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?

It was common knowledge that digital ID had not yet been funded. It had already been said on the radio this morning before Darren Jones tweeted.

I'm not exaggerating. How many people do you think I know where that shortlist I provided would be the majority? Honestly you are making me question how other people live. Do you not mix much? Do you mix in different socio economic groups where benefit dependency is high?

I am from an area not too dissimilar to Blackpool (don't want to out myself so won't say where exactly). Around a third of people are dependent on benefits. I would have to live under a rock to not know these people. They are everywhere

ETA that two things can be true at the same time. People can be abusing and manipulating the welfare state as some genuinely sick and disabled people can be dependent on it. One thing being true doesn't negate the other. It does nobody any good to pretend that everyone is a genuinely needy claimant that couldn't do anymore. It stretches what resources we do have and completely undermines the system. It's in everyone's interests that people don't abuse the system.

The trouble is, if people's tax pays to bail out people that have made bad choices, where is the incentive for the next generation not to do it?
There isn't, but the alternative is to let innocent bodies, their children, take the hit without giving them the chance to make better choices because poor choices is all they know.

Any party know that the answer is somewhere in between, but no party has found the most efficient middle. Maybe because there isn't really one.

It's all well and good saying "you can leave money in the business" but that doesn't pay my mortgage. Also leaving money in the business means you pay corporation tax on it so I'll still get hit with a tax bill.

Yes there's more flexibility and you can decide when you take money out to minimise tax liability but ultimately you still pay tax on whatever hits your personal bank account through self-assessment.

I'm very happy to pay the tax I owe but it's annoying when people act like being a business owner is some kind of tax haven. HMRC gets me for corporation tax, employer NIC, business rates, my own personal tax return (plus the VAT I have to put on everything I sell). My annual transfers to HMRC would easily dwarf most top rate tax payers.

@VanessaFence ,

It is not how much you pay, but a percentage of what you make. Surely you wouldn’t say that a business making a billion (for example) and paying 10 million in tax is paying a lot of tax, as 10 million is a lot more than most people pay?!

You can get money out via a long term loan or selling shares to someone else. I have no idea the size of your business or what you do, but anything over a few million will be interesting to some small private equity companies.

And, as you say, you pay corporation tax. I am not an account, but that is 19% for the first 50,000 and 25% after that, way lower than higher rate personal tax.

It’s a bit of a technical argument and I am not sure germane to the thrust of this thread, but you do have a lot more choices as to how to draw your income than someone on PAYE.

What is more significant to the thread is the really wealthy (unless you are amongst them!).

‘For the top 0.1% of UK taxpayers (requiring an annual income threshold upwards of £650,000), the headline statutory marginal tax rate on income is 45%. However, the effective average tax rate (EATRs) drops significantly when including capital gains and investment income, with a substantial portion of ultra-high earners paying well below the headline rate—about a quarter of those with multi-million pound remuneration pay an effective rate near 12%.’

The majority of the top end of these people are business owners. In terms of fairness, isn’t someone who earns millions and pays 12% of it as least as much of a societal problem as a ‘benefit scrounger’.

I know their 12% is still, in absolute terms, a lot of money, but they make it by having the support of UK society, UK laws etc etc.

Nope, that's a trope peddled out by the right wing in an attempt to protect those the left actually want to tax.

One where everyone pulls their weight or one where skivers get their benefits for doing nothing and a handful of professionals work long hours to pay for it

I know this one woman who's got 18 kids from 25 different dads, she's got 11 boyfriends all of them millionaires, and she gets £500,000 a year in benefits. What is this country coming to eh

this is it- the utopia that no one is society lives in a way you disapprove of (disapproval entirely based on whether public funds are involved) is completely unrealistic. You can’t starve out the people whose lives you don’t like. They are part of the human condition.

Your maths isn't too clever.

You're so close to the point

@Newbutoldfather

"And, as you say, you pay corporation tax. I am not an account, but that is 19% for the first 50,000 and 25% after that, way lower than higher rate personal tax."

