To be fed up with the amount of tax / ni I pay

[Elephantstone1]

although my salary looks decent from the outside. I’m beginning to get really fed up with the amount of tax / ni I pay.

so on £60k end up coming out with just around £3k per month from £5k after all taxes (including council tax) have been paid.

we’re not entitled to any help that others may get

my commute costs about £400 a month, but I’ve already paid tax on that money, so i have to earn about £600 a month to pay for it.

i know I’m lucky to be on a decent salary. Just with the col increasing, I’m getting a bit fed up

I imagine if I need nursing care, my house will need to be sold to pay for it

and should that money run out, the state will pick up the cost of your nursing care, won't it?

Nursing care costs a small fortune. Certainly it can be in excess of £1k a week. Whilst house prices are through the roof, unless you're sitting on a very expensive house, you can rip through the money made in a very short period of time.

I see the opposite. People on comfortable salaries resenting every penny they contribute to helping support those far worse off than themselves.

@Changechangechanging Yes, that is exactly true. Having lived in a country that went that path. I can say this to be the case.

Sorry I meant to reply to @LondonMatilda

The funny bit is this person thinks Scottish folk are resentful. We are not . I pay more here in taxes than I did in England and I can see where it goes . I’m also able to go to my local a&E and get seen in less than 1 hour 🤷🏻‍♀️

HMRC consider that your commute is a function of where you choose to live rather than where you chose to work so you're not going to get any help from the tax man.

I live in Scotland too but that hasn't been my experience.

I had a serious allergic reaction last March. You need to call 111 for permission to go to A&E, rather than just show up. I was on hold and on the call for about an hour.

Was then sent to outpatient at a hospital far away (not my closest hospital - hard to get to and needed a taxi).

Seen by a GP who said they couldn't do blood tests, so sent me to ANOTHER hospital even further away. I had to get several trains there.

Made the first call at 1pm and left the second hospital after tests at 11pm. It was tiring and expensive. I have no idea how an elderly person would manage.

Yeah you’re being unreasonable! My husband earns less than you and pays more tax due to a company car that he needs for his job! Stop moaning that you’re on a high salary and paying your way, we all have to do it.

You don't 'get less out'; you get a civilised society.
A civilised society is not based on personal gain.

I’ve had similar thoughts looking at my (much smaller) pay slip.
In a way it’s like car/house/travel/pet insurance - a pain to pay until it’s suddenly life saving. At least with tax you are already benefiting with education, roads, government etc even if these benefits are just taken for granted in the UK (just like benefits of EU are being missed now we’ve lost them).
I work in NHS (over 10yr pay reductions and down banding of roles) and see the other side when people have life-changing issues/ diagnoses and realise how lucky they are not to receive a bill on the way out. Think about complicated child birth, cancer, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, spinal injury. The last 2 would bankrupt anyone. Thank goodness for a fair, national insurance-based health service. I hope neither of us ever have to appreciate it as much as I’ve seen others have.

We pay a shit load of tax after which we have enough to pay our necessary bills and feed the kids lucky us im happy and blessed we can do that.....but it is extremely frustrating when I hear mums and dads at the school gate who don't work at all going on their second holiday abroad in the year, buying hot tubs and what not for the garden and going for meals out/buying clothes constantly.(of course this could all be debt accruing purchases)...we can't afford to go on holiday, we can't even afford to save for ourselves to do necessary maintenance on our house because everything we are able to put aside goes to pay next Jan's tax bill. And before anyone says anything about how we must be living beyond our means we really don't we bought an ordinary semi house for less than the bank we're willing to give us, our summer holiday is staying with the in laws and having two or three days out. We only buy new clothes for us or the kids when we desperately need them and get zero help with any childcare costs. it gets very very annoying to see how much of what is earned going to tax...I have no problem paying tax of course its necessary for a civilised society but it should be a fair system whetrbybthe millionaires and billionares should not have as many loopholes instead of constantly squeezing the middle earners and we should actually see it put to use instead we see no gp appointments, not enough school places, community and family centres closing down. Pot holes left right and centre it does make you a bit fed up of it all I agree with you OP even though you get lynched for that kind of opinion on here.

