To happily pay an extra £2000 per year to....

[Fatcish]

• see a GP f2f without a wait of 4 weeks and efficient onward referral as needed to sort the issue
• have my children taught by subject teachers and supported by TAs
• drive my car without hitting numerous potholes and missing road markings
• enable my elderly disabled neighbour to have more care at home (1 hour a week at the moment)
• ensure my son doesn't languish on the CAMHS waiting list for two years getting more and more broken
• pay public sector workers properly so they are not run ragged covering endless vacancies and schools and hospitals are viewed as aspirational and supportive places to work
• support government led, empowered oversight bodies of our water, rivers, trains and buses
• help the MNs on here with heart breaking experiences of seeking support with their SEN children

And on and on...all for £2k a year per FAMILY. I assume I will pay more as a higher earner. FINE. let's make it fair not equal.

I’m bottom 10pc and I’d pay this if it was guaranteed to go where it’s needed and not vanity projects or to their mates.

Eh, what do you think the taxes I pay go towards?

I think the problem is everyone seems deluded over the cost of providing the sort of services we think we want. If we want the services of Scandi countries or Germany then we should expect to pay commensurate tax rates and unfortunately we’re not as productive per person so we’d have to have higher rates. all the current politicians propose is tinkering around the edges. £2k more will barely touch the sides. so whoever gets in it’s just more of the same with UKs continual sliding down the standard of living scale compared to other countries

I’m in Scotland and pay significantly more than £2000 a year in extra income tax. It makes no difference and won’t if the same taxes are applied in England. There are such significant structural issues in the NHS /Education/other public sector services that you’re just pouring money down an open drain.

Agree with this. Things would not improve with increased tax. They’d just continue to spend it on other random stuff. Look at the NHS. The amount of money thrown at the NHS, and all they’ve done is employ more layers of management, who don’t manage the finances well.

No thanks, we pay enough taxes.

Fix the shocking waste first.
Improve productivity.
Ensure working pays - stop the top ups, ensure employers pay fair wages.

You think you are going to get all that for such a small amount of money?

I need to get that quote as my car insurance costs more 😂

Sorry - CAT 🐈 INSURANCE

One can only begin to imagine how many more 'Directors of Lived Experience' and 'Diversity and Inclusion Administrators' the NHS could employ if we all chipped in a couple of grand extra each.

Haven’t those roles been got rid of?

Appreciate the view that those in poverty should pay vastly more tax. Are these coming from the same people who view it as an absolutely awful hardship that middle class families might have to pay little bit more for their precious darlings to go to private school?

They won't be able to do all of that with £2k a year per family

It’s per household I think but not sure 🤔 I’ve seen both “families” and “households” used . I wish they would use more accurate, and frankly more inclusive, language and stick to “households” .

Many households are one person incomes whether that’s because it’s one person living alone or just one person working.

@Scalextrix thank you for this post. As a part time single parent I find these kind of statements so confusing. Presumably my primary school aged DC is not expected to contribute so do they mean households with two adults and two DC? When I think of my family I think my DC, parents and sister with her husband and DC but we live in 3 homes with separate finances. The message is always lost on me as I try to work out to what extent the statement might apply to my household.

I'm in education (20 years a primary teacher). The problem is now that you don't need to have a qualification in your name to be a teacher (England) the whole system is screwed. How are a new government going to claw this back? I'm off in July to retrain as are many, many others.

I think most people would agree OP but The reality is 2k won’t touch the sides and there aren’t enough people paying in. I agree that if the parties properly taxed corporations and didn’t waste so much the uk would be in a better position.

Can you enable voting @Fatcish ?

Let's put it to the people . . .

Firstly, 2k a year (let alone over 5 years) won't even touch the sides of the issues you've listed. Secondly, even if it did, it won't be 2k a year per household, it will be nothing for a large percentage of households and the higher rate tax payers will foot the majority of the bill, just like now. Would you still be happy to pay £10k? I'm not.

Well the £2k figure is wrong anyway, but yes I totally would.

Decent things are worth paying for, as those who fork out for private schooling, private healthcare, business class travel etc know very well.

No point expecting decent services for nothing.That’s what investment means - giving money to something that will pay dividends init!

This is the problem with every election and why I’ve stopped voting.

We get told our public services need more money as if underfunding is the only problem with them. The way they are run is perfect they just need more money. Which I don’t think is true.

The NHS is trying to do healthcare in 2024 based on a funding model devised in the 1950s and was originally insurance based. I’m not suggesting we move to an insurance based system but at least this was a sustainable funding model.

We need to have a grown up conversation about how the NHS is funded. If we want the Rolls Royce of healthcare then that’s fine but we need to pay for it.

A couple of people have mentioned inheritance. The way this is taxed needs to change too.

In my opinion the Australians have a good model for both these things that we should be looking at.

None of this will happen though because these are difficult conversations that don’t get votes for politicians. So we’ll continue to be told that we can have the best of everything but that someone else will pay for it and nothing will change or improve.

But we shouldn't have to because the government has mismanaged our contributions!

And taxes are high in Scandinavian. And people still stuggle.
Scandinavian is not at all the paradise people think It is.

I'm all for taxing to ensure good services but as someone who lives alone this seems unfairly balanced. It's already crazy expensive to live alone.

can I live in your fantasy world please?

“They pay higher taxes” is ALWAYS the objection but Denmark's TOP statutory personal income tax rate is 55.9 percent, Norway's is 38.2 percent, and Sweden's is 52.3 percent. The U.K. is really not far behind this. And if you look at what we pay extra for in the U.K. as a result of failing systems then overall you are taxed more here These are some of the happiest countries in the world precisely because they are welfare states and there is a cost to that. Furthermore, the cost of living in the U.K.since Brexit has made this country MORE expensive than most countries in Europe so there is a hidden tax there.