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'?

This.
It's to pay for services/infrastructure/etc that everyone can use.

The fact that some people think that taxes exist so that "lower earners could benefit from a higher standard of living" is laughable.

Just seen that walking-PR-disaster Lee Anderson MP has been promoting the Mail's front-page on twitter today and it's gone about as well as you would expect. "Feel free to crawl back under your socialist rock & chat bollocks there. Have you ever done an honest days graft? Thought not!" etc etc

I live in London in a mixed area of SE and don’t see this at all.

But I’m guessing I’m older than you at near 50 and what tends to happen is we move to an area that is up and coming early on which has people who have been here for decades, and then after about ten years City couples move here.

I think the pp is right you’re in a bubble where people say they couldn’t survive on less.

Would you be able to buy your current house on your salary? Could you manage 20% increase in groceries/childcare costs? A lot of people manage fine because they bought years ago or their kids no longer need full time childcare. my MIL 'manages' fine on less than 20k per annum in London but thats because she boguht her house at 100k. However, it is not possible for a low wage earner to buy her house for 100k anymore. in finance, corporate law and tech, it is possible for young people to buy their parents' houses or at least a flat even in London. And many people in finance don't earn 100k or more esp in the operations side at analyst level. But 2 40k salaries can at least buy a flat in London (esp if they lived at parents' house) or a small house in commuter territory (in their 20s). We were on combined £75k when we bought our flat in our late 20s, i believe.

I am not saying no one is earning an ok wage in other industries but a lot of people aren't . If they were, the median salary in London would not be 41k. And its lower outside London. The average rent in the whole of UK is £1000. Many many houses outside London are now £300k-£350k. When you do the math, you realize how poorly paid British people relative to housing (and lets not even mention childcare).

But how many other industries can two 20+ year olds earn 40k?

Also mentioned by the Daily Fail and commented on higher up this thread is that 53% of income tax is paid by the top 10% of earners. It is actually higher than that at 62.3%. Data from HMRC is shown in the the table attached.

Note that this is just income tax. Points to note are that the top 50% of earners pay 91.7% of income tax, and that this has increased by 3 percentage points since 2010/2011 matched by a corresponding decrease for the bottom 50%. The top 10% of earners share of income tax has increased from 53.5% to 62.3% over the same period.

I am 30. Age is key. What constitutes a good wage cannot be based on property prices from 20 years ago, they should be based on market rent/mortgage based on 10% deposit in the local area (in London this can be a wider geographic area due to good commuter links). If people are having to rely on parents to beef up their deposits to buy an average home, they are not earning a living wage.

I actually think it's services that are key. If people experience that they (and others) receive good services they are happier to pay tax. In Denmark for example taxes are much higher than here and peopl are, generally, ok with it. There is pride in the welfare state and the services it produces. In the UK public services are being degraded so people feel they are getting bad value for their money (personally and from a wider public benefit perspective). It feels like a rip off to pay £x thousands in tax and not only can't I get a doctor's appoitnment but also I see that children near me are living in poverty. What benefit exactly am I paying for here? It's a value for money perception as much as anything I'd say.

The top 10 per cent of workers earn an average of £62,583. We’re not talking super rich.

www.statista.com/statistics/416102/average-annual-gross-pay-percentiles-united-kingdom/

If I was the government I would not be highlighting - via a tufton street think tank - that the benefit piece of pie is now bigger than it was under labour. It might make people think the guys who have been in charge for 12 years fucked up a bit.

Of course you rely onlow paid workers. Do you drive a car, use public transport, eat food, buy anything, get your bins emptied,put your children in childcare? Unless you live entirely off grid and are self sufficient then you rely on an army of low paid workers to keep the country running.

The only way to make low paid people contribute more is to pay them more. As there's a finite amount of money, that would mean paying some other people less.

exactly and this is why I am saying the salaried population in general is underpaid. £62k isn't crazy money so how can they be the top 10%?

Thousands of houses built on formerly productive farmland are swamping our small town - there are no GP appointments of school places, the roads are choked and there's almost no public transport of viable cycle routes.

Why is it a think tank ONS already had the information.

I’m guessing it’s the left who tend to push higher benefits so people think no thanks to more.

Yes, and Civitas decided to make that those numbers into a nice shiny report for the Mail. As you say, why?

Because of the second line in that post people associate higher benefits with the left so wouldn’t want to vote for them to be higher

See, this falls under 'lifestyle choices'.
Living in London (or any city) is not mandatory, and I would actively recommend that people live elsewhere. Life is better when you're surrounded by cows and/or oxygen.

Median monthly rent is actually £725 outside of London. £30k is plenty for a couple - as demonstrated by my own outgoings, which includes the mortgage on an above average house, 2x cars, holidays, meals out etc.

You don't necessarily have to sleep with the people you share a house/flat with either.

the point of the article is the percentage of net contributors has fallen significantly. We do need a balance between givers and takers or the system doesn’t work.

We're agreed it's a deliberate narrative that goes beyond black and white numbers, then. We just disagree on what the resulting consensus will be from it.

I knew this due to ONS figures already and haven’t bothered to read the DM version.

I don’t have an issue with raw numbers and find ONS reputable as do many statisticians.

But both parties, and unions, use figures to prompt the public I don’t think that’s unusual. I haven’t reacted to the DM article as it’s not of interest to me.

but yes I recommend stats / info programmes over press releases anyway

Ha ha that's such a clichéd Daily Mail front page. Exactly the kind of thing that one would expect.

@SnackSizeRaisin

I was taking about relying on them for my job, since the poster I was replying to seems to think that all 'high earners ' have staff.

Of course your life relies on people who are paid less than you. You also rely on people who are paid more than you. This is a redundant point.

What you're missing is that you don't have to pay people more - you have to make the government and its machinations cost LESS. However, no government would willingly advocate for making itself smaller, hence the lack of conversation on the matter.

Living in the city is much cheaper if you have to commute (as most jobs are in the city). Less necessary to have a car too. Much kinder to the environment as countryside should be for the animals rather than humans!

I despair of low expectations in this country. I met an Australian lady when on a weekend break in Norway and they were aghast junior doctors were paid £33k in the UK.in their words, Australians would not work for that kind of money..not just doctors but anyone..sure their cost of living is higher but at the same time, it's not like our cost of living is super low either. We should expect higher salaries on par with other high income countries. Of course higher salaries without higher productivity would just lead to high inflation so we have to increase our productivity as well. However the fact we are a low wage economy isn't the fault of the people, it's the fault of the government. Even Liz Truss recognized this- outside of London/SE, the UK economy was low productivity/low wage. hence why jobs that are linked to the local UK economy (rather than London the financial hub/fintech capital) are low wage.

They're not talking about that because they know Britian isn't America. "Reasonable taxes to pay for good public services" remains a popular political tenet of most voters, and if people are angry right now is because they're clearly not getting the second part of the deal. Maybe that will change and libertarianism will one day get a foothold, but for now it's a minority ideology.

despair of low expectations in this country. I met an Australian lady when on a weekend break in Norway and they were aghast junior doctors were paid £33k in the UK.in their words, Australians would not work for that kind of money
Of course not when costs of living there is much higher. Its not comparable.

Taxes are to pay for public services and an element of redistribution. What is mot right is families that work PT expecting a similar financial comfort as those who work FT.

The only way for the government to cost less will be further cuts to the NHS, education, policing, social care, public transport, welfare etc. That would not, in my opinion, improve quality of life for the vast majority of people. Most people are much better off in a more equal society with good public services than in a society where there is poverty with all its associated criminality and decay.