to think that people who threaten to leave the country because they resent paying more taxes should just bugger off without trying to elicit sympathy form the rest of us?

[AllFallDown]

Oh and, many of those on high salaries earn that much either directly or indirectly because of the deregulation that caused this whole bloody mess in the first place. So to hear them moaning now they're aksed to pay a bit back ... Grrrr.

I apologise if people thought this thread was started to be nasty: I didn't intend to be nasty. And I didn't realise there was an unwritten rule about not posting threads about threads (how does anyone know about unwritten rules).
However, in some of the other threads about the tax increases there were some canards that I felt were offensive:
1/ that people earning £150,000 are "middle-class". They are not. They are the richest 1.5% of the nation. In fact only 10% of the population earn more than £40,000, Polly Toynbee wrote yesterday.
2/ that taxes are just wasted. They are not. They go to services. As I posted on another thread, this is a low-tax country, which is why services are not as good as France, which is a high-tax country, despite a lower headline rate of income tax.
3/ the notion that those who benefit from taxes are scroungers, and that the rich support the feckless poor. We all benefit from tax income and spending.
4/ and the solipsistic offensiveness of the very rich (those earning above £150,000) in assuming that it is perfectly reasonable for them to desert the country when asked to contribute more of their wealth.

I earn a very good salary. I am not poor. I am not envious.

Looking in from afar, my understanding is that the reluctance to pay higher taxes is due to the perception that the additional tax revenue (~ GBP 6 bn) (1) won't be big enough to change UK's current state of doom (GBP 180 bn debt issue coming up), and (2) will be wasted on pet projects that are not terribly necessary (ex: billions on ID cards).

You don't know allfalldown. You just find out. But I confess it's not something that bothers me that much anyway. But some MNers don't like it. As I say I didn't think it was that offensive a thread.

The NI will be an additional 1% on everything, but that still wouldn't make anyone's tax bill >50% of total earnings, because of the first bits that are taxed at lower rates. Even taking into account NI you would have to be earning around £400k to reach an overall rate of 45%.

I agree with Cote - I don't think many people would have a problem paying 51% tax on higher earnings, but it seems to be being done as a punishment (undeserved by many of those affected) and will not solve the problem. Also they would question the way the goverment is spending (squandering) money.

In addition, although no one will actually pay more than 50% tax overall, if people are earning say, >£300k, then more of their income is being taxed at 51% than is not - therefore their perception will be affected and there is a risk that this will act as a disincentive to people to build businesses (and employment) and keep their skills in the UK, to the longer term detriment of the country.

Riven yes but not really ..but I find the colonial moral imperative just too difficult to settle happily in my own mind so I know what you mean.

tbh I feel that it's the very poorest in Britain who suffer the most from "abuse" of the NHS (I appreciate you wouldn't call it that) and it does annoy me. The ones waiting extra time for appointments and waiting lists, who have no choice.

The political classes who find it so morally impelling to be generous with other people's health are well able to have private insurance for themselves.

Great posts by vezzie and AllFallDown

Thready - £7.47 billion this year, £9.1 billion next year. A drop in the ocean really (we're spending hundreds of billions bailing out the banks), but very good in international terms, and a big surprise that it wasn't cut.

Good quote from Bob Geldof today: 'we're all begging for aid,we just call it fiscal stimulus; and we're all begging for debt relief, we just call it disposing of toxic assets.'

"Benefit payments in the UK are lower, I believe, than in other European countries (please correct me if I'm wrong). But access to them is much, much easier. I think abuse of the system costs a great deal and leads to a lot of the resentment that higher tax earners feel."

From the benefit fraud website- "We estimate that £18 million was lost in 2006 through Social Security Agency benefit fraud."

According to a recent Dispatches I saw entitled "Camerons Money Men", we lost £50 million in taxes from just one tax avoidant Tory party donor who works and lives in the UK.

So I'm wondering here, who is the greater villian? The poorest of our country who cannot survive on £40 a week and supplement it with occaisional bar work, or the one greedy bugger running off to Monaco with £50 million of our taxes?

It's a simple strategy, folks. They keep us squabbling in the gutter over the scraps so we don't notice the way we're being robbed blind by these so-called "wealth creating" oligarchs.

Blu's absolutely right - the insidious damage to the economy has been done by the large corporations moving out.

There's a lot of ways in which corporations do move out:

(i) Relocating manufacturing to low cost jurisdictions - this being driven mainly by lower employment costs
(ii) Relocating shared services to lower cost jurisdictions - this being driven mainly by lower employment costs
(iii) "Inversion" where groups relocate their headquarters to lower tax jurisdictions - Ireland, Switzerland or Luxemburg mainly.

So individuals leaving matters in terms of tax revenues but the corporations leaving (and there are a staggering amount) really matters.

avoidance, or evasion? tax avoidance is legal

people from top to bottom do everything they legally can to get everything they can out of the system, whether tax or benefits

from top to bottom : decry it if you like but you can't deny it

unless he's legally required to hand it over, it's not your money at all

that's not a higher tax issue: that's an issue of tightening loopholes

sometimes I think there is a loss of contact with the realities: we don't like it, but it is real, it happens, it will happen, people will behave like this

I don't think it bears much relation to the question though, which is the financial disincentive to corporations, as many have said

plainly this is a level which is starting to generate talk of disincentive and worries me, I think it should worry people rather than being met with sod off .. it's an unpleasant reality

I don't know.. it's jobs we need more than anything, good jobs.. I don't want them to leave

when jobs go abroad, it's not just the executives who go with their fancy packages, it's the regular people, their taxes too, their spending power -- the misery that redundancy can bring, and since we're talking about social provision, the cost to the state

it makes me apprehensive

QC..i think there is a link between high earners and the economic crisis...who agreed to lend stupid money to people who clearly couldn't afford to pay it back? some banks were lending 6/7 x salary.....they have to take some responsibility...

But daftpunk being a high earner is only one facet of the very few people who caused this mess - the rest of us high earners had feck all to do with it.
You could probably assert that those few were, in large part, male but we don't start saying men are to blame and let's tax them to high heaven.
Similarly, most of them probably lived in or around London but we can't say Londoners are to blame.

Following that argument to its natural conclusion you could say that 95% of authors make less than 5k a year from writing and that that in some ways proves that those on less than five grand make good writers.

oh i know...i'm just a disillusioned labour voter atm....they have done some great things....but have messed up big time too....vince cable predicted all this...maybe i'll vote lib-dem next time immigration annoys me .this country is too soft, any immigrant on benefits should be sent back from whence they came!..we can't bloody afford you...