I’m at this stage and resentment after paying for private schooling (bcoz local schools are all inadequate) very serious.

work life is looking like slavery!!

I am about the same. My council tab is £235 per month with single person’s allowance.

I spent 20-odd years living and working in a low-tax country. The average tax most people paid was about 12%. The corollary of this was that they didn’t get much for it. No old age pensions (your kids were supposed to take care of you), no unemployment benefit (live in your savings till you find a job), no sickness benefit (again, that’s what family is for). Basically tax was low but there was no welfare state. Your taxes bought a military, a judiciary, some government regulators (EPA etc) and that was about it. Since there was always full employment—in fact a perennial labour shortage—life was quite manageable, it wasn’t a desperate hell hole of poverty. Quite the reverse. Just don’t piss off your family because when the chips are down, they are your resource. Personally I think it was an excellent system and the profligate waste and institutionalised idleness that’s welfarism in the UK is a scandal. But I suspect there are few in the UK who are prepared to abandon the welfare state in return for a 12% tax rate.

We all 'should' do it, but the fact remains, many don't or won't!

But what does "civilized" mean? As an individual, it doesn't matter how tax I pay, I get the same (lack of) access to my gp, the police don't give a shit if I'm burgled or harassed, my kids school is still underfunded.
The fact that it could be worse, doesn't make it good value for money for net contributors.

I rage at every single extra penny the Scottish government charges me and pissed away on nonsense like overseas embassies, baby boxes etc. Scotland gets £1200 a year per head of population more than it takes in taxes and still we have an education system so laughable it withdrew itself from international league tables to hide the shame, the nhs is as on its knees as everywhere else in the UK (1 hour at A&E - what planet do you live on!!!), drugs deaths 3 x the next worst country in Europe and the government has caused so much chaos with their lack of ferry services those on Uist say the impact on their economy is worse than covid.

id gladly - gladly! - pay thousands more in tax not to have to be governed by the shambles that is the SNP. Their former leader has been arrested as a suspect in a fraud case and the current leader decides to send her a bunch of flowers to sympathise. They are INSANE!

The lack of services is not due to taxation, but to the current administation.

Scotland gets £1200 a year per head of population more than it takes in taxes and still we have an education system so laughable it withdrew itself from international league tables to hide the shame, the nhs is as on its knees as everywhere else in the UK

I wondered about this, and the rest of your post re taxes v extra

I mean I thought that was the case

Not unreasonable when all the tax pays for fuck all in terms of public decent services.

As with most subscriptions those who pay a higher subscription get an enhanced offer. Taxation is the opposite, the more you pay in, the less you get out generally.

Nope, not true. This may seem like it would be true but it’s really not the case. For a start a massive proportion of welfare is in the form of pensions, and various tax breaks for pensioners. Richer people (which closely correlates with higher earners) live on average a lot longer than poorer people and so benefit a lot more from pensions and associated benefits.

And the difference can be substantial, those in richer areas can live 15-20 more years than those in poorer areas.

I am in the USA, so may be misunderstanding things. But, don't you already get a tax break for using public transportation? in the fact that you don't have to pay the car tax that vehicle owners have to pay?

Same difference.

This right here is why DH and I earn just under the upper tax limit and rather than an increase in pay will drop our hours. Same thing with investments, I would rather not invest in things with money I have had to pay tax on once and find myself paying tax again to obtain it or to dispose of the asset. There is no benefit to doing well for yourself, none, I’ve seen my parents work all the hours gods sends to build a better life only for them sacrificing time with friends and family and being stressed in order to achieve little more than being taxed to the hilt and taxed more than once on their money. So, we got smart, we have a nice comfortable lifestyle both earning under the upper rate tax threshold and also choose the have private medical healthcare/dental too.

Also agree with PP, some of these services we are talking about aren’t underfunded, anyone working in them will tell you that they are mismanaged because there is no accountability and far too many chiefs sitting pretty doing the bare minimum.

It also doesn’t matter who you vote for…. All that matters is what they will do once elected and then you can take the relevant decision as to how you mitigate that in your household. Time to adopt the current widely promoted attitude of quietly quitting, just in different ways!