the TUC says the public won't stomach the cuts because they are regressive, unfair and let the rich off the hook

[harpsichordcarrier]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11276452

a little poll-tax style civil disobedience?
can you anticipate this happening?
can you anticipate joining in?

Council tax pays for services. It does not tax the capital gain in the value of your house. If it did it would be a good way of forcing old people to sell houses that were too big for their needs. Instead we give them a rebate because they often live alone.

The whole housing ladder concept is based on releasing untaxed gains by selling your current house in order to use as a deposit on your next house. If capital gains on housing was taxed here would be no housing ladder.

There really is no way taxes on income can be raised any more. We have to start taxing capital.

NI could be used on the entire amount of money that anyone earns over £6000, that would raise the amount of tax brought in

"NI could be used on the entire amount of money that anyone earns over £6000, that would raise the amount of tax brought in."

Yes taxing SME's further would really get the economy moving. Our business is just about at the stage where we need to employ another person, what's stopping us, the NI liability.
The reason we felt better about voting Conservative was their promise to scrap NI for less than 10 employees, so if they don't they will not get another vote from us (not that they'll care it's a tory safe seat here).

What about the human and property rights of the elderly to live where they choose? In a free society we should not be forcing people out of their homes on some kind of utilitarian socialist ground that housing is a group asset to be shared by those who need it most.

There's no chance of new property taxes from either party. There is lots of waste in the public sector so even just bringing those people down to the level of most private sector employees (remember most people in the UK are employed by small firms which is rarely mentioned). That means most of them do not get sick pay when off sick except SSP, do not get enhanced maternity leave and work fairly long hours - all that is relatively rare in the public sector.

I think Beenbeta is also way off the mark thinking property tax is the answer. The people who buy and sell property for profit purposes pay CGT already. People like me who have lived in the same place for 20 years should not be penalised with tax for owning a home that has been paid for, maintained, insured and repaired out of taxed earnings and just happens to have increased in value. There are no 'tax incentives' to staying put but the costs of selling up - estate agent fees, stamp duty, legal fees - are offputting. Add CGT on top of that and there would, if anything, be less of a reason to move rather than more.

The accommodation problem is a combination of insufficient housing stock to buy or rent, the S.E concentration of population/jobs and the demographic reality that more people (not just old ones) are living in single-person households for various reasons. Unoccupied houses exist by the thousand and councils can't or won't make them habitable. In tune with the 'Big Society' I think one useful measure could be that if someone wants to take on one of these empty properties and do it up with the help of some friends, they should be handed the keys.

"In a free society we should not be forcing people out of their homes on some kind of utilitarian socialist ground that housing is a group asset to be shared by those who need it most."

In a free capitalist society we are already forcing people out of any homes on the basis of affordability, equally as wrong surely ?
The land should be free, who said it belongs to the national trust, queen etc.

A far bigger use of houses than old people is the rise in a)people living alone as they get married/ cohabit later in life and b) people living alone as they divorce.

Houses are taxed on death, at a higher rate than CGT, as inheritance tax is paid at a higher rate on the whole value, not just the profit.

LadyB- I am currently half way through my 6 months full pay maternity leave, and that is in the public sector. However my final salary pension is funded as I pay more than 10% of my salary into the fund.

The leaders of the unions need to take a long hard look at themselves before trying to stir up strikes for cuts that haven't even been put forward yet (i.e. nobody knows exactly where the axe will fall or to what extent). Maybe they would like to give some of their exorbitant salaries to the cause?

mama - so you would be employing soemone and paying them over £40k? then paying NI on the amount over £40k

If you can afford to employ soemone and pay them over this amount of money and are worrying about it - for goodness sake your business must be doing well and you want to skimp..?

In reality an optimal tax system would tax only the value of land as an annual wealth tax and externalities such as pollution. It would mean taxes would fall on the wealthiest in the population who own the most wealth and produce the most waste via their consumption.

Not even I believe that will ever happen.

Interesting though that people scream 'tax the rich' yet violently oppose the idea that the biggest store of wealth of all (i.e residential housing) should be taxed at all. Poll tax riots - that was really people opposing the taxation of housing wealth and it brought down a Prime Minster and nearly a Govt.

By the way I pay council tax even though I rent which is why and I do not regard it as a tax on property. Neither does my landord as he does not pay it.

It's not a case of skimping it's a case of their is a level of affordability and NI pushes us over that level, you cannot pay what you haven't got be it on a personal or a business level.

"In reality an optimal tax system would tax only the value of land as an annual wealth tax and externalities such as pollution"

Why would you say that, Been Beta? What about non-land based forms of wealth? Alot of tycoons are primarily wealthy in stocks and shares. Under your scheme they would be exempt.

And what about people who are land-rich, but income poor? Like farmers? How would they pay a land-based tax?

You would have the wealthy escaping tax by minimising land-based investments, and farmers going bankrupt.

"Interesting though that people scream 'tax the rich' yet violently oppose the idea that the biggest store of wealth of all (i.e residential housing) should be taxed at all."

I'm afraid you're just coming across as bitter that you didn't buy a house when you had the chance :)

Mama..If you can afford to pay a wage from your business of over £40 grand a year - and then moan about paying a bit more NI..

erm, also as an increase in the value of a house does not put money in the owners pocket....not v. affordable and designed to de-house the less well off homeowner...

and furthermore - when house prices decline, woul i receive a tax rebate?

