'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.

But surely the majority of those elderly people have paid their taxes and national insurance over their working lives, so why shouldn’t they receive what they were promised?

I hope to god the state pension is still going in 20 years because I’ll have paid 50 years worth of those contributions and I bloody well want what I’ve been paying for.

I agree to some extent. For some reason, in the UK, there seems to be a massive sense of entitlement around benefits that you just don’t see in other countries. There are a lot of people who seem to think that everyone else owes them a living, despite the fact that they contribute fuck all to society.

Yet that's exactly what's happening. Lots of people are "CHOOSING" not to work or to work part time so as not to pay income tax/NIC. That's contributing to the every increased public borrowing (now three TRILLION and still growing), causing the UK to spend more on debt interest than on education. We need to revolutionise the tax/nic system to remove ALL the disincentives, i.e. ALL the cliff edges, scrap NIC and increase income tax, scrap the tax free personal allowance and re-introduce a very low starting tax rate such as 10% on the first £12.5k of income.

At the moment our "tax graph" is more like a mountain range with stupid peaks and troughs whereas it should be a gently upward sloping graph with taxes rising smoothly as income rises.

I agree. Its bonkers.

I understand on one level you have more money than me and therefore you are still better off than me. But I dont understand why people dont see that its not motivating to earn money you dont get to keep 'for the greater good' especially when you see the end result is isnt functioning well. We all need to chip in for a civilised society and we all need to support those unable to support themselves, but its not motivating enough on its own for most people. . You need to feel a benefit for yourself too and the system needs to recognise that to work well.

Giving over half your earnings for a specific band of earnings is damaging.

I know there are ways round it with pension contributions but whats the point of a tax everyone avoids.

You literally said in your OP that there are lies of civilised countries which have fairer tax systems than the UK.

So Mumsnet applied Hitchens' razor: that which is stated without evidence may be dismissed without evidence. Until you present evidence, we can legitimately call bullshit on your OP.

You've been paying tax and NIC but it's never been a "savings scheme" towards your state pension. Your taxes/NIC have been paying for a whole raft of state costs, from the NHS to policing to schools to social services to prisons and benefit claimants. Unless you're a relatively high earner, your taxes won't have covered the costs of all the services you've benefitted from over your lifetime.

Here’s an interesting infographic - the biggest burden on tax payers is actually pensions. Last I checked, becoming elderly wasn’t a lifestyle choice or ‘reckless behaviour’: wheredoesitallgo.org

The problem is that the mandate of universal healthcare free at point of use has drifted far from its original purpose.

It wasn’t designed to support very elderly people with multiple ongoing co-morbidities, for 10+ years of poor health.

100% support PIP reform.

Should be means tested for a start and based on what is was supposed to be, additional costs of having a functional disability.

It's become a compensation scheme for having some kind of disability under the equality act and it wasn't designed for that and shouldn't be.

Or provide millions with ongoing interventions like statins, HRT and WLI.

Some of the main issues with the UK system are quite nonpartisan (i.e. it doesn't serve either side well to acknowledge them):

• wealth is highly concentrated in the pension-aged population, a large group in receipt of a triple-locked, non-means-tested benefit. Whilst the real value of salaries and working-age benefits has fallen, pensions are protected.

• the income tax burden is borne disproportionately by high earners. Depending on your beliefs this isn't morally undesirable, but it does result in compensatory behaviours already discussed above such as working and earning less rather than falling into a "tax trap".

It will never happen because it doesn't make sense. Where does the money come from?

I'd go further and say that the "extras" required by disabled people should be provided directly free of charge. I.e. provide the wheelchair or car, provide the home improvements to be disability accessible, provide free bus/taxis as required, special foods etc etc etc. We shouldn't be handing out disability money that "may" or may not be spent on the additional costs of the disability, may or may not be required. People with disabilities will have VERY different needs so it's a bit bonkers to give them all the same level of benefits when their needs (and costs of those needs) will be very different.

Disagree with this - the assessment process for PIP isn't about having a diagnosis of anything. It's assessed based on tangible difficulties in completing specific daily living tasks

Means testing in itself is damaging though and needs to be used sparingly.

