To be sick of politicians using 'fairness' as justification for tax rises?

[Itchthescratch]

Fairness is completely subjective and I notice that this is often shorthand for giving more money to those that contribute the least.

Of course there will always be those that can't contribute much due to factors outside of their control, but we are kidding ourselves if we pretend that there aren't already lots of people that are scraping by doing the bare minimum (sometimes even less) and making completely irresponsible decisions knowing the state will ultimately insulate them from the consequences.

I personally know people that have had lots of children that they can't afford and can't parent properly simply because they wanted to. They are now on an incredible amount of money as the two child cap has been lifted. I know people that have stopped working because they weren't much better off than being on benefits and they couldn't be bothered with the hassle. I know young people that are already planning to stay on disability benefits their whole lives for mental health issues as they want to stay home and game.

Is it really 'fair' to charge the rest of us more to subsidise all of this?

I haven't made any all or nothing suggestions though. There'd be no point.

Waitresses absolutely work harder than I do. As do bin men, nurses, retail workers, anyone with a manual role.

I work 45hrs a week term time, and 20hrs a week in the holidays. I sit on my arse telling people what to do all day (essentially), and have the benefit of WFH and flexibility that means I use breakfast club and that is it in terms of childcare.

I don’t have to put time out in for meetings for my son, for health appointments for any of us, and if my kid is off sick, so am I - no questions asked.

Yes, I answer the occasional out of hours email, and I’ll make probably one check in phone call whilst on my summer holiday. But considering the relatively easy gig I actually have, that’s hardly a hardship.

I accept that getting to this point in my career involved a lot of long days and unsociable working, but I absolutely do not work harder than any one of the jobs I listed, amongst others, and I get paid better than all of them.

If you’re paying corporation tax and employing people then clearly you are profitable, and not crippled, so my comment doesn’t apply to you. Your income from the business puts you in the higher tax bracket, so clearly doing very well and not crippled by taxation.

I didn't answer because I don't disagree for some expensive or severe disabilities. Others I would question more but that's a topic for another thread and I don't want to get into what is and isn't a disability, the assessment process etc.

To be honest the discussion was more about the two child cap and someone suggesting that benefits were still capped by the benefits cap. I was simply pointing out that this isn't true for the majority of people.

"That wasnt what was said"

Then you go on to repeat the comment you apparently didnt say, and confirm you said it.

Im surprised you're trying to claim you cant see how distasteful that comment was in this context.

That’s amusing since I’m not on MN all day and night 🤨

The difficulty is that when you “just say something” on a thread that is about the welfare bill, it is loaded - whether that’s intentional or not.

You may not have particularly strong views on disability benefit, and they may not be relevant to the discussion you’re treating to have, but as the thread is about taxation and benefits, it is relevant.

Mentioning disability as part of a wider conversation on benefits does imply that you’re involving them in the cost based discussion.

Well said

I'm not saying it is easy.

I'm saying it is disingenuous to draw a false comparison between household finances and a national economy - I see you are making that false comparison again now!

I'm currently the highest paid person in my company but there have been many times when I've been the lowest (or even not paid myself at all). I work 60+ hours a week and the only holiday I've had this year was a week off in April (and even then I had my laptop with me). I'm taking today off as I worked on Sunday and until 11pm last night.

I've never said I'm crippled by taxation, I've said multiple times in this thread that I'm happy to pay the tax due. However, many business owners have really struggled with the increases in minimum wage, employer NIC etc. (fortunately we can absorb it but ultimately what that means is it comes out of my pay).

Part of the reason people like me do this to themselves (and there are many days when I wish I'd never quit my day job!) is the pride in building something and creating jobs. So I find it extremely annoying when people talk about business owners as if they're freeloaders or tax dodgers.

One where hard work is rewarded and people understand that the benefits system should exist as a safety net and not a lifestyle, where saving is not penalised and where personal responsibility is encouraged. A million miles from where we currently are it would seem…

Scary? Because you don’t like the truth.

@Itchthescratch
@MaidsRoom

Sigh, I used Jeff Bezos as a handy poster-boy for rich industrialists and financial institutions generally.

We are a very unequal society: just 20 percent of the population own 58 percent of our national wealth. The bottom 30 percent largely don't own property, and have negligible pension provision - they'll rely on the state pension, which is by far the largest proportion of the welfare spending you're exercised about, at around 45 percent.

