Oh, I love Caitlin Moran

[Bleh]

and her view on paying tax. It does kind of put it in perspective.

"And someone working the hours required to command a large salary will be making personal sacrifices"

Yes, but so do people who don't have the privilege (if you like) of earning enough to put them in a higher tax bracket.

It's been mentioned before on MN but Carers for example...they are working all the hours god sends, in a physically and emotionally demanding role yet they get an absolute pittance from the government.

Their contribution is I would say of immense value to society but because it doesn't generate vast sums of money it isn't regarded as being worthy of reward.

I realise this makes me sound like a bleeding heart left wing type but there you go. That's probably why I'm poor!

But fairymum: if you pay taxes, then you DO get services like that (hopefully). ATM we are not paying nearly enough to justify setting up a system which gives high-quality childcare to every child whose parents both want to work. Ergo we have to make decisions about how many children to have (if any), whether both parents can afford to work, etc.
I think it would be wonderful and I also think we haven't had a govt in power which has had any idea of how to be sensible about the whole 2-parents-working issue.

hmmph. I'm always suspicious of people saying other countries have better models.

Sweden is busy cutting taxes ATM, AFAIK.

'It is important to remember that Sweden was a country with even distribution of income, relatively few social problems - such as crime - and high life expectancy back in 1950. At that time Sweden had a lower tax rate than the United States. Low taxes and ample opportunities for entrepreneurial activity brought about Sweden's high standard of living.

It was when politics radicalized during the 1960s and onwards that Swedish taxes began to rise to the high levels we know today. When taxes reach a high enough level they tend to be spent on things other than crime reduction, qualitative health care and education. It is no coincidence that Sweden has several hundred public agencies that, among other things, are occupied with ?supplying Swedish sailors with a meaningful cultural life?.

As taxes have risen, so has welfare dependency. In 1970, around 11 percent of the adult population of Sweden was living off various forms of public handouts rather than work. In the summer of 2006 this figure had doubled to 22-23 percent. It is of course important to have public safety nets, but the high dependency on handouts is draining public resources. This is why Sweden has higher taxes than other modern nations but cannot offer higher pensions.

Another problem arising from high welfare dependency is that norms associated with work and responsibility have deteriorated in Sweden. It has today become socially acceptable for people to receive government sick leave payments despite being capable of working. And norms are deteriorating most among young people.

The number of Swedes on sick leave is astonishingly high in international comparisons. Swedes eat right, exercise and are amongst the healthiest people in the world. When we see people in their twenties going into early retirement it is part of a phenomenon whereby society attempts to hide true unemployment and many people don?t mind living off social benefits.'

And don't lots of Swedes come to the UK to make lots of money (like yourself it seems)?

"so why are you presuming that people on £150k or whatever will happily roll over and take it, or that they should, when it's not something that interests or affects you?"

Well obviously I am interested, or I wouldn't have posted on this thread

My reasoning is, if you earn more, you should pay more. Why not? Someone earning over, say £150k is in a position of immense privilege.

The role of a carer and a captain of industry are not comparable. You have to apply totally different criteria.

It's not a 'social good' argument, it's a 'economic value' argument. And on that basis, someone who runs a business worth £10m a year is worth more to society than a carer. Because they contribute tens of thousands of pounds in tax directly, and probably hundred of thousands of pounds indirectly. That money enables the carer to be paid.

If you earn more, you do pay more. You pay 40% of everything over £36k or whatever the basic rate cut-off point is now.

Whenever I read articles by journalists extolling the virtues of paying more tax, I wonder rather cynically just how much they earn. Like not that much, probably.

I'm not going to beef about paying more tax, but I would like to see a receipt please. And preferably one that doesn't read like this:

For bailing out banks that we failed to regulate properly in the first place .... a squillion

For invading oil-rich countries and waging war on abstract nouns ... a billion

For doubling expenditure on the NHS in real terms without any corresponding improvements in efficiency .... a billion

For duckhouses and other sundries ... a few hundred thousand

Their contribution is I would say of immense value to society but because it doesn't generate vast sums of money it isn't regarded as being worthy of reward.

Reward from whom? In other cultures people look after their families because it's expected of them, not because the state rewards them for doing so. Certain prominent immigrant cultures to the UK, such as Indian and Chinese have much stronger sense of duty in this respect, and this filial piety is one that is naturally found across the world.

Normal human behaviour shouldn't be essentially nationalised.

"The role of a carer and a captain of industry are not comparable. "

That's very true. Carers are usually nice folk

I see what you're saying wonderingwondering. From a purely economic standpoint that makes sense. That's capitalism for you eh?

"If you earn more, you do pay more"

Yes, I know.

