AIBU Income Tax rise.

[H202too]

To be panicking about income tax rise.

Things are tight and to loae even £30-60 a month will be difficult.

I know people are talking about the mansion tax being a no go. But I would prefer this than taxing the workers as per usual.
The tax free rate should be put up. What a mess.

That cohort has had the UK in a stranglehold for far too long and we simply can’t afford to wait for them to die off. We need a politician who will show some leadership and stand up to them and say enough is enough, you’ve bled the country dry already and it stops now, before it’s too late.

I think we can all agree that’s uncalled for.

Here are the pay scales. Main scale is with no extra allowances. To achieve UPS extra hoops have to be jumped through.

Pay scales – England | National Education Union

So that has been remedied, although I agree that the cost for those who have already retired on such a pension is high.

Worse, actually.

Much less of France’s debt is index-linked. Their main issues are labour market rules and public pensions which most sensible people in France do accept will have to be changed, despite the French being more militant than the UK population so the inevitable ruckus it will cause (!!).

In the UK the public are far further behind with accepting that the state pension ponzi scheme has gone far beyond a joke. Every time it’s discussed there’s still this “oh the poor pensioners” nonsense even though means-testing wouldn’t affect anybody remotely poor at all. The “I paid for it!” nonsense when the vast, vast majority of them most certainly didn’t pay anything like what it is costing and all they did was pay the legally required tax so that they wouldn’t go to prison. Many, many paid little or nothing at all. The pretence that it’s not a benefit: the irony that you see the vast majority of comments about welfare and how it should be cut being made by pensioners who are by far the largest recipients and when this is pointed out they say “oh, I didn’t mean cut my welfare!”. The pretence that there was some kind of “promise” or “contract” to pay them when it has always been absolutely clear in law since the NI Act in 1948 that this is welfare and it’s subject to change in eligibility criteria etc depending on affordability like any other welfare payment.

Then the apparent horror that the personal allowance might fall below the state pension threshold when the personal allowance in the UK is double or triple what it is in most countries and they don’t have a right to receive welfare tax free. Or the “it never occurred to us during our working lives that we should save any of our own money to fund our retirements even if we had good jobs. Young people should be doing this though, while also paying for our early retirements, otherwise they are irresponsible! Make them pay our pensions otherwise how will we afford our cruise next year? Just tell them they’ll have to pay for us but won’t get one themselves! (And also thanks for the chunk of cash they’re now paying 5% interest on to buy the house we paid for with peanuts which we’re also using to fund extra holidays. And look at our new car! If only these young people would work harder. So lazy.)”. And on and on. All utter rubbish and they know it and politicians need to call them out. They ran the country and its infrastructure into the ground during the greatest economic boom in recorded history, mismanaged the economy, made no provision for the future at all, and now the piper must be paid.

Nobody is suggesting removing money from the poorest pensioners. But we certainly shouldn’t be paying out £35-40bn per year in welfare to people who are millionaires, and another £40-45bn to people who have annual incomes far exceeding those of the working-aged population. While also exempting them from NI when they are the highest users by far of healthcare and social services.

This cohort need to accept that their children and grandchildren - who have no hope of the same standard of living/ homes/ retirements that they have been able to obtain with the same occupations/ levels of qualification - cannot continue funding extra holidays and luxuries for the wealthy in their cohort far above anything they can afford for themselves while working full time.

The stranglehold that these very loud people have had over our economy and politics cannot continue and is the reason that everything that could generate growth like infrastructure and education is so underfunded. They could have fixed the ponzi scheme much earlier, like they did in Australia, but chose not to do so. The chickens are now home and ready to roost and quite frankly, this nonsense won’t wash anymore and politicians need to stop being scared of them.

Apparently the age of the average Conservative voter is now over 65. Who do they think is going to be voting for them in 15 years’ time? Labour are terrified of them as well, see the WFA debacle. But if you actually look at population data, they are no longer a majority. If the effect that this stranglehold was having on the economy and everyone else’s living standards was explained clearly to the rest of the electorate then I am pretty sure they’d agree that impoverishing 85% of the population (and all future generations) to please 15% of people who mostly do not need to be absorbing 50% of public spending and rising is not reasonable or sustainable. As would anybody of that generation themselves who is a remotely reasonable human being.

The triple lock was only meant to be a temporary measure because if you leave it in place at some point down the line it’s going to cost the entire UK budget. No money for anything but the state pension. So many people don’t understand that you have to scrap it some point and the sooner the better before too much damage is done.

Then public sector pensions need to be addressed.

We already had tax rises in Scotland as income tax is devolved and no I have seen zero improvements. I’d actually be happy with it if we actually saw an improvement in NHS Scotland or better public services but we don’t

If they reduce public sector pensions they will need to i case wages. The pension is part of the benefits package as the average civil servants isn’t paid very much. They could go to the private sector and earn a lot more.

The really depressing thing is that they have a huge majority, but a shallow one so are well aware that the likelihood of election again next time or, even if they achieved it, re-election with a similar large majority is slim to none.

Therefore, this is the time to do the right thing, take the truly reforming steps to fix things and at least make a legacy that you can be proud of when you are old. Take the unpopular but necessary choices because you actually can do this. They’re going to break manifesto pledges whatever they do because the pledges were impossible to keep, so they might as well do something decent for the country and actually take measures that will improve things.

Yet they steadfastly - so far - have refused to do this. I actually think their refusal to be brave and do so has made it far less likely they’ll be re-elected for a long time. Really stupid behaviour.