Yes, I can hear you shouting, "But some people WORK HARD to earn what they've got, while others, on benefits, have done SOD ALL!"

I agree. Unfortunately, working hard doesn't automatically get you much these days; it very much depends what job you do. You can slog your arse off working 7 days a week in digital marketing for about £28k per year. You can't hope to own a house on £28k; you can barely make the rent. Your pension will be derisory. And yes, 7 days a week; I know people who do this. They're supposed to have the weekends off, like most regular office workers. But their employers insist on sending them work on Friday afternoon that must be completed by Monday morning. And the company's social media accounts aren't going to monitor themselves on Saturdays & Sundays. You're the digital marketing assistant; it's your job. Customers expect replies straight away, not on Monday. You'd think a decent trade union would help with that, but these are employers who don't recognise unions, and would sack you in a heartbeat if you tried to organise one. You don't want this job? Someone else does.

At the other end of the scale, the 350 richest individuals and families in the UK hold combined wealth of £772.8 billion, more than the GDP of Ireland. The 50 richest hold more wealth than half of the population.

Why would we only tax that at 2 percent? The point is, what are they actually doing with all that wealth? The answer is, overwhelmingly, nothing. The rich have always taken money out of the economy and stashed it somewhere the taxman can't get at it; nothing new there. But it's now happening at such a scale, the government itself is strapped for cash. Governments can't spend money on stuff all governments should spend money on: providing the population - ie employers and employees - with a high standard of education; keeping the population in good health; providing the population - businesses and individuals - with good infrastructure (roads, rail, broadband) and services (water, sewage, energy); keeping bad people in prison. When they try, markets react and economists say, not possible. Why? Because so much wealth is sat doing nothing except keeping a broad smile on the faces of 350 families.

But apparently that's all ok. The people who are REALLY bankrupting the country are those feckless madams down the road with their 6 kids by 6 different dads. Damn, those gals don't realise just how much economic CLOUT they wield. You keep believing that.

This ☝️.

Yes, also cringed very hard at the departing “look what you can achieve girls” speech. Tone deaf and misplaced arrogance.

I don’t think she’s much of a role model.

Excellent post. The successful business owners I know don’t whine about taxation as they know they have it good.

If it’s that good and easy more would do the same.

You can't hope to own a house on £28k

Whyever not? You can get a studio for less than £60k here. I agree they’ll struggle within the M25, but there are plenty of other places for those of us without a few million in the bank.

I’d LOVE to know how many people on this thread ever pay in cash. You are going to be part of the problem. Your cash at some point will be used to dodge tax, maybe not on the first transaction, but first thing I’d do is ban cash. THEN we can collect all the taxes due. I can tell you it’s not the bankers paying PAYE on their £2m salaries (inc. bonus ;-).

Well I’m in that camp and I’ve moaned on here but wouldn’t dream of doing it in real life.

I think you'll find we educated him for you. 😂

For a masters and phd. He was formatively educated in Canada, so again we lent him to you.

Where's "here"? But it doesn't matter - on £28k you can borrow about £100k - IF you've got £10k deposit - an insuperable barrier if you have no savings or rich enough parents. Average house prices in England are nudging £300k. And look where most of the jobs are: London, South East.

It doesn't matter; you go ahead and pick holes by quoting me the cheapest studio flat you can find. The big picture is, it's not poor people cheating the benefits system that is our big problem, as the OP suggests. It's rich people being legitimately exempt from the tax system. The richest 1 percent are increasing their wealth at rates of 5, 10, 15 percent or more - in an economy that's growing at barely 1 percent. What d'you think is going to happen?

Tell us about your experience running a small business.

I pay 2% less NI contributions than someone on a payroll, but get no sick pay, no maternity leave, no employer's pension contributions (though need to pay these things for my employees of course, including the increased rate of employer's NI). Also I pay a lot of money for income protection in case I am ill and can't work.

You are making massive generalisations, probably because you've heard something about dividends and directors of limited companies. Absolutely loads of people are sole traders or partnerships so that stuff doesn't apply.

In this day and age we don’t even need to personally know people, I’ve seen accounts from people on tiktok openly boasting about how to game the system