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

My tax is high but this, 100%z

I don't think it's true that doctors go part time for the tax situation

I suspect it was workload stress that actually pushes them over the edge. Then they look at the cost benefit of fewer hours

I hear you op. I personally don't think we have it too bad in the UK in terms of taxation but hear what you're saying.

What irks me is that we get sweet FA from what we do pay. It's not like we have great public services and can be happy with the NHS, education, care, policing, homelessness etc etc. It's all shite and public sector pay is crap as well.

I'd gladly pay higher taxes if the poor were better looked after and everything was tickety boo but it's so far from that it's a joke.

For info I pay about £1600 in tax each month at the moment. What it goes on is anyone's guess.

I've been a higher rate taxpayer for years but for the first time I've decided to go part time. It'll move me back to being a basic rate taxpayer. I have always felt a moral obligation to pay tax and a pride in being a net contributor, but over the past few years, it's just gone. This country is an utter shambles and I've no idea what the point is in me working my fingers to the bone just for that additional tax contribution to be thrown down the toilet or whatever it is the government is doing with it. I'd rather try and preserve my mental health.

Maybe that's selfish, but I've never been entitled to a thing my entire adult life. I don't have kids and I've been a net contributor for years. I'm prioritising myself now.

I'm sure I'm not alone. Sad but true.

@jenandberrys
Those who pay nothing also benefit from those things. You don’t get a greater benefit if you are a higher rate tax payer
They are statistically much more likely to benefit from all of those things than a higher rate tax payer. A higher rate tax payer is more likely to pay for private education or healthcare so even 'universal' services don't benefit the rich in the same way as the poor and this on top of the the means tested provision means the poorer do much better out of the system than the rich. Of course this is by design and the intention of the system but there is obviously a balance to be had somewhere.

It's an optimisation problem really !

I work for myself as a contractor, and the past 5 years have been a tax attack on independent contractors and small limited companies. I now pay 40% tax and I have no paid holidays or benefits of any kind.

The rates are higher to reflect the lack of holiday and sickness pay, everyone I know who works as a contractor takes out insurance for sickness and makes sure they budget appropriately for the periods they don't work (aka holidays). Become an employee if you'd like the same benefits as they get. IR35 was long overdue especially in the public sector.

Sure annoying but everyone pays tax and NI

Why are you moaning about this?

You need to compare ALL aspects. It's not only unpaid holidays and sick pay, it's no redundancy pay, no employer pension contributions, having to pay for your own training and equipment, paying your own insurance and accountancy, etc etc. Even worse with the recent attacks on self employment (IR35) is that you can also find yourself having to pay employers AND employees NIC, and apprenticeship levies as well as admin fees if you now have to work via umbrellas and/or agencies.

Firms don't want to take on "salaried roles" because it costs them more than it costs to take on a freelancer/contractor when they factor in all the "extras" as I've outlined above. They just want to carry on paying lower rates as they are accustomed to which previously worked for freelancers before they were clobbered by the recent tax hikes on them! Even the NHS and BBC (public sector) preferred taking on contractors/freelancers to avoid the extra costs of employing people in salaried roles!

It will take time for the equilibrium to be reached where firms either pay for salaried roles at market rates or accept they have to pay higher rates to freelancers/contractors. In the meantime, contractors are "squeezed" in the middle.

I suspect not that many since the few miles adjacent to the border aren't especially densely populated. But people in that position also have the much less drastic option available of just earning a bit less. Not taking that extra shift, paying more into the pension. We'd surely need to know how many are doing that before drawing any conclusions, no?

Not at 40% they don't. Also 53% of households receive benefits so the who tax Vs benefits ratio is very different for them.

Put loads in your pension. You’ll get a bit less take home pay, be entitled to child benefit (if you have kids) and have a nicer & likely earlier retirement. Objectively £60k is quite a lot of money even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

In general the thing is about people who don’t want to pay tax is that they don’t want to stop having lots of things that are state funded and will fully expect their state pension (which is one of the biggest expenses for public spending) but they just don’t think it’s fair they have to pay for it. No one likes paying it but a society without a welfare state isn’t that great either. Many of my colleagues in the US earn more doing same roles but are less well off due to massive costs of education and healthcare.

I think people wouldn’t begrudge paying tax if our services eg NHS were ran a lot better.