If there was ever a time to be brave and announce widespread sweeping changes and a complete change to the economic model, this is the moment. The public WANT change, that’s what they were elected to do. The economic case is clear. Tinkering and taxing us further into a doom loop will obviously make things far worse than doing nothing. Surely anybody who’d been hankering after such a position of power would grasp this moment to actually do something meaningful that will set in motion long-term changes for which - even if they remain unpopular in the short term, they would anyway! - they in a decade or so would be hailed as a visionary who saved us.

But they are so short-sighted that even though politicians are by definition glory hunters, they have not even spotted that the one way out of political checkmates in the present is to accept that the game for the present is lost but they could have an immense legacy for the future.

Perhaps short-sighted is too generous: completely blind might be more accurate. Not sure even Specsavers’ best could help in this case.

Exactly. It’s unfathomable that people don’t understand that by definition it means an exponential increase in cost as long as it remains in place and therefore it is mathematically impossible for it to remain in place indefinitely because it will end up costing more than the entire GDP, let alone tax revenue. Eventually it would be more than the GDP of the entire world. 😆

Right, but look at Reeves’s history - it doesn’t look good.

She has the air of someone who randomly called a phone-in on the radio, and won the prize of becoming chancellor.

She lacks the core competence, and is deceitful.

Yes.

Having been incompetent, but then lacking the integrity to hold up your hands and say “mea culpa” and do the right thing is the worst of both worlds.

Shout it from the rooftops!

It needs to be said over and over and over again.

I also find it utterly shocking that the older generation are prepared to do this to their children and grandchildren, meanwhile disparaging them for allegedly “not working hard enough”. It really is quite shocking.

Yep, they really struggle enough to recruit to roles in my team at work, because they can’t compete with the salaries that are offered in the private sector. We sometimes have to go out to advert multiple times, often with few to any candidates.

Agree - the welfare bill is huge and unsustainable - we need to get more people working and contributing tax.

It seems that the top 10% and including the top 1% of uk workers contribute 90% of the total tax contributions - the rest contribute 10%. That's the problem - with out those high earners we are completely screwed! So I don't think we need to tax these people more and Im not one of them, by the way, but can see the brain drain coming If these massive tax payers start to relocate abroad which many are saying is already happening.

@222days I have no idea who to vote for anymore & feel no party has represented me for some time. I'm not going to vote Reform though. Why put us back even further.

The brain drain is happening already. Too many people hate wealth and job creators in this country. It really is a race to the bottom.

I think people don’t realise that civil sevabys make less than the private sector and that’s why they have a good or soon. It’s similar to upping your pension contributions. My relative who is a civil servant for never get half the benefits I get in the private sector. Good holiday allowance and a good pension and that’s about it.

@222daysI don’t think they know what that should be and for our sakes they probably should tinker rather than endanger

@222days what would be your definition of a wealthy pensioner ?

In relation to supermarkets, profit figures are meaningless without knowing the turnover. UK supermarket margins were between about 1.5% and 3% last time I checked. There will probably be some accounting jiggery pokery in there to keep it low, but it’s not a high margin business and relies on volume.

This is a pet peeve of mine! I work in pharma and so many people grumble that the sector is too profitable and we’re mugging the NHS etc. Not a scooby about the (huge) turnover relative to profit or the number of drugs that are researched and developed at significant cost, but cannot be launched.

One of the problems with means testing is that the base level, after which these benefits are cut, rarely seems to be set at a realistic level or take personal circumstances into consideration.

An example of the failure to take circumstances into consideration is unemployment benefit, this is the same for everyone then other benefits are added on top depending on eligibility. But the eligibility is very black & white e.g. rented home or not. If you rent, your rent is covered up to a reasonable amount, but if you own your mortgaged home you get no assistance with that at all - I'm not talking about anything towards the capital, but assistance towards the interest alone would seem to be fair to me especially as that is often less than any housing benefit would be to renters.

Take 3 different people, all the same age. One still lives with their parents, their outgoings are whatever they agree to pay towards their keep (often nothing). Person 2 lives in rented accommodation, they get their rent paid (within reasonable limits) and need to use their JSA to pay council tax (a percentage only, but still some), energy bills & food. Person 3 has their own mortgaged property. Their JSA needs to cover the mortgage (even if only the interest), household bills like energy, insurance etc, and food. All 3 receive the same amount in benefits.

Person one has plenty of personal money, person 2 is just about surviving, person 3 is getting hundreds of pounds deeper into debt every month they are unemployed.

Another problem with means testing is the lack of "joined up" government, especially when it comes to IT systems, sometimes even within the same department. A classic example of this was when I left a job and was claiming JSA. Tax statement arrived, they had down that I was no longer working for my previous employer and had been claiming for a while, however nothing had linked the additional notional income of me having had a company car to the job I had been in. So they were trying to tax me on the notional benefits of a company car while unemployed and in receipt of JSA. Easily sorted by a phone call, but a real "Duh" moment for the person on the other end of the phone when it was pointed out.

That gem came from 30p Lee!

in many EU countries your out of work pay after redundancy reflects what you earned when you had the job. Work for 5 years at £4k a month, get £2k a month in out of work benefits for the first year of unemployment. It’s a much fairer system. Redundancy is bad but not catastrophic. It encourages working mentality. Yes the taxes are higher to pay for it, but it shows much more respect for the taxes paid by the workers, rather than just doling out endless money to people who never work.