions in indirect taxes and increased benefits-in-kind, largely in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, drove the proportion of individuals receiving more in benefits than they paid in taxes increased from 47.5% to 54.2% in FYE 2021’

If only more people learnt economics and were better at avoiding tabloid terminology.

I agree. You're preaching to the choir.

The trick is to extract the tax from those earners without turning U.K. to a poorer right across the board for all economy because like it or not that tax burden won’t reduce.

You have many other countries quite happy to have tax payers - individuals and companies