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.

Here are the figures to pay 6k tax per month, prior to NI insurance. I am assuming Tootaxed has paid off any student loan.

Gross Income £200,000.00
Tax-Free Allowance £5,225.00
Taxable Amount £194,775.00
Tax £71,414.40
National Insurance £4,986.36
Net Take-Home £123,599.24

Which works out at £10,299.94 take home per month or £2,376.91 per week.

BTW I am not some tax geek rather there is a website called i-resign.com where you can look these things up.
Always handy.

I think the biggest problem tootaxed has is paying for carers for her husband. I expect that half her salary goes on paying for care for her husband or kids.

If she is agrieved by her tax then she needs to claim disablity allowance for her husband. It would then make the situation of her paying high tax a bit fairer.

I suspect your eldest daughter's starting salary is not in any way typical, Xenia. Extrapolating from this situation will not reflect the reality for most people.

It's true that with the low interest rates of the past few years, many people have borrowed multiples of salary that would have been unthinkable previously. It is not a genuine indicator of affordability given that very few of these loans will be at a fixed rate for a long term, and they are likely to prove unsustainable over the next few years.

You get a much better idea of affordability if you look at the numbers of first time buyers, and in particular, unassisted first time buyers (ie those who don't get large deposits from their parents). All this inforamtion is on the CML website.

With regards to your "Chelsea" comment, I can assure you I am under no illusion that your average middle class professional might be able to live anywhere near SW3.
Your Harrow house does look like pretty good value compared to many in zones 3/4, but it is still well beyond the reach of most would-be first time buyers.

You really are astonishingly out of touch if you think affordability is not an issue. Even Mervyn King said, last May, "Relative to average earnings or incomes, or anything else you could look at, house prices do seem remarkably high."

(quick highjack -xenia would you mind having a quick look, I am after your advice, you will approve it is to do with going back to work!) thanks

I am actually quite sickened by this thread. Yes the OP earns more than most of us do. She also has a sick husband, children (not sure how many), one who is clearly ill and also probably financially supports her ILs who take care of her husband.

Her OP probably was a bit tactless but I saw a post by someone who is struggling with a lot of difficult issues for which she has received very little support (with the exception of 1 or 2 posters) and looking at the tax she has paid was probably 'the last staw'. It may not be rational but how often have posted been irrational on her but received support nontheless.

tootaxed - I agree with most people that the proportion of tax you pay is not unreasonable but I also can see how hard it must be to see that money go in tax when you are feeling so stressed. Many times these feelings aren't rational but they are there nontheless.

VVV has given some very sensible and measured advice and support and I'm not sure I can add much to that, but I'm sorry you are getting such a hard time on here.

Havent read all the messages, only OP's and some of the others that follow.

To the OP - YANBU to feel the way you do. I am sure most people at some point open their payslips/ receive their P60 and are severely annoyed to see how much of their income goes on tax/NI.

Your error was in coming on mnet and expecting sympathy for it. Especially as you are a very high earner. In my short time on mnet, this much I have gleaned. If your family earns over a certain amount and as such, you fall in the high tax bracket - dont expect any sympathy for any problems you may have (from the majority of posters). The fact that you have a certain amount of money means all your woes are irrelevant and you have no right to complain. It is ridiculous. And it irks me no end. And it makes me want to post the following.

EARNING HIGH AMOUNTS OF MONEY DOES NOT MEAN PEOPLES ISSUES ARE NOT REAL!

further to the last two posts - i actually said this back about page 8. TT should investigate what help (financial and practical) she is entitled to. Tax has to be paid but i know i also hate looking at my deductions each month and they are only a tiny fraction of TT's.

however this thread has turned into a rich v poor topic with certain people (Xenia for one) suggesting that lower wage earners are intellectually inferior. my fur has been ruffled but the comments that nurses are inferior to doctors(we do different roles) and that you need to work 100+ a week to be successful.

its always a pleasure to see that wealth and the excess of it brings out the worst in people.

I can't even begin to think how I would cope if my DP became permanently ill and I don't really have a problem with people expressing their resentment at paying so much tax.

What I can't do is agree with them, or pretend to follow the various reasons which they give to make that resentment sound more palatable, ie, 'it's not going on the right things', 'I've contributed enough just by amassing loads of wealth and creating jobs'(the entrepeneur's excuse), 'I've earned it through my hard work and intellectual superiority and deserve to keep as much of it as I see fit' or 'I've already paid enough tax for now.'

It's all very well wanting to tax people more, but as Xenia said lower down the thread, it is interesting that if you REDUCE the tax rate, you INCREASE the tax take.

