Anyone else lost a bit of ambition now they’ve been taxed to the brink?

[Peasontoastt]

I used to be extremely ambitious and was really eager to reach some sort of financial security. As a consequence, I’m in what’s considered a highly paid career, I work hard and it took me many years to train.

Just as I paid off my student loan (which took many years), I then had a baby and returned to work to be stuck with the childcare dilemma. I struggled through that phase and have come out the other side but being taxed so much, no child benefit, still paying for nursery even though dd has ‘free’ hours now. It’s likely that savings are going to be bashed next, so what’s the point in even putting anything aside when there’s likely going to be a 4K cap on ISAs.

I used to feel so ambitious and of course I know money isn’t everything, not by a long shot. But having worked my way up the ladder and with huge responsibilities only to feel penalised financially for doing so…what is the point? Yes I have more financial security than someone claiming benefits but equally, I am not being flippant when I say a few years of resting and being at home and being frugal is starting to seem so much more attractive. Has anyone else started feeling this way? I feel taken the piss out of by every financial angle!

No Rach, You got that very wrong. Is that we you keep trying to beat us down?

That's what fourteen years of the Tories will do to you

Every, every time.

I do find it a strange concept to call paying higher tax a ‘privilege.’

Isn’t privilege something you have by virtue of luck? Of course you could argue that you’ve had good opportunities so therefore a good job and then a good salary which has come from initial privilege…but where does that end?

Personally I think working and trying to improve yourself should be celebrated. Yes there needs to be tax and yes there are people less fortunate who may never have had such opportunity to even reach the salaries we are talking about here…but it doesn’t make it morally right or even sensible to wipe out any sense or recognition of the hard work of higher earners. It doesn’t make it less hard to be earning that sort of money because others can’t. I’m still juggling my life for little reward and yes I would be worse off financially if I gave it all up but I would have a life where I had free childcare, CB, contributions to my bills and so on.

I posted earlier but I left London almost 6 years ago to live in Switzerland. At the time I earned 60k and lived with my OH who earned around 150k. We felt comfortable, owned a 1 bed flat. But having moved to Switzerland you see another side, high salary, low tax, brilliant quality of life - everything works. I looked at coming back, but to do the job I did when I left, the salary in London is now 55-60k - salaries are stagnant but cost of living has rocketed. When we left London a 2 bed flat was 2k per month to rent, now a 1 bed flat is 2400 per month, and all bills are so much more expensive than what they used to be. I'm not surprised everyone is fed up. Every time I come home to visit I can feel the atmosphere has changed, people are miserable, fed up.

I’m still juggling my life for little reward and yes I would be worse off financially if I gave it all up but I would have a life where I had free childcare, CB, contributions to my bills and so on

How would that work? What would you claim? Have you costed this?

I agree it’s an odd way to frame it.

Indirect taxes were far lower. No student loan repayments. Cheaper housing. And 40 years ago was 1985 when the highest rate of income tax was 60% not 85%!

Today the highest rate of income tax is 45% so not really that much lower. Not to mention that we now have "cliff edges" where the marginal tax can be 60%, i.e. on earnings between £100k and £125k, which of course is the same as the 60% back 40 years ago!!

Yeah and the 12 years of Labour before them was so much better - not!!

They didn't fuck the economy though.

The global financial crisis did that.

Yes, but labour aren't looking any better.
As a school governor I can see that over the past year funding has gone down in real terms, they are much worse off than when Tories were in. I knew it would take a while for things to get better, but no one within our school anticipated things would get worse. They raised teacher pay without giving extra funding, so our school had to lose several TA's, and they have cut SEN funding in real terms. The experience of my older child through the same infant school was vastly better than my youngest who is now year 1. Oldest had 2 TA's in her class in year 2 and a highly experienced teacher. Youngest is going into year 2 with no class TA'S and a newly qualified teacher as the school is having to replace experienced teachers with less experienced to make ends meet.

This labour seems to be all smoke and mirrors - such as the ludicrous private school VAT plan is not actually going to raise any money, at best it will be cost neutral, even at the labour figures of what they hope it will raise it would provide an extra £5 per year per state school child. Wow - what a difference that will make!!!

I don’t come from privilege. Like many in my position, I’d imagine.

I come from a council estate in the NE, and was state educated in a run down, low quality secondary school.

Which I think is maybe why I can acknowledge I’m in a position of financial privilege now, because I’ve had and seen people with far less.

