to think that 6000 per month is excessive for the government to take off my pay for tax?

[tootaxed]

Surely there should be a maximum limit that each person has to pay as tax? Six grand per month in tax is just excessive imo. And that is before NI contributions etc. If the government set a maximum tax limit they would take more care over how they spent their central funds. And I wouldn't have to work so many hours away from my DCs only to have 72 bloody grand a year taken off my income to fund their mis-spending.

It is a myth that senior people suffer most stress. It's people on the factory production line with no control over their hours that have worst mental health. My sister (a clinical psychologist) was saying she has quite a few middle management patients at the moment, set impossible targets, working very long hours etc. People like me, people like her (she works for myself), my brother even (NHS consultant) - we control our hours to some extent. We aren't as stressed.

In fact one element of my career advice to the 5 children is - first choose work you'll adore doing which luckily I've managed but secondly try to pick something with the chance to work for yourself if you choose to do that (as I did, as my sister did when she had children as even my father did to some extent and entirely after he retired from the NHS).

As for who is worth what - where applicants are ten a penny and just about anyone can do the job wages are lower is a reasonable general rule. There genuinely aren't that many people in the UK who can do what I do. It's one reason I'm reasonably well paid. Other jobs that is not so.

As for whether we could all become hookers.... I know (not in the biblical sense) someone who uses a particular kind of prostitute to service his particular needs. She charges what I do per hour which is amusing. I assume she does not pay tax however.

What are we worth in financial times is the interesting question. Whatever the market will bear I suppose.

None of this changes my view that tax is too high but I'm still pleased we aren't in the tax regime we were under when I was a child - my father paying 66% (and 80 something % on savings income). Bring tax down, have a flat tax, be Estonian or Bulgarian and you might increase the tax take and people my choose to work harder if every extra hour you keep 90% of what you earn not 59%.

I also think mothers have a good role to play in telling girls what jobs are out there - that daughter might have one life if she earns £20k a year and another if she can aim for £500k a year, that we don't narrow girls' options (or even £600k a year if she marries a rich man and divorces him quickly).

Why does everyone seem to think only the highly paid have to work more than their contractual hours? That's just not remotely true.

"As for who is worth what - where applicants are ten a penny and just about anyone can do the job wages are lower is a reasonable general rule. There genuinely aren't that many people in the UK who can do what I do. It's one reason I'm reasonably well paid. Other jobs that is not so."

This just isn't true either Xenia. DH was one of 10 a penny tax lawyers in the City. We moved out to a rural area. He has all the same skills (and more). He's now listed in Chambers etc etc (one of only 2 lawyers in the county listed in his area) blah de blah ie still good at what he does but paid a salary half that he would be earning in the City as a standard ten a penny lawyer.

The amount someone is paid depends on many things, public versus private, profession/area, location, training etc. But when you start looking closely I'm not sure that difference in work put in really explains the vast differences 2 people can be paid.

Rural based DH is paid half Fictional London based DH. Same skills, same work, same hours actually. Different location.

Your life cannot be measured in its success by your salary fgs.I would say I am the least salaried of all my friends but am definitely one of the happiest and least stressed/My most successful friend re career and big house big money is distraught that her husband has no interest in her and the kids and she craves love and attention more than anything .

To live in a work where someone's worth was defined by their salary sounds very scary indeed.

And Xenia most people don't get divorced without some sort of emotional fall out. For many that wouldn't be worth 100k a year

Yes two women who earn 20k a year and 500k a year respectively will have very different lives. It doesn't necessarily follow that the one earning the higher amount will have a more fulfilling or happier life.

the nneb nursey nurses who look after my wee one are paid very low wage for the responsibility they have. i love wee ones nursery nurses (their qualifications range from HNC to BA(hons) early education) so despite studying they are not well paid

I was having such a nice day before I came on here and read about these poor people who have to pay so much tax. Now I'm crying into my Asda tea . Must be such a hardship to pay so much money to the government of a country you choose to live in, just to keep up the society that enables you to have a well-paid job - it's a real tragedy.

As for the comment about being disatisfied with the way the government spends it... do you only get to judge if you pay over a certain amount of tax?? What about those of us who pay a relative pittance in tax because we earn SO much less... should we just be grateful for anything the government spends our money on?

You live in this country, you pay the tax, end of story. If you want to work a lot of hours to earn something over £100k that's your lookout and if you don't like it, stop! Maybe spare a thought for the people who have to work long hours for FAR less annually than you pay in tax!

I'm loaned one month's of this woman's tax PER YEAR to live on while I'm studying, to be paid back afterwards, so I can manage to get a job that (with child-friendly hours) will pay me about 2 months of her tax PER YEAR, which I will also get to pay tax on - lucky me! And there are thousands of people in the same or worse positions!