On the whole (I know I’ll get chewed out for this) I find people who are working tend to have a better lifestyle ie better food, less illness, better health etc.. So we feel like we don’t see our moneys worth out of the system because working people use it less.

But I have to remind myself that when I’m older and more frail I’ll probably use the system more then I do now while I’m of healthy working age.

^this

I think it's quite hard for people to understand that a 60k salary isn't all that much in a lot of areas and, unless you're on roughly that amount, it's hard to see how squeezed that bracket has become in recent years.

I'm on less than that but occasionally bonuses/overtime have taken me close to it and essentially I'm working overtime for almost nothing after tax, NI, student loan, high income child benefit charge, etc. I particularly object to the child benefit charge because, as a single parent it's tough anyway but there are households with nearly twice my income that still get it.

The child benefit rules are fucking ludicrous, and I've never yet seen any evidence that they've actually resulted in net savings. The aim was clearly to phase it out in the longer term.

Child benefit should be scrapped altogether.

Oh come off it! You worked full time because you either wanted to or needed the money. You did not work full time out of some moral obligation to pay tax.
You are now working less probably because you have the safety net built up in your life from years of higher earning.

The benefits to society such as lower crime, cleaner streets etc are the same benefit to those who dont pay anything as to those who pay a pretty penny. In reality the bins dont get collected, the roads are more hole than road, crime is through the roof round here and you can't see a GP for weeks at a time, let alone register with a dentist.

If you can't have kids and have a mortgage you can basically wave goodbye to any sort of social security net so you have to put yourself first sometimes and I can see why people begrudge paying more in tax, whilst at the same time ploughing money into personal savings to go towards mortgage and bills should you find yourself out of work for a period.

The PP who said people don't mind paying higher tax whilst they can still maintain a decent lifestyle that they think is commensurate with earnings, but when the lifestyle is being rapidly eroded as it is massively for the squeezed middle you can see why it is a source of frustration.

I also don't think only the poorest can moan about their financial situation. There is always someone worse off and always someone better off, and it's natural to be angry and upset about your own circumstances changing. If you don't like a post where someone who earns more than jobseekers allowance then just scroll on by as you are not the target market, these posters just want to share their pain with others in a similar boat, of which there are many!

The benefits to society such as lower crime, cleaner streets etc are the same benefit to those who dont pay anything as to those who pay a pretty penny.

I don’t think it’s really the same though? Richer areas are safer and streets are cleaner because more policing and more cleaning is done for the richer areas than are done for the poorer slum areas.

Do show me where I said I only worked full time out of moral obligation. I didn't. I had to because I needed the money - I'm a one-income household and I've had a very difficult few years. It just comforted me, when I was working really hard, to think that I was contributing to the country in some way.

I don't have a safety net built up. Everything I've earned has helped me keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I've just decided that I'm going to scrimp a bit more and get some quality of life back. The absence of that pride that I previously felt was highly relevant in the consideration.

You seem extremely angry at me for some reason.

Boo hoo. YABVVVU

See
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/extra-local-government-funding-found-ease-cuts-has-benefited-councils-serving-richer-areas

The whole point was for contractors to work on particular shortage projects or whatever, that then morphed into bums on seats and doing the same job as someone else who is an employee whilst being on an inflated rate. The vast majority of people who are contractors could easily secure a perm role if they wanted to.

And here. When funding for public services falls, the rich preserve their own neighbourhoods at the expense of the poor.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/austerity-cuts-twice-as-deep-in-england-as-rest-of-britain

And not just crime, roads and schools. But it also affects NHS treatment. It’s not the same public services for rich and poor. So the more you pay in, the more you get.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/23/englands-poorest-get-worse-nhs-care-than-wealthiest-citizens
England’s poorest people get worse NHS care than its wealthiest citizens, including longer waiting for A&E treatment and worse experience of GP services, a study shows.
Those from the most deprived areas have fewer hip replacements and are admitted to hospital with bed sores more often than people from the least deprived areas.

With regard to emergency care, 14.3% of the most deprived had to wait more than the supposed maximum of four hours to be dealt with in A&E in 2017-18, compared with 12.8% of the wealthiest. Similarly, just 64% of the former had a good experience making a GP appointment, compared with 72% of those from the richest areas.