"The accommodation problem is a combination of insufficient housing stock to buy or rent, the S.E concentration of population/jobs and the demographic reality that more people (not just old ones) are living in single-person households for various reasons"

add to that the iextreme difficulty of building new housing...and you're there!

Well no we can't IVY and that's the point we can't afford the NI so we won't be paying another persons wage, which is a shame because without it we could.

I cannot wait to take my place at the barricades alongside the TUC.

Bring it on.

The government have no mandate to do what they are doing, the Cons didn't get a majority, the Dems came last.

Cutting is one thing, destruction is another. There is no need, it is counter-productive, and idealogically driven.

If we're talking ideology, was it ever right that such a large % of the nation's GDP was derived from publicly funded employment? Didn't a 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' economy where the tax just went around in ever decreasing circles prove to be less than robust when the banking sector hit the buffers? Didn't it show up just how vulnerable Britain really was?

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government and that, de facto, means they have a mandate. If the vote for PR is successful, multiple party government is the way things will operate for the foreseeable future.

Butter - the theory goes that all wealth ultimatley springs from land and that those who own land are rentiers who do nothing of economic value but rent out the land and collect the rent. In contrast, people that rent land to carry our farming or carry on some business add value and employ people so should not be taxed. Even if land were taxed at say 10% of its value every year, it would still exist and would still have a use a and people would still be willing to rent it. Its just the value of the land would be a lot less to the landowner.

People who own houses would seek minmise excess surplus ownership of land above and beyond what they need to live on in order to minimise tax. Farmers would indeed see the value of their land falll to generate a sensible return after the land tax but they would not be paying tax on profit after that so they woudl in fact see littl eimoact on profit. Banks would lose security on their loans as land values fell.

Interestingly, people who have made a lot of money out of The City have bought farmland and pushed up the price dramatically in recent years because it is exempt from IHT and in certain circumstances CGT. Yet another way that land is not currently taxed properly.

Back to the OP " the TUC says the public won't stomach the cuts because they are regressive, unfair and let the rich off the hook " ...

I don't know anyone in my profession (teacher) who has the appetite for civil action or who thinks by paralysing the country it will help get it back on its feet.

And education isn't suddenly going to have cuts imposed; they've been in place for a while, just going to get more severe. We had a below inflation pay deal for the last 3 yrs, pay freeze for the next two, big cuts coming in funding, major pension review looming, later retirement age. I'm not saying woe is us, just that the cuts have been happening for a while, under Labour as well as with the Coalition.

80-85% of a school's budget is on teachers' pay which when the cuts come could = less teachers in front the class but in the last 10 yrs though there has been a rise in non-teaching, low-paid admin jobs in schools and that may be where they make 'efficiency savings'.

But striking when people in the rest of the country is facing job losses in insensitive to the current economic climate; we are fortunate to have jobs.

Rumours sweeping the capital markets this afternoon that Portugal and Ireland may be on the verge of calling in the IMF.

Just in case anyone needs a reminder of what happens when a govt spends more than it takes in taxes for too long.

The countries and IMF have denied but life just got a lot harder for those two countries. In the last few days I have read news reports of Greece, Romania and Hungary beng in a similar position.

Yet the GMB union is talking of balloting UK bin men for a winter of discontent strike.

Get real!

Hardly a suprise, how much longer is the euro going to be a valid currency - a week a month a year...? Portugal being in trouble is hardly a suprise either

It's not so much what is "fair" at the moment although most Governments try to be so to keep people's faith in them but what extreme measures we can put in place to generate a lot of savings so we can pay the interest on our debts as a nation so that we don't lose our credit rating and descend into even worse a place.

Taxing people on notional values of their homes where as someone said above that value could reduce ( I remember negative equity in the 90s and house prices go down as well as up is not on the cards as many of those people could not afford it - plenty of people on fairly low incomes and pensions are in houses which rose in value and it would not raise enough cash soon enough.

If we go round suddenly taxing the assets of the rich they will just leave. If you tax land they'd just move their money into some other asset class. Anyway they are already taxed on profits on shares, properties they do not live in when they sell them etc. and there are not enough rich people to raise the sums we need.

As Chil says we need to tackle the problem of public sector reliance - I think most jobs created under labour in certain areas of the UK were simply public sector (and many were nonjobs like socialist societies do where people ni the odl Eastern Bloc did little work but were paid almost to sit around as that was what the state preferred). We need to move away from that and encourage people to generate their own income and wealth and not rely on state hand outs.

Edgar: the international aspect was only the icing on the cake. The Labour administration had been running a deficit budget since 2000.

They were elected in 1997 on a promise that they would maintain the Tory spending plans for three years. That was part of what made them electable as more people had vivid memories of the 1970 then (and I'm old enough to remember doing my homework by oil lamp because we lost electricity 3 afternoons a week).

Even the current Governments cuts will only cut the deficit. We shall still be living beyond our means with the National Debt increasing at the end of the process.

The amount we pay in repayments/interest on existing debt is eyewatering (in the region of £63b per year) - just think what it would be like if we could put that back into people's pockets!

And it was a Tory Government which last managed to pay back a chunk of debt (althoug Gordon Brown did pay back the last of the debt we took on during WWII to fund it I think during his term).