In the words of a song - "Lifestyles of the rich and the famous - we'll take your clothes, cash, cars and homes - just stop complaining"

smallwhitecat - yurt is right about her mum and thousands of other nurses like her. publicsector employees esp nhs staff regularly do unpaid (and unrecognised) overtime. as a staff nurse myself there have been many times when there has been no cover for the next shift and the nurse in charge of the hospital has told me i have to stay behind until they can get cover. not great when you have just worked 12.5hrs and are due to start your next shift in 11.5hrs. incidentally the NMC code of conduct does actually state that the nurse in charge must hand the ward over to another appropriatly trained member of staff and it is gross misconduct to just walk out at the end of your shift.

i have never received payment for any extra hours i have worked for the NHS. please can you let me know what jobs your friends and family do within the NHS if they are able to leave on time every time. i would like to change jobs.

most NHS staff regularly work unpaid over time, or limited lunchbreaks etc.phone rings when your eating sandwich still hets answered!

ahem...
can I just add that some people who earn a lot of money have absoloutely no objection to paying tax and NI. DH and I paid tax when we had nowt, pay tax now we have more and will continue to pay to help others who need it.
Personally I have always believed that you judge a society and its members by how they treat their most vulnerable.
Of course it gets up my nose when people claim for stuff they don't need etc but I would rather feel occasionally ripped off but feel that those in need get help than try and wriggle out of what i see as my committment to the community at large.
So please don't tar all high earners as miserly and selfish!!!!

pagwatch - so true.

My dad was actually pleased when he moved onto supertax as he said he always felt guilty at earning so much for a job he regarded as fundamentally useless, compared to how hard he worked as a foot-solider in the same organisation. He felt the extra tax mitigated some of the guilt.

"Then you got jobs like nursing/midwifery which also require degrees like law does but I'd say were more stressful, require higher intelligence and decision making abilities etc yet are paid pittance."

The barriers to entry are significantly higher in law than in nursing - it's much harder to get to be a lawyer than to be a nurse.

No one thinks your worth is determined by your salary unless they're an idiot but clearly your salary tends to reflect things like whether you're top of the tree -whether you're the refuse collector or the owner of the biggest waste business in the UK or whether you're rather poor barrister on £20k a year who only does low paid legal aid work or you're one on £1m a year or whatever. Those at the top of the tree in their profession (unless it's running a convent I suppose) tend to earn more and those jobs which it is harder to do and you need be cleverer to get into are much better paid. That's just common sense.

I know scientists who have earned a fortune - I've been speaking to one today. They're getting £2m tomorrow. So it's not true that science if badly paid just depends if you have the will to make money at something or if you're not interested and all that other stuff too.

As for some people are paid less if they move out of London - that's the choice they make. Firms will pay much less because the cost of living may be less and the profits they can extract from locals are less etc.
If you reduce tax rates you tend to increase tax take thus there's an argument those of us who want to pay less tax want to help the poor more than those content to pay or even pay more. Those who want to pay more can always start giving it away to poor mumsnet posters if they feel too guilty with what they have of course.

"As for some people are paid less if they move out of London - that's the choice they make"

Exactly. And there are lots of benefits (view of the sea from the kitchen, close proximity to moors, a little less obsession around chargeable hours etc etc) But to suggest that the massive pay difference reflects someone's value (as was suggested earlier) is crazy,

"Those who want to pay more can always start giving it away to poor mumsnet posters if they feel too guilty with what they have of course."

And that's just remarkably patronising. I'm really not seeing much evidence of super EQ.

Who said that they felt guilty with whatthey have?

The government record with public money is not good - buying banks, going to war, all that sort of stuff and I (ME PERSONALLY) am footing the bill. I feel like a victim of crime every time I read my salary slip.

The fact that the level of tax in the OP was irritating to some and painful to others seems to have caused a distraction to the main point.

quite right, quattrocento, the government should have let northern rock go to the wall, and left millions of families without a mortgage and forced to sell their homes quickly in a hostile market.

the war is another thing, but in the scheme of things, a drop in the ocean (or about a day's worth of tax for the op)

Hmm, so everyone is gutted to lose their hard-earned money to tax because... they don't think it'll be used well.... In fact the OP is moved to tears because of it.

What do you take us for?

Top tip: don't read your payslip in future, just look at your bank account. Problem solved!

Oh, wow. My thread has moved on a lot.

As I don't want to be rude, I will answer the questions posed of me. Re. my job - i am a global supply chain manager for a large multinational. That is why I end upworking so many hours as not only is it a senior position but I have to work across multiple timezones and travel frequently too.

No we did not get compensation for the accident. It was my husband's fault. In fact, it ended up costing us a lot of money. Which I suppose is part of the reason why I work so hard - because I never want to be in that fearful position again of thinking I may lose everything. I want to build stability and a secure future for my children. Is that worth more to me than seeing them all day, every day? Quite frankly, yes.

But back to my original point. I do think that I am taxed too much and that income tax should be capped - prob at around £50,00 per person per annum. If that offends some of you lower wage earners, so be it.

'you lower wage earners'

I can't even be arsed to read this thread tbh

I think that's the wisest thing anyone has said on here Oliveoil

I think you need to fuck off out of the country and find yourself a tax haven personally