You realise that I pay the corporation tax for the money that's in the business and then I pay tax on it when I take it out of the business right? So I pay 19-25% CT on profits and then if I take out profits in dividends then I pay tax on that through my self-assessment tax return. Plus tax on whatever I've paid myself via PAYE.

Yes you can decide when and how to take money out of the business in order to be the most tax efficient but the flip side is you have almost no financial security and have to deal with very lumpy income. Plus no sick pay, no holiday pay and no company pension contributions.

Lots of things are arguably part of the human condition. Murder, rape, stealing.. all of these things have existed for as long as humans have existed. Does that mean we have to tolerate these things as a society?

I know you will suggest that the analogies I make are ridiculous but my point is that something being part of the human condition doesn't mean that we have to support or accept it. It also doesn't mean you have to starve it out of people. There are other ways but the mechanisms do often have to be quite sophisticated. There are ways for example that you can directly help children in poverty without giving more money to the parents. You tackle key areas of inequality without enriching the parents' lives. Obviously this is controversial but it is possible. Nobody starves but equally feckless parents don't profit from their feckless decisions of having more and more children they can't afford knowing that their benefits will increase.

“Murder, rape, stealing.. all of these things have existed for as long as humans have exited. Does that mean we have to tolerate these things as a society?”

Ultimately we do tolerate them, yes. We punish people after they’ve committed those crimes. We put lots of work into preventing them but they do not entirely stop any of them.

But here is the rub. I'm from Canada which most feel is more socialist (just ask Americans). We have universal heathcare and we certainly pay more in taxes BUT things work. We absolutely help people in tough times and to get back on their feet but it isn't indefinite. And the ongoing credits we give are to get them through - not so they can afford holidays etc.

People are happier in Canada (various studies to prove) cause even if we pay more new hospitals are being built, schools aren't crumbling, houses are being built etc.

It strikes me that in the UK people are tired of working hard, paying a lot of tax, not having things work and spending a lot on people who feel they don't have to work or contribute.

Is there social housing in Canada - sure. But it isn't your house. You are given a place to live. You can't buy it below market value and then sell it and make money.

The balance isn't right here and people are tired of that. The continual squeeze of the middle is what really annoys most. Because that always seems to be the answer - squeeze the middle more. Then the argument is 'it isn't a race to the bottom'. No it isn't but there has to be some fairness in working hard and paying for all of those who choose not to.

I would argue that none of those things are tolerated in our society. Most come with quite serious punishment and penalties. In the recent past you could be executed for murder. The fact that murders etc still happen doesn't mean we tolerate them.

Oh you had one.

@illbeyourperfectmrs radio 4 this morning said the money for ID cards was being funded by cuts in spending from other departments so he is correct it’s all just smoke and mirrors on order to immediately “do a thing” 45 quid savings hardly pays for a takeaway

I can explain it if you're struggling?

@Newbutoldfather you’re confusing owners of UK SMEs with founders of listed businesses. A UK SME owner doesn’t have the same options a US tech billionaire does. They almost certainly don’t have access to cheap loans against their equity holdings, and it will be very difficult for their to sell partial stakes in their business at reasonable prices. In reality their options are to pay themselves a salary or take a dividend. The salary option obviously has no tax advantages. The dividend option is lower tax than salary if you ignore corporation tax, but higher tax than a salaried worker if you include it. Whether corporation tax should be counted or not essentially comes down to your political views - left wing people mostly say it shouldn’t, right wing people mostly think it should.

I think it's transparent that your sark landed badly. No, please don't go to the trouble of explaining your poor maths. We can't all be competent at figures.

Except it is nothing like that, because national finances don't work in the same way as household finances.

If you genuinely think my post was poor maths rather than satire it does make me doubt your ability to understand and engage in political discourse

Could we have used that money to pay down the deficit and reduce long term interest payments? That's the point.

It was terrible satire. None of the people I referenced in my OP are living extreme lives in the way you were trying to suggest. If you think that's extreme you really need to spend a day in my hometown.