Presumably this is because more entrepreneurial activity is enabled in environments where tax rates are lower. It might also be that self-employed people declare more of their income if the tax is not punitive.

Here's an article which shows the folly of governmental greed:

news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/7319045.stm

I didn't say affordability wasn't an issue, just that those £250k 3 bed terraced houses in zone 5 for those prepared to slum it and reduce their standards to live that far out are as affordable in 2008 as they were in 1983 for people like myself and my ex husband. His teacher wage then (at age 28) and my wage then were each £7,500. 3 x our joint salary was £45k and the house cost £40k. Today his equivalent salary would be about £30k and daughter 1's will be 35k. x 3 is £195,000. Okay that is not the extra £50k more you need but you could borrow 3.5 times and probably 4 x for most young professionals and thus it is still as affordable as it was then. I don't know if teachers' salaries have soared ahead whilst the average wage has not but certainly the maths for that road shows house prices in zone 5 are no worse than they were in 1983 and interest rates are much lower.

pmsl at people living in zone 5 'slumming it'. You are a character Xenia.

I don't mind some parts of zone 5 but I would draw the line at Harrow.

Which parts of zone 5 don't you mind, Swedes?

I havn't read all of this as I'm sure at some point it must get fairly explosive. But I work loads and loads, and my Dp works well over 100 hours a week, he's barely home, and yet we struggle by on a crappy wage that barely pays the rent and council tax on our crappy, tiny, 2 bedroomed house, and we can't get our debts paid at all.

So do you know what I think?

I think they should tax you much much more since you can afford it, and tax us less considering what we earn and what we have to pay out.

Your post is disgusting and shameful. You're no better than anyone else. I have a degree like you probably do. But I work my arse off for peanuts and pay shit loads of tax that I GENUINELY can't afford.

And I have NEVER moaned about it until this day.

Though I do think over £100 a month for council tax is disgraceful considering the state of this town.

Oh and I've just read the last 5 or 6 posts and seen that the OP had issues (though I don't know what exactly because I havn't read it all). But so does everyone. EVERYONE.

thank you lazycow!

I manage to make that sensible advice on annual earnings that barely take me above the OP's monthly tax liabilities [embittered smile]

Quattro -
Twickenham, Totteridge, Whetstone, Finchley perhaps?

yanbu - i have never earned anywhere near that much. If the government did a good job it would at least soften the blow but it doesnt.

I think the original poster has much more problems than most people on her income,even me with a brain damaged husband and was it child with special needs. It certainly didn't sound like much fun, whatever your income, even my situation dogged with divorce, deaths, dementia debt left with 5 children on my own doesn't quite match up to her trauma and as someone said above the real things that are difficult in life are really completely separate from income and the problems most of us have over a course of a life are pretty much the same as anyone else whatever we earn.

As for zone 5 my slumming it was a joke because so many people say London is so expensive and yet they're not prepared to live in perfectly acceptable parts of it which are cheaper because they're too snobby, that's all I qwas saying.

As for me not knowing what people earn the average wage is £24k. We knew plenty of teachers on about £30k supporting a non working wife and family in zone 5 and yes whilst a one income salary is hard in zone 5 if you have two incomes totalling £60 - £70 then clearly it's easier. I think I've a reasonable idea of what people earn and their lives. We had many years where we bought 100% of the children's clothes at Oxfam (whilst living in zone 5!) and buying things like conditioner for the hair or washing or orange juice other than real squash were never on the agenda because of lack of funds.

Mumblesmum 'I think they should tax you much much more since you can afford it, and tax us less considering what we earn and what we have to pay out.'

This is what gets me. The assumption that if you earn a certain amount, you absolutely should pay more tax since you can afford it. WTF??? Why should high earners pay more? And why is there the assumption that they can afford it??? It isnt as black and white as that.

They shouldn't. There's no justification for anything except a capped flat tax in my view but it's all a legacy from the communist/socialst era - tax the rich until the pips squeak even if we reduce the tax take by having such high rates (which is a proven fact) so in other words do it even if the poor have less money because the tax take is lower because it's more important to be seen to squeeze the rich because socialism wants everyone on the same low income than to do what is right morally or even for the poor.

They should do more work in getting the poor into churches and rooting out the sin of envy perhaps. In other countries you see someone rich and you think great - that could be me. I'll work towards that. In the UK they sit back on a sofa eating chips most of the day wanting to burn out the eyes of the rich with a hot poker.

Xenia!

I used to have a lot of respect for you, but your world view is decidedly strange, even if you were 'joking' in the last post. (Having said that I've worked with a lot of people who are very good at their job and not so great at functioning in the world at large, so I don't know why I'm surprised )

40% is hardly taxing until the pips squeak. Get a grip ffs.