What do you think of the 5% tax hike for those earning more than £150k - good or bad?

[soapbox]

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Exactly. And all this stuff about outgoings is just mad. Who doesn't have proportionally high outgoings compared to their incomes FGS?

Nobody makes you take on a big mortgage. I appreciate that house prices have been punishingly high in recent times but they are high for everybody.

I would much rather have to find the way to pay a high mortgage on 150K than on the 19K that has been mentioned on this thread as about average. Duh, it doesn't take much working out surely?

Honestly how on earth do high earners think that everybody else manages?

Also I agree very much with mabanana's point about how there seems to be a very self-congratulatory "because I'm worth it" sort of culture around in the UK at the moment.

Are there really people who think that low paid always = unskilled and not important and that high paid always = highly skilled and very important?

Tell that to the next fireman, teacher, nurse, youth worker or ambulance driver you meet.

Some of the wankers who have got us into all this financial trouble are ridiculously highly paid. Can't honestly see much evidence of their use, skills or importance right at the moment personally.

I live in France where salaries are lower, tax is higher, house prices have not been pushed up to stupid levels by every man and his dog trying to make a fast buck as a property developer, credit is harder to come by, mortgages are fixed, re-mortgaging is rare, people don't see shiny new bathrooms and executive kitchens as a basic human right and almost nobody talks about their bleedin' equity.

I used to think that I would like to come back to the UK but I'm not so sure now. There is too much weird stuff going on in our culture right now.

I realise they are probably fair game...()but nowhere on this thread has there been anybody sayng "I earn over £150K and I think it sucks that anyone is going to cut my pay and I am so much better than you" etc.

Surely that was not the question posed? I think the cut is a bad idea and, no, I don't earn that.

We could put an extra tax on idiots who look down on others etc. That could work and would cross the earnngs spectrum quite nicely.

Bagsy I sit on the panel of judges!

beachcomber you presume that us high earners ( and yes I am one of them by a long shot ) were born that way yet the majority of us have worked our way up having scrimped and saved in the process.

taxing us harder will not solve the problems we have in this country. we have created a society that simply beleives its their right to a certain standard of living, foreign holidays , 2 cars , computers and the luxury of wives staying at home funded by tax credits etc.

This is not the way our parents and grandparents were bought up. The women may not have worked much but money was in most cases scarse and valued. There were no big handouts.

Somebody somewhere is paying for it and that is why we have a big black hole in the countries finances. I am not against increasing spending on public services but I do think we must look again at the the question of need rather than want which are 2 different things.

I stand to lose a significant amount in the change at a time when my business will be declining. We employ 150 people.......taxing me harder will just make their jobs less safe. 161 families whose houses may be at risk.

I may be filthy rich according to some on here and deserve to be taxed to high heaven but remember that I may also be employing some of you and we are all vulnerable as GB PLC goes slowly bust.........

Bring back Maggie !

Agree with mpoppins.As part of a high earning partner we have worked our way up the property ladder. We have worked our way up the promotions ladder too. I bought my first house in the eighties for £38,000. I had no new furniture. I had a borrowed bed and a second hand sofa!

These days, people want their own 4 bedded property in a leafy suberb furnished with all the latest gadgets. We have worked and paid for everything ourselves. We even paid for our own wedding. We have done our fair share of scrimping and saving.

No in the long run the extra tax won't effect us. We will budget it in. I don't think its going to work though. I don't believe spending more money and having more debt is going to refloat the economy or boost the flagging housing market.

'bring back maggie !!!'

yes let them pay more

i still don't understand how the basic pay for an office worker is roughly £8 and hour.

it was about £6 and hour when i started working in 1986.

somethings up.

shellye, just because my DH and I have less than you, it does not mean that we have worked less hard, nor that we have frittered away our cash on a godforsaken widescreen television.

an hour

Whatever you think of the morals of the 'rich' paying more tax it is an absurd policy because it will raise so little. In fact I would love to know how much it will cost to administer the changes. I wonder if having a flat rate of tax and therefore getting rid of the inland revenue and the quite frankly USELESS people who answer the phones there woudl actually increase the revenues. The system is so complex is costs a fortune to run. This is the biggest flaw of Labour govns in my view - they create huge government, costing a fortune and take resources away from public service of real value.

I put 'rich' in brackets because despite earning that I do not feel in any way rich and we don't have a massive house or huge outgoings. As usual I find myself agreeing with Quattro ho has made this point over and over (but no one listens). Income is irrelevant. If you live in London with no family support you are worse off in many ways than living in an area with afforable housing, family help and tax credits.

exactly shellye we will budget it in too and as I have only been the owner of a flat screen TV for 3 months and still wont have Sky you can see that we too saved for everything !

I bought my first house for peanuts and slowly paid off every mortgage as I went. Borrowed furniture all the way . I paid for my owm wedding including the dress. No fancy holidays....gap years in the sun.....new cars..........always an old banger mended by various boyfriends along the way ! I also funded my way through my legal training.

I am not expecting a medal or violins........it was all my choice but why should I pay more tax now to fund those people who are not sensible in anyway with their money and just expect others to provide ?

Eaxctly Southeastra. Under Maggie you were better paid!!!!!

southeastastra - What is your objection to 8/hour wages? That they have increased too much since 1986 or too little?

