To not be happy about paying this much tax

[Lovingthehamsterwheel]

Name changed to enable objectivity.
I just saw this new tax calculator that shows you how much tax you are paying in total, including all hidden taxes, council tax etc

For a Person on 75k a year, 44 percent of earnings go on tax.

10k of that is spent on welfare.

Am i being unreasonable to think this is absolutely a terrible time to be alive in terms of taxes in the UK. And it is no wonder higher earners are leaving the country.

tax.corgi.global/

You understand everyone pays council tax right? And tax on goods and services? Taking into account all taxes lower earners pay a higher percentage of their income on taxes. What do you do to earn 75k where you don't understand that?

Which also means they are likely to be management, without specialist skills- meaning only English speaking countries would be interested in them- pretty much all of which pay as much tax as we do- the US pays less but also have to pay huge healthcare premiums.

The higher taxes you refer to are at much higher income levels than ours though…so for the vast majority of people that’s not true. None of them tax someone earning a salary as low £55k at a marginal rate of 42% (England, including NI). None of them tax someone on £120k at a marginal rate of 62%. Having spent many years working in Japan I can confirm that on substantial 6 figure salaries I paid a lot less tax - and wasn’t even fluent in Japanese :)

That's mainly because we have lower wages overall, and a smaller proportion of people on higher wages- obviously the tax burden has to fall on lower earners if there are not enough higher earners- you are looking at the tax system through a very narrow and personal lens. Good for you in Japan- you did speak Japanese though- very, very few people ever become fluent.
Plus I didn't say these places had higher taxes-I said they have similar tax levels, which, I notice, you haven't denied.

You don’t have to speak Cantonese or Mandarin in Singapore. My company has moved hundreds of people there and I doubt a tenth can speak any form of Chinese. The main business language is English.

My income is under the income tax threshold. According to that calculator I pay 52% of my income in taxes, including employers NI (I dont work). It's rubbish.

What absolutely nonsense. English is the national language in Singapore! The tax rate is far lower I know people who moved to Japan to work without speaking fluent Japanese and the tax rates are lower. HK would be another example of an Asian country with a far lower tax rate.

Well things have changed then , my brother worked there in the late eighties.

This is objectively bonkers. What new benefits have Labour brought in?

You do pay employers' NI indirectly as it means your wages are lower. That's why wages have been held down and unemployment has risen after the last budget - because employers' NI was hiked.

I'm self employed and have to pay employers' NI out of my invoices - it's a tax on work.

That's why wages have been held down and unemployment has risen after the last budget - because employers' NI was hiked.

For many businesses, especially small businesses it's an excuse to keep wages low. For our company the doubling of the Employment Allowance offset the increase in Employers NI.

I didn't realise I needed to deny anything...I thought it was just an interesting debate and was challenging misconceptions :)

I chose to work in many countries during my career, so I don't really understand those who stay in one country and then moan about it There are plenty of options available, with language being a self imposed barrier in many cases. No language is so difficult to learn that it's not worth trying. It goes without saying that if you want to move to another country you need to learn the language - so that's hardly a surprise

I'm not sure that it's correct that we have a lower proportion of people on higher salaries (relative to the average in each country) than the countries I have mentioned - I'd be interested in your source for that. Income distribution curves don't really show that. For a given standard of living, which is what really matters, tax rates are lower in those countries, and they have more progressives tax systems without the cliff edges present in our system.

I worked in Singapore in the mid nineties and the language used in my work environment was English. Nowadays half of people in Singapore use English as their main language. I learned some Malay as well, but that was more for ordering food and drinks at the hawker stalls. :)

It's not just the headline tax rate. Australia for example has fairly similar taxes but the government subsidises private medical and private school etc (i.e. goods that this target market is interested in) rather than taxing them extra. And there aren't random cliff edges for suddenly losing all nursery fee payments.

e.g. private schools, if the equivalent cost of educating a child in the state sector is £100, the government pays private schools £70, so both the government and the parents pay less. Win/win. In the UK they just spitefully add on extra taxes. When I talk to people leaving the UK it's often this feeling of spite/ungratefulness, or a feeling that they don't get anything back, rather than the pure level of tax paid.

