To reduce hours when labour win election

[Parttimeplay]

I fall into the “60%” tax bracket. With the upcoming elections and knowing the government always hammer the middle ground….woudlnt it make more sense for me to cut my hours for a more relaxed life, eligibility for childcare, reduced tax?

@Katemax82 yeah right.

@Parttimeplay since the max tax bracket in the UK is 45%, I am assuming you are caught in the bit between 100k and 120k where you lose the personal allowance which feels like a higher tax rate?

If so, I've always been of the opinion that people who want to pay less tax should just earn less money, so reducing your hours is a good way to achieve this. Personally, I am the other way around and have aspired to paying £1m tax per year. I am still some way off sadly.

I'm not opposed to higher taxes.

I am also pro universal services. If people are paying in to the system, it is going to make them much less resentful if they also benefit from it. That benefits everyone.

I'm also very much opposed to these non-sensical cliff edges that create contrary logic in people's personal decision making.

So e.g. don't get rid of the allowance, it would make more sense to put the tax rate up then, otherwise combined with the removal of other services (childcare etc) you can create a situation where the effective tax rate on those areas is over 100% and that benefits absolutely no one, including the government.

Unfortunately "getting rid of the personal allowance" sounds a lot friendlier than "put the tax rate above 100k to 50%" or whatever alternative would make sense, in spite of the fact the latter would at least remove this cliff edge for workers.

I can't believe that someone would change their working hours before a single vote had been cast.

But this has happened because tax brackets has been frozen......Which happened under a tory government.

THIS ALL HAPPENED UNDER A TORY GOVERNMENT.

I can't stand it when people moan about paying taxes. Ok you can pay for private school and healthcare but unless you fly everywhere by private jet then you need roads right?
I think it's how taxpayers money is spent that counts. If tjere are loads of potholes in roads then it does leave us to wonder why we qre paying taxes.
I do agree that the benefit system needs an overhaul though.

Well, David Cameron urged everyone to vote to remain.

but Corbyn didn’t urge labour supporters to vote remain

the blame lies jointly with:

-the Tory brexit attack dogs for most likely making their support for David Cameron conditional on having a referendum
-Jeremy corbyn for not getting up, leading and appealing to his supporters to vote remain
-the public, many of whom cast their leave vote to stick two fingers up at the sitting prime minister (admitted on telly!)

This triad of donkeys has really fucked us hard!

Even weirder when you realise that this is the only thing the OP has ever posted on mumsnet. Almost seems... fake.

Your current standard of living was created by the tories. They've destroyed this country. Thanks to Liz truss being an idiot my mortgage payments went up by hundreds of pounds for no reason. Go part time now if you want. That's nothing to do with labour. You speak about part time as if it's giving up. It's a valid choice for work life balance.

The key is not to to go chasing after things you can't afford (like private school or a nice house in a nice part of London) because if you're struggling to find £2k a month for nursery, it's unlikely you'll be able to afford private school.

When you say reduce did you mean actually reduce, or increase to the highest level in 70 years but say they are a tax cutting party, like the Tories?

I expect the tax burden to be broadly similar under Labour rather than steadily increased as it has been for the last 14 years.

75% of the costs are staff.

That means the answer is to make some staff redundant and stop all new bursaries.

Great plan!

Sorry for typos.

My heart bleeds.

Why don't you work out what would be better: reduce your hours so you take home under £100k and qualify for free childcare, or earn over £100k and pay it yourself? Either way you're in a great position to do whatever benefits you most.

Can anyone clarify something for me? I'm pretty sure that if you earn more, you take home more, regardless of the rate of tax. So nobody is going to take home less by getting paid more.

If I'm right about that, talking about reducing hours to avoid top rates of tax still means taking home less money. Which is anyone's choice of course but unless you want the free time it's cutting your nose off to spite your face.

(I'm sure we'd all be happier paying taxes if they obviously made the country better, removed the need for private schools, etc.)

@Parttimeplay my goals 20 years ago were similar to yours, but Im heavily motivated by ‘making a difference’ (not being judgemental - we’re all wired differently and this just happens to be my main motivation) so I went to work in the public sector. What I’ve seen over the last 14 years is truly heartbreaking - services being broken down for ideological reasons, people being failed, staff facing real time pay cut after pay cut, leading to burnout and mass resignations.

needless to say I cannot even afford a 3 bed semi in a ‘grimy’ part of London and am raising my family in the equivalent of 1/5 of the space I had growing up.

sometimes I wish I had chosen to work in the private sector and to concentrate on earning well, because then I wouldn’t have to know how bad things really are for the majority, and perhaps I could buy myself out of the systems. Sadly, my experience looking after elderly relatives in the private care/ healthcare systems, and friends’ experiences with private schools makes me think those systems are broken too - perhaps without a robust alternative, the profit motivation of the private sector leads to a race to the bottom?

in any case, I think this lot have had their chance in govt and they have royally effed it all up - the economy, our political standing internationally, living standards, state support, etc etc. I cant wait for something to change.

I completely agree with this.

My biggest gripe is that the biggest asset that most people have is their home and the capital gains they make on it are entirely TAX FREE.

I simply cannot fathom any rational explanation for this at all, especially as yet again it is another policy that benefits the rich more than the poor. But no one will even entertain the idea of changing it because it’s too politically difficult.

This. Lots of them don't pay their teachers any more so the money isn't going there.

No, the Conservative and Unionist Party introduced a policy whereby an increase in annual net pay from £99,999 to £100,001 cost working parents £2k per child.

Confession time - I'm an accountant and I still haven't figured out how to calculate that effective rate of taxation brought in by party who want to punish the middle classes.

Spot on. If it's real, OP has bigger problems. Changing your working hours based on problems caused by this government that you're worried about because labour may win is ineffective life planning.
I've just dropped to 4 days and it was lifestyle and children related, nothing to do with government like most other people who do this!

Agree

In the interests of efficiencies - you may want to generalise this post slightly and create a shortcut to paste it.

It's going to be a loooooong six weeks.

Actually you’ll find many of them have been doing this extensively for the past couple of years due to inflation and not wanting to pass on the full rises to parents… so they’ve taken a lot of hits to pass on around half the rate of increase they’ve seen in their costs.

As for school fees, as a private school parent, as long as schools are given eg 5 years (one parliament) to bring it in, I think it is doable without creating a cliff edge which is difficult for the state and private sectors to manage. It won’t raise as much money as people think anyway as so many more schools are making adjustments to be more tax efficient. Treat them like a business and they’ll act like a business, tough luck taxman!

Good idea @CelesteCunningham that would come in handy!

As opposed to dying in the back of an ambulance stacked up outside A&E under the tories?

Good luck getting this through your employer. I’ve asked for a 3 day week as my mother is dying and I have a 20 month old. I’m not superwoman and really can’t manage full time anymore. it has gone down soooo badly! There wasn’t any discussion on the positives, it was a hard no and all because of the business needs! So I’m now paying a lawyer to see me through an appeal and tribunal.