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

[soapbox]

????

whether its a lot of oney depends n where you are

here (south wales) it would buy my house. my dh has a good job and earns 1/7 of that, a good wage for here nonetheless. A teachers wage (if they ever sort out sn childcare...) for me would be an extremely good wage for this area.

Those from the South East and Londoners certainly have a different take on that I know.

So Scummy just what do you consider to be a huge wage ??

Should point out we earn nowhere near 150 K even between us!Less than half of that actually, which is still good earnings, but still makes it hard work especially if youn live as we do in the South East.The problem is we are not high earning enough to have a good quality of life, but not low earning enough to qualify for any of the measures announced today.What do you do if you are stuck in the middle and exhausted and you want to be at home more and see your kids grow up?
Perhaps I was being naive but I never expected it would be this hard .And thats why I feel so let down and disillusioned by today.
Sorry for the rant.I have taken some wine Medicinal you understand

Earning high incomes just gives you choice.It allows you to live life at a higher standard if thats what you want.

Everyones idea of affluent lifestyle is different. How people would choose to spend it would be different too. We don't have 6 sports cars or would ever choose to do so. We don't stay at the Ritz when we go to London for the night. We had a holiday in Cornwall last year.

I live in London, I earn about 1/3 of that, I have a 2 bedroom flat and pay all my own childcare. Oh and did I mention I'm a single parent with no financial contribution from anyone else?

150k doesn't make you super-rich granted, but it does make you very comfortably off.

Well, I feel that the more you earn the more taxes you should pay. It is called redistribution, apparently

Of course £150k is a lot of money. But it is easy to spend it - I know that sounds obscene to someone struggling on a fraction of that. But it is true that everyone lives to their means, and if you are earning that sort of salary, you generally have expenses that are seen as luxuries but to you are essential - who is going to work 14 hours days and weekends, and then come home and do their own cleaning and DIY?

And the big house is often an investment: if you are earning over £7k a month, servicing a large mortgage is a decent way of investing into your family life, and with property having soared in the last ten years, it has been a sound investment.

To the OP - I think that if you are earning a salary of 150k or more, you are paying an enormous amount in tax already: a lot of your income at 40%. And those of us on PAYE get hit very hard, as there's less option for hiding income or restructuring it into more tax efficient payments. So I think a fairer system would be a high rate of tax for ALL high earnings, not just salaries on PAYE.

Bree, I would say:
10k- low wage
25k- average family wage, low in London
50k- more than adequate family wage (though could still be a stretch in London, depending on area)
100k- extremely good family wage, starting to lose any entitlement to complain about having no bread
150k+- massive family wage

I have no problem with people earning over 150k and can quite understand that the money is all accounted for, I know that the more you earn the more you spend. However, increasing taxes by 5p in the £1 for every £1 earned over £150k is hardly going to bankrupt anyone and shouldn't upset anyone's income too drastically, whereas those at the lower end of the income spectrum are seeing a far higher proportion of their income disappear on essential like food and heating.

I have no problem with the tax increase,tbh,and DH is a high earner,not quite £150k but not that far off.
However,this pre budget was touted as a 'fiscal stimulus'to help the economy,get people out spending(some may say that is how we got in this mess,but t hat is a whole other argument!).
I fail to see how the VAT cut will give much incentive to buy more,tbh,food and children's clothing are VAT free anyway,so unless one wants to spend thousands on widescreen TV's or designer handbags it is a drop in the ocean to a normal family.
Too many people are fearful of redundancy to spend more at the moment.

gorilla, it is not true that everyione lives to their means. If you earn a lot you are in the advantageous position of being able to save. If people choose not to, they are being foolish.

who will work 14 hours and do their own cleaning? Lots of people who don't eaqrn a huge amount of money, believe it or not. I am surprised at your quick assumption on this.

A big house is not a sensible investment at all if it is causing you to regularly run short in the short term. A lot of that will be greed and aspirations raised too high.

I would say:
10k- poverty
25k- not enough to support a family
50k- adequate family wage (but not in London)
100k- adequate family wage (in London)

But if you are earning 150k a year then your NI stopages will be the same as a person earning 40k per year

Hardley fair as it is a much smaller percentage on 150k than 40k, take it further and the rate of NI stoped on 20k is still going to be a higher percentage of the total wagesif you earn 20k than if you earn 150k.

So if they want to tax a person 45% on earnings over 150k then it is extremaly fair as they will still be having a smaller percentage of the earnings stoped in NI and income tax than someone earning over 66% less than they are.

I would rather see NI paid at a fair amount than how it is calculated now

Pointydog, sorry, I did mean if you work 14 hour days and generate a six figure salary - I know plenty of people work long hours and don't earn anything like that. Apologies.

But my point about the house is that in the past ten years, the most effective 'money generator' (for which read security) has been a house and big mortgage - you buy a £400k house with a £300k m/g five years ago - it is now worth 700k (or it was until recently....) But that increase in equity combined with having serviced a large m/g gives options for raising money if you do want to give up work for a while, need to raise cash etc. It is unlikely that anyone on £100k is likely to have saved £300k over 5 years, but using that income to service a 300k m/g has generated a substantial increase in wealth.

Not saying it is right, or moral - just that is the reality. Slightly off the tax point though.

The Blonde, I am sorry to say that house prices in parts of Liverpool are the same price as those in London, so that means £50k doesn't go far outside of London either.

It is a big money generator for the wealthy. All the better to afford those taxes.

The average income is £25k or just under, blonde. It is enough to support a family. Not easy, maybe, but that is what a huge huge number of people do.

I don't care what everyone else on the thread has said (and I've been here long enough to be able to imagine), I'm back and I RELISH the opportunity to shout at the top of my voice:

"Yay! Tax the Rich!"

Progressive taxation was always a good idea, whatever paltry excuses the well-off give about what a terrible disincentive it is for them to create wealth.

Oh boo-blardy-hoo.

Pay your way and stop bleating.

Oooh, I enjoyed that.

Byeeeeee.

If £25k was enough to support a family then there wouldn't be the need for tax credits would there ?

Stamp duty does in part answer your point, Pointydog.

But I don't disagree that there is an unfair distribution of wealth and opportunity in this country at the moment, fuelled in large part by the property boom.

You can easily live on 50,000 a year in London.
Lots of people do
The average wage is 25,000 p.a
Many families survive on that

Agree with The Blonde.

There is no point arguing over whether people who earn more than £150k are rich or not, we will go round in circles.

The point is that the tax measures are ineffectual. WHY do we need spend more money - this is what got us in this mess in the first place and is storing up problems for the future. We must all stop consuming, spending on tat etc.

Low interest rates and falling house prices will cause another housing bubble that will burst in the future. Consumers and the government cannot continue spending indefinitely.
It is called Keynsian economics and it is a load of tosh!

your point is, kDD? People should be paid a lot more?

Lol WillSelf
I agree