'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.

Can someone explain in-work benefits to me please? What does it mean that companies are “not paying enough” and that wages need to be “topped up”? There’s a NMW in the UK, is there not? Which is around £24k full-time? Are wage top-ups for those working part-time? Are they ever asked to justify why they’re choosing to work part-time?

Yes, but only a third of UC claimants are workers, so it's the minority. The vast majority don't work at all.

Perhaps it was the far lower tax burden in the op that was misread.

You misread this stats - the biggest burden is Welfare (24%)
Only half of this item are pensions, so about 12%, still less than Healthcare.

The rest of welfare payments - UC, child benefits, housing benefits, PIP etc are about 12% as well, but this line item is constantly growing

Fully agree!
And I’ll add: the amount of UC + any other benefit excluding disability should not be equal or higher than full time min wage.
People will earn less but as a result prices will go down.

Can I legitimately call bullshit on all the posters that can't seem to read a post properly? They seem very quick to want to call bullshit on everything I've written. I think they just read what they want to read so they can have the straw man argument they want to have.

Don’t people understand not everyone ended up in a poor financial position from being reckless?

YANBU. So many people are content for OTHERS to pay massive amounts for their use of roads, health, education etc.

No, we pay relatively low tax in the UK. Denmark Belgium and Austria are way higher. Of the major economies only the US is considerably less, and they have no health service.
I do feel like I pay a lot compared to what I earn, so I get where you're coming from, and of course the really wealthy pay accountants to reduce their tax bills. These are the loopholes which need to be closed to stop avoidance and also the wealth tax as proposed by The Green Party is something I am in favour of.
We have been badly managed by the greedy for so long now, which has caused this illusion that the poor are to blame for your problems, a myth convenient to the super-rich who control our media.

No it wouldn't need to be high. Those presently receiving high levels of benefits would see their money decrease. If you want more you would need to work. The name says it all Universal BASIC Income.

Absolutely agree. Lazy, workshy people taking benefits that are meant to be for those who are genuinely in need. I see this every day. It has to stop.

I think you need to quantify this. There will always be people who abuse a system, but, as others have said, rich people abuse the tax system.

In my career as a social worker I saw far more people who were not getting the benefits due to them than people abusing the system.

Of course the majority haven’t paid enough, that’s the point! And very few will have paid enough for their pension, healthcare and education.

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?

Unfortunately what they paid in wasn't enough for what they were promised. Their contributions were set at a time when most people did not live as long, more people smoked and died prematurely of heart disease etc. They have had much longer retirements than were budgeted for, and have required more healthcare than was ever expected.

Yes, because wealth taxes absolutely work in a global economy where countries are literally do all they can to incentivise the rich to live there.

@Peridoteage I don’t understand why people don’t get it.

We know what the state pension is and we know what average salaries are.

Yeh that happens. Very irritating.

'Reported' difficulties.

There's a reason why PIP claimants with actual physical disabilities are in the minority to MH and ND claimants who don't have actual physical disabilities and that's because we created this ridiculous system where MH and ND disabilities were considered as the same as actual physical disabilities.

Which I agree could be a good thing if we're talking about employment and reasonable adjustments to get and keep people in work.

But we're not talking about that.we're talking about literal functional abilities caused by disability.

It is absolutely not the same in terms of additional costs to an individual of their disabilities nor what the state should be paying for.

Plus the people retiring now were basically funding the pensions of the much smaller Silent Generation that died younger and had less expensive healthcare available to them. We now have a top heavy population pyramid with people living longer and in worse health.

Basically the system was devised with the idea that there would always be enough people in the working population to easily fund the pensions of a relatively small number of retired people that would die relatively quickly and inexpensively.

No, we pay relatively low tax in the UK. Denmark Belgium and Austria are way higher. Of the major economies only the US is considerably less, and they have no health service.

You pay less only if you're at the lower end of the earnings.
UK does have the most progressive tax system, let me post it yet again
Britain’s tax system combines the worst of the US and Scandinavia

And this is the essence of the issue - those at the top pay way too much, those at the bottom take too much. Former just aren't sufficient to cover later.
Read the article, it's really interesting.

Oh hello - the Daily Mail and/or Reform are in the room............

But you haven’t said where you think is better @Bargepole45

Every country has a different approach to taxes and I’m not sure where gets it perfect. And some places have lower taxes and do one thing (like say, education) really well but others (like infrastructure) less well.

For my part having travelled all over the world the nicest / cleanest / safest places I’ve travelled where if I got sick I’d be happy I’d have got great care and the schools are great etc is Scandinavian countries. And the taxes there are higher (75% top rate for income over £150k)

It's a shame you fail to grasp the essence of the quote and wasted so much energy on it too.

• *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

@plsdontlookatme

exactly right and one reason we have such a productivity problem.

Yawn! Heaven forbid someone isn't gladly handing over a massive chunk of their money without questioning where it's actually going to. How dare I! I should be delighted to fund everyone else's lifestyle choices

You see you’re wrong. You’re like one of those people calling everyone against transwomen in womens prisons ‘far right’.

The majority of people in the UK are sick of the ever increasing benefits bill and ever increasing tax bill.. 65% of the UK public think lifting the 2 child benefit cap is wrong. step outside your echo chamber. Britain is going down the pan. If the government continue to ignore these issues and shy away from them there giving a free pass to Reform at the next election.