To Stop Generating Taxable Income?

[GabrielsOboe]

Quite simply, I am done with being taxed to
death, whilst getting little or nothing in return from
the state.

The big question though is where is the money going? Certainly on interest payments. People moan about underfunding of services but we have effectively been living on debt for decades. We can't afford the welfare state we have now that everyone moans about, let alone the one that people feel entitled to for no other reason than they would like it to be so.

Also we have a lot of very expensive issues we need to solve. Migration is one, but the spiralling welfare bill is another as well as SEN costs. For example, how many £100k a year SEN school placements can any indebted and overstretched state afford whilst delivering a decent service to all children? It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out that it would require an awful lot of average tax payers to fund one placement and nothing else. Is this sustainable and realistic considering the mess we are all in? Difficult questions like this need to be asked rather than simply hoping we can tax our way out of it all.

But most of what the taxed income will finally be spent on will include taxes and or duties. Taking us back above 50% going to the government.

Anyway taxes are high and I don't think OP is unreasonable to feel they are poor value

People moan about underfunding of services but we have effectively been living on debt for decades

And it was cheaper debt. The can was kicked down the road and now we run out of road.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned Defence. No one wants to increase spending in this area but we have to consider the world in which we live. The one thing I agree with Trump is that Europe needs to step up on defence spending. We have an aggressive Russia…. But that money also needs to come from somewhere.

All money needs to come from somewhere. I think this should be made clear to people. So when they argue for example to remove the two child benefit cap then they should be clear about what is being cut and which group specifically will be impacted. Pensioners, the disabled? These are the big hitters welfare wise so probably where cuts will have to come from realistically.

I don’t ever see an nhs gp as that’s practically impossible at my local surgery. I have to see a private gp for referral. Pisses me off when we pay for public services.

Even if you think you personally don't use any public services or benefits (spoiler you probably do) there is a libertarian argument for funding these things. Benefits and public services are a price you, a rich person, pay to live in a safe and fairly decent. Or environment. Or do you want to live in the kind of country where everything outside your expensively paid for compound is unsafe and unsanitry - where people and animals are left to die in the street, where destitute beg, harrass and scam you at every turn?

I think it is a postcode lottery with GPs. I can get a same day appointment with my GP if I ring at 8am.

I think it’s a privilege to be a high earner and therefore pay a lot of tax.

Do you have a spouse or partner @GabrielsOboe ? What is he/she going to do, retire with you? Presumably your kids are all grown up, if you have them.

That would be brilliant.

Of course - lots of people do. Not sure why you thought I was saying otherwise?

Do you think that is good that peoples rents may go up

So you’re just retiring? I don’t understand your drama. You’re exceptionally lucky to be rich enough to be able to retire but still afford BUPA. Once dh retires we will lose our private healthcare at the time we’ll need it most. What sympathy are you expecting? 🙄

Sorry I am not sure either…my bad.

Having been on many webinars about tax policy what everyone agrees is that taxes on landlords are usually passed on to tenants which restricts the ability for tenants to save to buy a property and keeps them trapped renting. Those that buy are much more likely to have a bank of mum and dad to help. It’s shit.

But should we give landlords a tax break in the hope that they don’t pass on costs to tenants? I don’t think that’s right either.

All of this antagonism about tax is another consequence of high house prices. If we weren’t penniless after housing costs then a tax increase with be no big thing. But after a rent of 50% of earnings and then all the other costs we incur no one can afford to pay enough tax to have good public services. We desperately need to build more houses and reduce migration that is economically inefficient.

Asylum seekers are not put up in 4 star hotels. Stop posting absolute rubbish

Well they are, but the star system is nonsense. You can get an extra star if you have xyz facilities regardless of whether the holy is nice or not. A lot of the plushies furnishings many imagine at these hotels will have been stripped prior to moving the immigrants in. These places are not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination.

no it won’t. That’s the marginal rate.

Yes, the marginal rate between £100-125k is 60% 62% inc national insurance.

Then it goes down to 45%.

Does that make sense? If yes - why?

It would be a privilege if high earners were chosen through some kind of lottery system and hours and responsibility wasn't almost always directly correlated with earnings.

I have done all kinds of jobs in my life and most lower paid jobs have less responsibility and expectations. I did the work that was expected of me, sometimes dealt with some difficult people and situations and clocked off at the right time. I have also had more senior, highly paid jobs where the buck stopped with me, I was expected to work evenings, weekends for free and had the stress of managing people and huge amounts of money. Expectations were through the roof and I was paid accordingly. I also had to get into a lot of debt to get the qualifications needed for the higher paid job and move many miles away from where I would ideally live to pursue the opportunity.

For someone to then act as if all this sacrifice and striving is a privilege and somehow based on luck is ridiculous. We need to encourage people to push themselves, upskill and take risks to grow the economy. People aren't stupid though and won't do this for the privilege of losing any extra reward through taxation. We are in a precarious situation where everyone needs economic growth. This will come from entrepreneurs and those willing to really put themselves out to achieve something. We are at real risk of alienating these people through taxation and talk of privilege rather than achievement.

That possibility is better than the existing, definite system of having tax policy disproportionately focused on labour, yes.

We simply cannot afford to give preferential treatment to non-work income in a society with our demographics. I would prefer to get rid of NI entirely and roll it up with income tax, but this would be a start. The need for housing would be better tackled by building more than it is by privileging capital over labour in the vague hope that landlords will behave like we want them to.

I think this is a cart before the horse idea yet again.

If (big if!) any government is capable of actually building more houses and somehow a large proportion of these houses entered the private rental market at an affordable rental price then we could consider taxing landlords in an effort to even up earned Vs unearned income as a point of principle. However, we currently exist in a reality where landlords are already leaving the private rental market in droves, there is already a massive shortage in the sector and any taxes or additional costs are being passed on to tenants often out of necessity. House building completion numbers look terrible, planning applications for new houses are down and it just doesn't look particularly realistic that all this new housing is going to actually be built.

In this climate, it is madness to target landlords yet again with effectively more taxation. Governments should use the taxation system to incentivised what we want (more responsible landlords offering quality housing at a reasonable price) and disincentivising what we don't want (good landlords leaving the sector and decreasing supply further).

This would perhaps be a reasonable argument in a society that didnt have our dependency ratios. You haven't even considered that part of our reality at all, speaking of realism. The private rental sector is only one aspect of the picture.

Are you truly saying you think it's fine and indeed realistic to have a disproportionate share of the tax burden fall on people who are working, with preferential rates for those over a certain age and whose income is derived from asset ownership? And if so, since people working in jobs are liable to become a smaller proportion of the population over time (due to population pyramid) is there a point when you'd accept that needed to change?

Agree. DH been made redundant from 6 fig salary. He is now looking for jobs around 45K. Never claimed anything benefit wise Inc child benefit in our lives, used private healthcare + although used state primary our DD is now in independent secondary school, always paid all taxes owing, for what? To be blamed for all of society's problems. Well fuck it, why should he half kill himself just to face yet more tax.
So he's out, cut back all charity donations (previously 10% of gross salary), child will go to the best state 6th form in the county, stopped private healthcare just at the moment we will start costing NHS money (late 40s) and we will just sit on any money we've got instead of contributing to the economy.

We aren't the only ones doing this either.