People don’t mind paying high taxes if they get something back. In means testing anything you are giving to perhaps those who have chosen not to work or not to save, and taking away from those who have worked and have saved to do so, disincentivising behaviour that you want to encourage. See the childcare hours / £100k threshold, and all those affected stuffing money in pensions or dropping their hours, both of which actions harm the tax take.

I agree. We should support those with severe disability - but some of the reasons people are getting it don’t really call for more money IMO.

I have often seen posters here say that you shouldn’t be any worse off as a result of any disability, and so the money tops this up. Ditto on things like motability.

I’m not sure that’s the purpose.

Around 4 million people claim PIP - and 85% aren’t in work. That is a number that is growing - 1,000 new claimants a day. It’s unsustainable, someone needs to work out what exactly is going wrong.

The worst outcome of course is the whole system collapses under the weight - which will have serious consequences for those truly in need.

Quote the part of my OP where I say that there are countries with a fairer tax system. For someone that seems so keen on evidence you should find this easy. Unless of course I never actually wrote that.

Fairness is fundamentally subjective anyway and therefore impossible to prove or evidence. Hitchen's theory was never meant to apply to opinion on subjective matters.

Yes. Best answer is to raise the qualifying threshold.

I keep saying this. Two major flaws with UBI.

Firstly, the cost will be ruinous - paying literally everyone a huge sum of money every year has to come from somewhere. So inevitably taxes will have to rise on those who are working - a big disincentive to work. Almost certainly that means scrapping the tax free personal allowance and raising tax rates. Not many people are going to give up their free time and work if they have to pay something like 50% of every pound they earn back in tax!

Secondly, it won't be a fixed rate for all. Some people will need more, i.e. those having to rent properties still need "top ups" to pay their rent. Disabled still need "top ups" to cover their additional living costs. There'd probably also need to be "top ups" for those with lots of children. So we won't end up with an equal amount for everyone which is the basic pillar of the idea. If it was set at say £15k, there's no way a large family of say 5 children, one with a disability, could live on it! It would have to be a lot more, say £30k, but it's utter madness to pay £30k to everyone, even single people living at home and would bankrupt the country!

Remember that Universal Credit is an umbrella benefit with lots of different components, including what used to be ESA - the old out of work sickness benefit, for which you really do have to be quite measurably unwell to qualify. "Being on Universal Credit" could mean anything from receiving £4 a month in Council Tax support whilst working a 40 hour week, or being on what used to be called Jobseekers, or being on full out of work disability benefits. It doesn't make sense to generalise or to panic about what percentage of claimiants are or aren't in work - it's such a huge and varied group. UC exists in part to supplement the unliveable wages paid by employers - even full-time workers in my area can qualify for HB if theyre in private rentals because costs are so high relative to wages.

Such a sad story, if you add a soundtrack it will sell well at Labour Conference.
Whatever you say it comes back to people being feckless. It probably starts with not being good parents, not inspiring their children to work at school. Then worst of all 'Liberal' 'do gooders' making excuses for their failures and low standards.

"People with disabilities will have VERY different needs so it's a bit bonkers to give them all the same level of benefits when their needs (and costs of those needs) will be very different."

Very different needs means that it makes more sense to provide monetary benefits than have an expensive system where others with little knowledge have to try to work out what each individual needs to be provided with.

Isn't the point it would be for everyone and there would be no extras such as housing. Thus still encouraging people to work.

No, best answer is to scrap the cliff edge thresholds completely and introduce a gently sloping upward graph of tax rates according to income. No reason at all why we can't have multiple tax rates rather than just 3- everything is now computerised, so we don't need a simple 20/40 system anymore. It needs to be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, for income tax, scrap NIC, and the 50% limit encompassing everything, so also includes student loan repayments. No one should lose more than 50% of every extra pound they work for. Likewise, at the bottom end, benefit loss should never be more than 50% too, so someone on UC "loses" a maximum of 50p for every £1 they work for - including ALL benefits, so to encompass loss of other benefits such as free prescriptions, rent, council tax relief, etc etc. Once you lose over 50% of the "extra" whether you earn £15k per year or £150k per year, the disincentives and behavioural aspects kick in. The 50% needs to be a hard red line at ALL income levels, high and low.

Then UBI would have to be stupidly high to cover housing, extra children, disabilities, etc., which it can't be.