Someguy, that bit in quotes about Sweden, where's it from?

I'm quite interested in the idea of turning down work in order not to hit the highest tax bracket.

See, that makes perfect sense to me. I see that as a mature decision. Obviously someone who does that is in a privileged position. We can assume that they have enough money to live well. Why be angry about that? Why not say: I have enough. If I earn more than that, things feel unfair for me - so I won't do that.

Look, a country needs higher earners to pay more tax, or rather to be seen to pay more tax. It's basically going to piss MOST people off if that 0.6% of the population are not contributing proportionally more - or being seen to, I bet they pay a lot less that they ought to.

www.thelocal.se/17964/20090303/

But they are contributing proportionally much more, because they have a proportionally lower tax allowance (even before its recent withdrawal), no tax credits, proportionally less benefit from child benefits, etc.

Hang on
Aren't tax credits there to boost the income of lower earners? WHy on earth would the wealthy be entitled to them? You make it sound like it's some kind of right that has been taken away from them.
And what do you mean by proportionally less benefit from child benefit?

I just don't get this all-out resentment of the rich - this assumption that they're all awful, greedy scumbags.

There's good and bad all over: I know many wealthy professionals who happily pay their taxes, and on top of their long working hours, volunteer in their community as school governors, charity trustees etc. And there are awful, immoral, lazy people working in 'caring' professions, too.

Categorising people by their income/intelligence/life chances is so short-sighted. And skews the debate: the gist of some comments on these types of thread is that we ought to soak the rich to pay them back for some imagined wrong-doing. And that it's OK to tax at extortionate rates as 'they've got plenty'.

It's still their money. You can't just help yourself and expect them not to react to it in a way that potentially reduces the overall tax take.

What a lot of rot Ms Moran talks. If she likes paying tax so much, she can pay mine too.

I'm not sure what you suppose the difference is between 'boosting' somebody's income and not taxing them in the first place. The net contribution will be much greater proportionately on £150k than £20k, and tax credits will be part of that - you might pay £4k tax, but then get £3k back, and you have therefore contributed £1,000.

Part of that net contribution would be child benefit and other such things, which might turn that net £1k contribution into nothing, whereas it wouldn't turn a £50k contribution into nothing, would it?

Prunerz, I'm not sure why you think the wealthy are not contributing as much as you think they should?

Here's some hard facts about income tax

Top 1% of earners pays 23.1% of all income tax
Top 5% of earners pays 42.3% of all income tax
Top 10% of earners pays 53% of all income tax
Top 25% of earners pays 71% of all income tax
Top 50% of earners pays 88.5% of all income tax

The majority of income tax is paid by the top 10% of earners. I've taken my figures from HMRC here

It may interest you to know that to be in the top 10% of earners you have to earn just £50k. So the wealthy are paying a hugely disproportionate amount of tax already. It's not actually sound economics to tax the wealth creators until the pips squeak.

Oh, I love Caitlin Moran too, but am with SomeGuy and wonderingwondering on this one.

journalists earn quite alot - reading the times pages regularly it is obvious their journos enjoy a standard of living vastly above that we used to afford on 40k, and what is more, they do so in London...

CM may be being flippant, especially as i've not doubt as a higher rate earner she still employs an accountant to reduce her contributions. those accountants are expensive - and expensive because they are worth paying for.

personally i don't support the 50% tax rate because it is just window dressing, and those same clever accountants will find ways for people not to pay it.

Er, SomeGuy, you may come on my thread and argue against Caitlin Moran's argument, but you may not come on here and have a personal attack, calling her Moron and so on. That's low. If you have to revert to that sort of tactic it undermines your argument.

As for the 50% tax and finding ways around it - it may be very difficult, depending on your employment status. If you are a regular full time employee, you contribute automatically through PAYE. You would have to be employed as a company, with an offshore account (a loophole that's being cracked down on) or registered as a non-Dom for tax purposes in order to avoid most income tax. Or, you would have to receive the bulk of your pay through dividends (lower tax rates), rather than as income. Very, very difficult position to negotiate if you're a regular employee (even a high earning one).

Journalists as a whole earn bugger all, lots of Oxbridge graduates earning £20k out there, it's only the fortunate few on the nationals that earn good dough.

I do however note that Moron's husband (also a journalist) is a Company Director - a device most commonly used to avoid paying PAYE tax altogether - the newspaper remits payment to the Ltd. which pays only 21% tax, not the 40% or 50% she mentions.

Until she publishes her tax returns to show that she is not in fact doing the obvious - viz. getting paid via their limited company - she can fuck right off about how people should be glad to pay 50% tax.

OW. SomeGuy - stop referring to her as Moron. That's incredibly rude! I may have to start refering to you as SomeGit