Here here Mummypoppins. Goodness I think I am getting misty eyed about the Blair years at least he did not have a problem with peopke working hard and doing well for themselves. Seems like Labour have finaly shown their true colours and gone back to the politics of envy.

Thats what I mean. We are all the same really. We all work hard. We all (or most) have been through hard times. We all have undervalued jobs. How else should we pay certain people with skills that only a few have. I am fascinated by this thread. I have no problems with the higher earners in this country being taxed at higher amounts if its going to have any effect. The trouble is in this country there are lots of extra taxes too which we all get stung with.

Why are people so hostile towards the super rich? Thats what I feel as I am reading the replies. I don't feel any different than I did 20 years ago in my 2 up 2 down.

I assume nothing of the sort mummypoppins. You have assumed that I am making assumptions.

I assume and bloody well hope that anybody earning a big salary has worked hard for it. I hope and assume that in a modern democratic society that not only those born into money have a chance of being highly paid.

I just happen to believe there is more to life than money and materialism. I also think that some jobs are over-paid whilst others are under-paid.

I agree with you that this tax is not going to solve many problems but the government has to try and raise some cash somehow. How do you suggest they go about doing it? By taxing the poor?

I don't see how taxing you harder on your very high income would affect the viability of your business or put people's jobs at risk. Can you clarify please?

we both work bloody hard too. yet our wages have hardly gone up at all, how is that right? someone is getting rich out of our hard work!

beacuse beachcomber people like us simply wont bother any more...........we will sail into the sunset with our savings and pensions income leaving a pile of redundant workers.

There has to be some benefit to taking the risk of running a business with all the raft of legislation protecting workers and borrowing money etc.

We wont care at all then what is happening here!

People aren't hostile to the super rich.

They're hostile to the idea that the super rich should contribute at the same rate as the very poor, to the country's exchequer.

I just did a little Excel time series, and if a GBP 6/hr wage in 1986 were to grow in line with CPI inflation, it would be over GPB 10/hr in 2008. So GBP 8/hr shows a significant real decline in wages.

(Disclaimer: I took 2% as CPI inflation for the four years I couldn't find figures for, so then end value might be even higher than I calculated)

And also perhaps people feel a slight frisson of hostility when the super rich imply that anyone who is not super rich, has been feckless and hasn't made sensible choices with their money.

Lots of poor people are amazingly good at managing money. Many super rich wouldn't be able to begin to raise a happy family on £12K a year. And yet many poor people manage it. Not by being stupid and irresponsible with money, but by being really quite good with it.

Isn't it government who sets minimum wages, though?

I don't think many sensible people feel hostile towards the super rich on the basis that they are rich.

I however have no patience with rich people who do any of the following;

-Complain that high outgoings mean they are no better off than anybody else.
-Complain about paying tax that they can well afford.
-Justify very high salaries by saying they work hard and are highly skilled with the implication that others don't work as hard or are dunderheads.
-Fail to see that many of them are as well off as they are now through pure chance of being in the property market at the right time.
-Claim that living in London is impossible on less than a trillion quid without considering how the majority of Londoners manage it.

Minimum wage was not the point. There was no minimum wage in 1986 and £8/hour is not the min wage now.

Mummypoppins I am frankly revolted by the idea that very rich people would fuck off out of a country that has given them the opportunities to get where they are because they are so grasping that they grudge paying money they can well afford back into that country.

Am even more revolted at the thought of an employer doing this and putting his or her workforce out of their hard earned jobs; employees who have largely contributed to the riches being made in the first place.

Aren't most people going to have a reduced income due to the 0.5% increase in NI? Also on the subject people complaining about higher rate taxation seem to forget that it kicks in quite close to the NI upper limit so most of the income that is being taxed at 40% is only being NI'd at 1%. Whereas my lowly part time income is being taxed and NI'd so you are immediately above 30% on anything above the personal allowance. Personally i think they should merge incoem tax and NI.

The government could raise the cash by cutting out the money they spend on inessentials such as spin doctors and PR consultants. They could cut the number of unnecessary quangos and focus groups they have.

They could also stimulate the economy by raising the personal allowances to £12,000 per person, which would take the poorest and the pensioners out of tax, and perhaps obviating the need for some of the overly complicated and badly administered tax credits. This would mean that people had more to spend and savings could be made.

They could also decide to get rid of the ID card idea and the data base that is being set up to record the details of all our children. Perhaps not hosting the Olympics would help as well?

They could also ask the EU to reinstate the portion of our rebate that TB gave away -that'd be approx £7billion per year we'd get back.

Trimming the allowances of MPs might also save a considerable sum. I know of no other crown servants who are allowed to claim for a second home. Turn one of the redundant London barracks into apartments and make the buggers pay rent as we have to do for married quarters.

Labour have spent 11 years creating a client state and all the infrastructure and expense that goes with it. The infrastructure needs to be trimmed and streamlined fast to save money; but there is not the political will to do this. AD and GB want to tinker at the edges in the hope that they will be re-elected. They don't care who they take from....the high earners, or those at the other end of the scale who were the most affected by the 10% tax rate disappearing, therefore doubling their basic rate of tax at a stroke.