'Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society'

[Bargepole45]

Having just paid an enormous tax bill, I frankly am fed up with hearing this. There are lots of civilised countries that have a far lower tax burden than the UK. It's just a form of blackmail designed to make contributors believe that there is no other way other than to pay sky high taxes to subsidise people's crap life choices.

Have too many kids and can't afford them? No problem, the state steps in. Have a terrible lifestyle and don't look after your health at all? No problem, the NHS will treat you. Spent all your money with wild abandon and have nothing left to pay for your care when you get old? Don't fret, the state will fund the same care home as someone that has saved all their life.

Don't people understand that these 'safety nets' just facilitate reckless behaviour? We can have a civilised society where people aren't cushioned from all of their bad decision making. I say this as someone from a background where I didn't have much money and I am so fed up with people pretending that poor people don't know that an apple is healthier than a chocolate bar or that it's a good idea to actually attend school. It's insulting and disempowering to keep making excuses for people that simply aren't incentivised to make different, better choices.

My DM gets PIP for mental illness (or more specifically, a psychiatric disorder). She suffers from a condition called Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is what used to be known as Multiple Identity Disorder.

She can’t work, because not to put too fine a point on it, she’s barking. When she’s medicated, she sits in a chair and doesn’t know what year it is, never mind what day of the week it is. She can’t take care of her own needs. She needs daily care from ourselves and carers, who will work out what shopping she needs, do her shopping, housework, laundry, prepare her meals, administer her meds, help her get showered and dressed. She is literally a zombie on the cocktail of heavy anti-psychotic drugs that she takes.

Unmedicated, she actually functions better because she isn’t being chemically coshed. Unfortunately she will also be in the throes of psychosis. Depending on which of her alters (split personalities) she is that day, she can be violent. She’s paranoid and believes people (including us) are trying to kill her.

She can’t go out alone, she always needs a carer. We couldn’t take her on public transport because she’d terrify the passengers with her outbursts. She also has type-2 diabetes as a side effect of her meds. She has extra costs from healthier (more expensive food), chiropodist appointments etc.

I actually cover a huge chunk of her costs myself (even excluding my own time/expenses) because PIP doesn’t nearly cover it.

But what are the expenses?

This is not correct.

Policies vary by country, but broadly it was just deemed a huge administrative burden on the middle classes, meant people had to sell family business and homes, and led to people leaving the country to avoid it. And - didn’t raise that much tax revenue as a % of overall income anyway.

But DO we need a strong private rental market? Amongst other things I do own investment property so I am absolutely not a communist but I think it’s interesting the things in this country we take for granted that ‘must’ be the case. Many many other countries have stringent rental controls and a far less thriving private rental sector and the knock on effect is yes, poorer landlords, but many many people better off.

I just feel if we want to make our country better all options need to be considered and preconceptions like thriving private housing = good should be really examined. And we could look at other countries examples.

BUT in those countries home ownership is lower and house prices are less as a proportion of average salary due to more protection for renters meaning less incentive to buy and it’s less economically attractive to be a landlord.

Something like this would totally upend our economy BUT the outcome could be in 10/15 years time a country which looked a bit more like what we all want - lower tax burden for the majority. Major things like this or other ideas are needed to underpin major changes.

But there’s no political or public will to do anything thats short term painful.

The studies are pretty emphatic that rent controls don't work. We need to look at why rents are so high. I just responded to a poster who was adamant that their landlord must be making a fortune out of them. When you break down the cost of capital and ownership it's clear that they absolutely won't be. Even if they own the house outright with no mortgage then they could still make more money elsewhere so there is an opportunity cost in putting their money into OP'a rented house.

Cost of capital is so often forgotten about but it's at the heart of so many of our issues including servicing our astronomical national debt. Look at the government's twitchiness with the Bonds markets.

In many European countries home ownership is lower because large investors have been encouraged to ‘build to rent’ I.e. build an apartment block and rent it out for a reasonable not extortionate amount. These companies want long term residents to give them a continual passive income with low admin fees. They provide secure tenancy’s. We discourage such investment with talk of rent controls and the renters rights act, and hence have a poor rental market.

No. It was the existence of private landlords full stop. They were a major reason why houses went up four times in less than 2 years. Wages have never risen to match that. They and private property portfolios are why housing has never come back down, and will never be allowed to. It’s the rentier economy that has punished us for being stupid enough to try and work for a living in a country that changed to maximise returns on pre-existing capital.