I do actually agree with this. I have no issue paying tax but the cliff edges are shit and it's unfair to not br able to use the things your taxes pay for. Also I do think that people think high earners have more disposable income than they do, compared to those on lower incomes. For example you could be getting universal credit, housing element, childcare costs etc. But people don't generally ADD that on to what they're getting and compare how much people have in total after tax. They compare the gross income of one against the other and the. See the higher earner as super rich. Having said that I'm very much pro higher taxes, higher services. I just think everyone should get those services

I earn about that and I’m pretty sure I don’t pay that much tax. And my tax code is something like 550, so I feel I pay a lot.

I believe its factoring all the other taxes that are, ultimately, paid for by a person as they are factored into either the rate someone is paid or the price of goods and services.. So council tax, VAT, fuel, alcohol, customs duty, stamp duty, employers NI, corporation tax. All of which are not always visible or directly borne by an individual but are ultimately paid by them

You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think that higher taxes will lead to better services for everyone. The horse has well and truly bolted on that. We are now stuck in a situation where certain groups in society cost the state an astronomical amount of money and there are constant complaints that current levels of funding aren't enough and these groups need ever more money. These groups are growing in size all the time and are the metaphorical bottomless pit from a public finance perspective.

So the government is taxing anyone and everything that they can in an attempt to even partially cover this escalating bill. There is no money left to consider basic public services for the average working person such pot holes, libraries etc when hundreds of thousands can be spent on individuals. This is where the frustration arises. Obviously my example is at a local level but the same is true nationally.

Yes, I agree. It's like, if I had a bunch of less well-off friends I'd be happy and pleased to take them out to dinner, my treat. I would not be happy if they all went out to dinner without me but sent me the bill anyway!

Someone should build a calculator which tells you the equivalent salary you'd have given your total net income including benefits, 30h free nursery etc. I can't express how frustrating it is to constantly see sentences like

"yes I get £xxxx a month but half of it is just housing component, it goes straight into the landlord's pocket so it doesn't count"

Does that mean I shouldn't count the part of my salary that goes towards my housing costs? The rest of us pay all these bills out of our salaries.

Some people are so used to being subsidised they have no idea about how difficult it is to self fund everything and be financially responsible for yourself and your family. They don't really notice that many people are taking on far more responsibility, working far more hours and living with a hell of a lot more stress for a higher salary. All they see is the higher salary and they are too quick to assume that this has been earned through luck and therefore should be highly taxed to even things out and make society 'fairer'. They of course have absolutely no intention of taking on the student debt, long commute and insane levels of stress to make things fairer. It is a one way street of entitlement and envy.

Well yes. I agree with all of this. But honestly I think it's not income that should be taxed more heavily really. It's wealth. Landlords don't pay the same tax on their income - that they're not actually even working for - as workers. Pension recipients don't pay NIC - this should be abolished and added onto general taxation so it's payed on all income.

Absolutely agree- whatever government we have will tax employment heavily and unfairly, because they avoid wealth taxes, we will struggle to pay for infrastructure and services if the wealth that has shifted to the very wealthy (especially in Covid) is not shifted back with wealth taxes for multimillionaires who earn more from investments than even our highest earners earn in income.

I fully agree. It's crazy that NIC is only a tax on workers and that pensioners, landlords, investors etc don't pay it, so end up paying less tax (on the same income) than workers. Passive income should be taxed at the same, if not higher, rates than workers.

Until the 80s, we had different rates for different types (classes) of income. We need to revert to that.

We need people working, so we should incentivise it, not tax it higher.

Trouble is that entitlement to the state pension is tied to NI contributions. That isn’t consistent with continuing to levy NI on people once they start claiming said pension. The only way round it that I can see is to make all income liable to NI up to an age limit, ie state pension age.

It's no more inconsistent than the fact you still have to pay NI even if you have enough contributions for the full state pension.