Is your household contributing net tax ?

[Pingufireengine]

Following on from the awful disabled people are a drain on society threads...

For those that have children, have you considered this?

Roughly 55-60% of all households aren't net contributors to tax.

That's not to say the households that don't make a net contribution are in receipt of benefits.

Having children entails the following:

(This is per child)

Maternity care on NHS/midwifes,
Birth/delivery £3000-10000,
Post Delivery Care,
Health Visitors,
Statutory Maternity Leave,
Free prescriptions during pregnancy and after birth for 1 year,
Child gets free eye tests, glasses, prescriptions, dentist until 16/18
Child benefit until 16-20
Free nursery hours £2000-7000 per
Free School Milk £30-40
Free school meals: £400-500
School is £7,690 per
Sixth form/college/higher education £4,843

Student loans for university £30,000-50,000+

Yes the loans are paid back, but the initial offset is footed by taxpayers. And around 27% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2022/23 will repay them in full. They forecast that after the 2022 reforms this would increase to 61% among new students from 2023/24.

So instead of looking to blame those who are disabled for being a drain, look elsewhere, and better yet, instead of the disabled, pensioners, the working poor...we should look towards those are govern us, avoid tax.

The UK pension is the lowest in Europe, our wages are low and have stagnanted, working rights and conditions have eroded.

The UK looks asset rich, but it's only a small number who are generating huge wealth for themselves. There are parts of the UK poorer than the poorest parts of Poland. In fact, Poland is predicted to be wealthier per person than the UK in just a few years.

Maternity care is awful, the NHS is broken and on its knees, social care is non existent.

We've had austerity for 14 years, then Brexit, then COVID. Our country is in desperate need of investment into our creeking infrastructure.

@Neveralonewithaclone I've worked for a trading bank (a long time ago). The stress on bankers was immense. Most people managed 5 years or less. Suicides were not uncommon. Alcoholism was rife. Divorce was the norm.

Do you imagine jobs with a £200k salary aren't fought over. There was always someone trying to oust the incumbent. No matter how well they did, their target would rise by 50% the following year.

Calling them 'administrators' is a misnomer. It's a job I wouldn't want at any price.

Absolutely this.

We used to live in a country where if someone did the 'right' things (leaving aside that only certain people were ever actually able to access these things!) they felt they could get the 'right' life.

Now, you go to uni, are law abiding, work hard and have to think carefully about whether you can afford a child at all.

Humans want the basics - shelter, family. Housing and kids are both luxuries now!

That is a good point, it does create a them vs us mentality.

As has often been pointed out everything is a phase. We are net contributors now but when DCs were small we were probably much closer to being in balance. When we retire we will be net beneficiaries.

So many posts on this thread have been about playing extremes off against each other. Most people in reality are in the middle ground.

And the amount of money the finance sector brings into the country so a lot of us can pay less taxes.

I think the treasury would be better paying some of the best minds in the city to work for them.

Some benefits are also taxable:

The most common benefits that you pay Income Tax on are:

Bereavement Allowance (previously Widow’s pension)
Carer’s Allowance or (in Scotland only) Carer Support Payment
contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
Incapacity Benefit (from the 29th week you get it)
Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
pensions paid by the Industrial Death Benefit scheme
the State Pension
Widowed Parent’s Allowance

I don't see how this can be true. I work part time (due to having a disabled child. I even claim benefit for them so shoot me) and earn around £1k a month, I didn't pay any tax last year (in Scotland if that makes a difference). Granted I do spend all I earn so do you mean tax via VAT etc?

And how are you going to pay more ? Tax you harder? Reduce spending on your child's education? Most people simply cannot pay anymore. We're squeezing people enough as it is.

Companies rely on the state to subsidies their workers.

They receive subsided childcare, universal credit, help with rent, help with medical care and dental fees. Those with disabilities are subsidize more.

Now imagine being paid a living wage, and paying for your own hosing and childcare. How much better off would you be when the children’s tarted school? How much could you put in your own pension? Pay off your own mortgage?

You think childcare subsidy is a bonus? It’s not it’s a long term tax that you are grateful for.

Cool, pay them double then. Not 500 times more.

It's a bit of a silly comment because the Q is could you do their job with a week of training - no. Could they do your job with a week of training - yes.

Pay is also based on income you generate and skills required to do the job. That's why supermarket market workers and fruit pickers aren't paid the big bucks, despite being essential to infrastructure as a whole...

The big issue is the ageing population & the fact economic policy has centred on house price growth as opposed to wage growth. Which creates more inter generational inequality.

Tax is far too weighted on PAYE vs other income.