The “hard work argument” doesn’t work for me either. My mum works 12hr shifts in a factory, she’s 63, she works hard for far less. Some of my staff are on significantly lower salaries and receive support with childcare. I get paid double what some of them do - they work hard and receive less for their efforts.

Earning £50k+ isn’t “little reward,” is it. It’s a good reward, a better reward than others get.

That’s like me suggesting I walk away from my (reasonably) high salary, and claim benefits instead so I can sit on the sofa. Ludicrous idea, I’d be bored within a week and I’m used to the lifestyle I have.

Of course I’ve worked hard, but plenty of people work equally as hard and don’t get the life we have. Sometimes it’s just about being grateful for what you do have.

Does being sarcastic and putting me down make you feel better?

Quite a few are seeing what Labour do and it’s only a year in.

This phrase may well be their’s by the next GE.

"Taxed to the brink" my arse. The UK tax burden is around the OECD average,¹ and well below levels in the EU14 let alone Scandinavia.²

Yes, if you're comparing tax levels with the US you can feel a bit hard done by, but the average family over there had to stump up $25,572 in health insurance premiums in 2024, plus substantial copays etc. if anyone actually needed treatment.³ That can hardly be ignored!

It certainly sounds like you're feeling a bit unmotivated in terms of your career right now, but I don't think you can assume that's because of taxation.

¹ https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-issues/global-tax-revenues/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.pdf
² https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally
³ https://brighttax.com/blog/taxes-in-uk-vs-us/

my poorest friends work multiple jobs. They work bloody hard. My job is hard as my brain has to constantly critically appraise information and make decisions but is different stress to running multiple jobs and still not covering bills.

Nothing compared to the capacity of the low achievers and the work shy to feel entitled to ever more of someone else’s earnings!

To the OP - I’m sort of in the same boat. I’m considering going part time because the amount of a decent pay rise I’ll actually keep is so low that I think an extra day off a week would be more valuable to my life overall. I did a similar thing when I was in that ridiculous tax trap just above £100k. It’s not something I’m particularly angry about or anything - just a rational assessment of what’s best for my family and me holistically.

I couldn’t last 5mins in the position others have to live in every day.

Some of the lowest earners in the country keeps our shelves stacked, our elderly people cared for, and are support staff for our kids. We could do with being more grateful for that.

I genuinely believe anyone suggesting they walk away from salaries of over £50k, over £100k in some cases, are having a laugh. I genuinely do not know how anyone in this country survives on NMW, and I’m aware enough of my privilege to have no desire to find out.

I think it's churlish to complain publicly, when I am aware of the low levels of salary across the country. We do live in an increasingly poor country, and that sucks for everyone. It is easy to point at high earners as being precious, but it is a worrying thing for a country when even the higher earners are struggling in my opinion.

On a personal level, it is true that tax levels have made salary increases negligible for me - and I now have a similar net income to that I did 7 years ago, but max my pensions, work 4 days and have 8 weeks off a year.

I don't mind paying tax, I believe in democratic socialism. But I am not altruistic enough to work that extra time for a minor increase in money

We also remember a decade of Gordon Brown screwing things up!

These are mostly in former mining, shipyard industrial areas

DH was reminiscing recently about how the steel foundry his dad worked in used to run a family day every year - the expectation was that your kids would follow you into the job, which of course didn't happen. DH left the area and got a professional job instead but I bet a heck of a lot of those kids didn't, and we're not THAT old...

When I was growing my career the basic rate of tax was 33 % and VAT was higher than it is now.

When you say you ‘moved offshore’ do you mean you live on a boat in international waters?

probably not, what you mean is you are a migrant worker / immigrant in another country, benefiting from its healthcare system (sounds like it’s privatised but you can afford it) and tax benefits (mainly that they don't insist on much tax as instead of public welfare, everything is private).

let’s stop dressing it up when its westerners (mostly white) moving to other countries.

Because I highly doubt everyone in that country is on a great salary and paying comfortably private births. Most likely there is a huge gap between the wealthy (probably mostly foreign) people and the poor (locals) with not much in between.

Those low earners doing jobs that other people don't want to do are the low achievers some posters are sneering at.

When I was growing my career the basic rate of tax was 33 % and VAT was higher than it is now.

were wages growing then and what were house prices like?

They didn't fuck the economy though.

The global financial crisis did that.

Low interest rates went onto long and austerity and wasn't a good thing. O