As if. As if a bit extra on top of rent to pay for a few taxes are going to compete with the very fact of having to pay rent at all. My boomer parents worked less, but they could own because the cost of living was cheaper; because landlording had not taken off and people expected to work for a living, not cream off the mugs who did that.

@Weetabixw

Its quite clear from Nevermind17's post that her mother requires 24 hour care.
I would imagine that uses up the PIP.

I was in the minor injuries unit at the hospital last week. I got talking to a very sweet woman, probably around late 30s. She was cuddling a big teddy, she told me all about her epilepsy, eye condition, she clearly had some cognitive impairment. I imagine her PIP was more than used up by the 2 carers she was with.

If you paid an enormous tax bill it’s because you earned or made an even enormous-er amount of money. Stop moaning greedy.

And as if landlords are all in it out of the goodness of their hearts too.

Landlords are in it to make money. They make money by both owning an asset and having some other working mug paying the rent for them. The rest is the lies we’ve heard ever since buy-to-let became a thing under the traitor Blair. Let them sell up if not. Why don’t they sell up? Why are more people becoming landlords every day??

If one of my children needed 24 hour care - be they under 18 or over - I would expect to provide the majority of that care myself without any payment needed. If I was still working I would expect the government
to to provide daycare during working hours and some respite care. I expect that’s how many parents of disabled children live.

Could you please explain? I'm curios to know. There is still substantial generational wealth there

None of them were comparable. If you want the UK to follow an example, you need to provide an example the UK can follow.

The US isn't a civilised country. A broken leg can easily bankrupt you.

I’ve already listed them:

• Carers
• Taxis
• more expensive food
• Chiropodist.

I also should add that up till 10 years ago, she’d spent the best part of the previous 20 years in a psychiatric unit on a section. The few hundred quid a month she receives is roughly 15% of what it would cost to keep her as an inpatient.

I feel very strongly about insane benefit state here and do agree that whatever some people say, it's not that difficult to get PIP for MH, plenty of internet "advisors".

But what you're saying is so far from reality of truly disabled... there are very real cases of both physical and MH disabilities (ASD anyone? double incontinent, non verbal, violent) which require round clock full time care, so surely their parents/families need financial support, respite, etc and even some luxuries you know, just to make their lives a tiny bit bearable

What you’d expect and what you’d receive are two very different beasts. I’d expect social services to fund my mother’s care. They don’t. Because they know I’ll do the majority of it ourselves because we’re desperate to avoid her being readmitted. You’re just expected to crack on.

I don’t think the state should be providing luxuries for anyone whatsoever. They should provide carers for when the parents are unavailable and respite to give parents a break.

That’s actually hilarious. When care is provided (we are lucky we do have some care) it is unreliable, and at a time that suits the providers, not the family. And with frequent illnesses and appointments- yeah good luck

That’s a failure of the system then and needs to be fixed. We need to look to the state to provide services that meet the needs of recipients, not cash handouts.

But again define ‘making a fortune’.

I’m a landlord myself. I’m a good one, I maintain the property and charge pretty much the mortgage. I pick and choose nice tenants. So I don’t make a big income from it.

But the reality is they are paying the mortgage on an asset i own. In the end i’ll own a property which will be worth twice what I ‘paid’ for it except I didn’t pay, my tenants did.

So I have made a huge amount of wealth from sitting on an asset.

I’m playing the game with the rules available to me. But I am able to see that I am not the victim here. If anything I think it’s kind of crazy I’m allowed to do this as it’s such a steal. Yes I also have to have a job, I can’t live off the income, boohoo poor me. Its a house its not a job. Just because I was rich enough to fund a deposit in the first place.

Thats an amazing standard of care youd expect from the government its way in excess of whats on offer for carers of 18 year old.

BUT it would cost the government infinitely more than the current system. So would you be happy to pay more tax to fund it?

Because it sounds like you’d be happier for the bill for the cost of disability to skyrocket, rather than give disabled people £100 a week to cover the costs. And that’s just spiteful.

No it didn't. Why are you making up stuff?

In what way would it be ‘spiteful’ if the costs of care were being met?

I was talking specifically about a poster's scenario. A landlord could not use the rent they were paying to pay off a repayment mortgage assuming a standard LTV. The rent simply isn't high enough when you factor in current interest rates.

I imagine you bought quite some time ago or you own in a specific area to be in the situation you are in now where tenants are essentially buying the house for you. If you had the same deposit now I suspect you wouldn't be able to recreate the same model at all.