See I don’t believe this. Some of the most stressful jobs I’ve had were the lowest paid - boredom, and lack of agency drove me spare. As I my salary has increased my jobs have become physically easier and while sometimes stressful they have been better because it is the stress of action - of doing. Plus the whole point of UBI is you’d still get it - so your good wages would be even better. What UBI might do is reshape employer/employee relationships

making bankers pay more tax isn’t going to solve anything, to fix public services most of the population are going to have to pay more.

A huge amount of tax is funnelled into housing benefit which is regressive. There should be much more social housing. Similar story with benefits to top up low wages.

Most admin staff in banking are probably being paid the same as you. The bankers you are thinking about are the top of their profession.

Just like anybody at the top few if the company says make us 500 million over last year and your bonus will be 2 million then you can see how they earn so much.

We're in net contributor territory and that's before you include tax such as VAT, which those just below net contributors are likely to pay a significant amount of. Plus the extra council tax.

What I would like to see is for us to stop borrowing and making this our kids problem;

*A proper balance sheet for the county made public.
*A realistic budget drawn up on what we bring in without borrowing!!!!
*Essential public service for the working prioritised so security, health and education. With fair salaries for those working in it.
*Whats left can be used for things like benefits.
*Companies can get tax breaks if they subscribe (with evidence) to private insurance schemes.
*Topping up allowed/encouraged e.g. schools can charge up to X amount to parents to fund extras on top of the money they receive from the government. Early morning/late night/weekend appointments for health/council etc at extra cost.
*A COVID tax on those we protected with the lockdowns so our kids who weren't at risk aren't paying it off!
*The only borrowing allowed is for things likely to bring in wealth e.g. if we borrowed to build stadium to host a World Cup that is capped at a percentage of the predicted extra tax it will bring in.
*Considerable increase in powers for the police to tackle the lawless element of society and prevent any backlash against issue like just stop oil.

I feel like in this country we have lost our focus on the average working family. We have labour on a race to the bottom and conservatives on a race to please the top 1%. No one is looking at the average family of two working parents with 1 or 2 kids. Someone could walk the general election if they avoided all the nonsense over things like gender ID and economic migrants instead focusing on how they can pay down the deficit without adding to the tax burden.

I will have a very decent income from my occupational pension because I have worked full time my whole career and pay £500 every month into it. If that means I'll lose my state pension then sod it! I'll take an easier life and stop paying so much of my hard earned income into my pension! Of course I'm also paying hundreds a month in NI towards the state pension.

The kind of attitude above is clueless and is about the politics of envy rather than common sense. You can't penalise people for working hard and contributing to their own private or occupational pensions by taking away their state pension (which they are also paying into!)

No, they wouldn't. Those 'best minds in the city' don't have the first clue about how society really works. They are good at what they do, but that doesn't make them good at what other people do.

If you look at how decisions were made during COVID, it was having blinkered privileged people making decisions too quickly that led to issues such as no DV provisions in the regulations.

We need civil servants to be civil servants, it is an extremely complicated area that involves thinking about society as a whole. We have had som many problems wince the government has started to cut the civil service so no one has time to think. The last thing we need are bankers messing about with government!

Yes this is an excellent explanation of why you can not remove the universal state pension.

The kind of attitude above is clueless and is about the politics of envy rather than common sense. You can't penalise people for working hard and contributing to their own private or occupational pensions by taking away their state pension (which they are also paying into!)

And yet pension age is moving out for younger people & will move out further. Prescriptions won’t be free to the over 60s in a decade, and healthy life expectancy hasn’t changed

It’s not the politics of envy to acknowledge that younger people have the odds stacked against them. Even if someone earns a very good salary they will be paying a lot of tax & wondering if they can buy a home & afford children. That’s where things have gone wrong imo.

I think there is a political limit to how far pension age can go at the present time.

A solution to the mess we are in does not lie in further cuts. Austerity put the country into something of a death spiral, continuing down that route will not help. Removing free prescriptions, for example, will cost more as people become reluctant to seek medication and conditions worsen.

You/your family have never used the NHS ever?

Never driven on a road?

Never been for day out in the country?

Alert the papers!

Pensions is a tricky one. Imho state pension should be universal. But it wasn't designed to be paying out to so many people for so long. All 2 of my grandparents claimed it for over 25 years each, one claimed it for 30 years and I have one who is still alive and at over 25 years of claiming. I'm grateful they had/have such long lives but multiply that over the country and it's not sustainable.

Your average person is not bothered about the deficit ( well not until the city will not finance it any longer then they will )

If what you suggested were to happen the amount of services and welfare would be non existent. As you know the deficit is approx 100 billion pa that's a lot of cuts.

Electoral suicide

Yes, it'll be things like VAT - which, remember, is on things like utility bills, fuel etc and so adds up to quite a lot of money. Council tax is also a very unequal burden, yes big houses have a bigger bill but rarely commensurate with the wealth of the inhabitants (which is why the SNP promised to abolish it in 2007!).