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'?

I cannot understand how you would think you pay in 50% tax and then expect to get it back? It’s not a service we pay the government all your tax in order to reap back exactly all the money you paid in, how would that ever work? How would you know how much you took back out? It’s not a post office savings account

Tax relief on pension contributions isn't my issue - its the fact that I get substantially more tax relief on my pension contributions than someone earning much less because its given at your top rate of tax.

I'd restrict tax relief on pensions to basic rate. The income derived from the pension income may be taxable but that is likely to be a much lower rate than a top rate tax payer receives on contributions and will benefit from the personal allowance.

Apples and pears. The T&C's, pensions and benefits, job security, will generally, be way better in public service, than someone on minimum wage.

I'm not complaining, but just highlighting. The effective rate when people jump above £50k and lose their child benefit is even higher than 60% I believe

That is me. Single parent house. I work from January to June full time just to pay the tax for the year. I am the definition of 'taxed to the hilt'

I also have a dispute with HMRC at the moment about HICB and they go after me like you would not believe because I am not rich enough to get a lawyer and just easy picking for them. It is like dealing with the mafia. They arbitrarily apply charges with no warning, apply deadlines that are just made up, make it impossible to contact them (no email, letters never registered, a minimum of 1 hour holding to speak to someone only to be told they are not the right person).

This dispute with HMRC is connected to this case here and the gall of it is that the guy won the case, but in between the first win and the appeal, Rishi literally changed the law to say that anyone else with the same issue cannot use this as case law, even if HMRC lose the appeal.

Genuinely like the mafia.

It's not unsustainable as long as the top 1-10% own the majority of wealth. There's no point in increasing wages if the end result is increased prices, all that does is keep everyone in-situ.

The only way to improve things for the majority is to decrease the amount of wealth held by those at the top. Sounds harsh on paper until you realise that, even if you drastically reduced the wealth of the elite they'd still have more than the average person ever will.

I've lost count of how many times I've said this but, as an example you could take £2.5 trillion (enough to wipe out the UK national debt) from the top 1% (around 65,000 people) and they'd still have £15,000,000 each (which would take and average earned around 430 years to earn).

Unfortunately, far too many people ignore this level of wealth disparity at the very top and chose to focus their anger on those at the bottom. You see it all the time (this thread included) where people are genuinely angry that someone receiving benefits/top-ups can afford a big TV, decent car, or god forbid a holiday. Yet point out that Jim Ratcliffe has more money than a top surgeon would earn in over a thousand lifetimes and they just shrug their shoulders and go "meh".

Yanbu. I'm a net contributor, and I think this is perfectly fine. The redistribution of wealth and the funding of public services is the whole point of paying tax in the first place. I would like to live in a society which does this more effectively than we do at the moment, but the basic concept is perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned.

No actually it does not it's separate from welfare but welfare covers a lot more things.www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-public-spending-was-calculated-in-your-tax-summary/how-public-spending-was-calculated-in-your-tax-summary

Throwncrumbs

Young working people who can’t come here isn’t the problem. It’s the young people already here who dont want to work because they can claim benefits!“

We don’t know any such young people. Our adult children are both studying, o e for BA one for MA, work when they’re not in classes and one is bringing up a young child at the same time (with her FT working husband).
Their peers are all doing similar (18-28 age range).
Do you know lots of young people who don’t want to work?

Throwncrumbs

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!”

Its 2023. Any more recent anecdotes.

I remember the 80s very well. Unemployment figures were shocking, there were few jobs to be had.

Again, I ask the question that @Throwncrumbs didn't answer either - would you work extra hours in a minimum wage job where the system ensured that effectively you got paid £2 an hour for those hours?
Don't be so quick to blame people for this - the system is all wrong, it actively discourages them to work more.

@orangeoyster

Living in London (or any city) is not mandatory, and I would actively recommend that people live elsewhere.

Don't you realise that most decent jobs are in London and other major cities? If you want a good job, then basically, you have to work in a city and live near one.

It's one of the reason why the majority of graduates don't return to their home towns - there's no jobs for them there, except for low paid jobs like hospitality and retail.