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?

preventing tax loop holes would be better and seems the lib dems are keen

Philip green is reputed to save £285 million per year with his commute and his wife owning the businesses

But PG makes a lot of money for the country. What he does is no different but on a bigger scale than if a husband uses a wife's tax allowance by sharing savings between the two or they both work so they get two allowances. it's always been a fundamental principle that we can organise our affairs to minimise tax

Well it needs to stop on both a small and a large scale and saying the rich will all leave if we tax them properly is a complete red herring Paul Daniels has been promising threatening to leave for years and is still here, whinging.
They have family ties the same as everyone else.

Not all will leave but some will.

We could stop the PG situation by saying a spouse who doesn't work in a business cannot own shares in the business of a spouse but that would be very unfair as they would then be treated worse than people who are unrelated and who own shares in businesses in which they do not work.

We could say anyone who works in the UK even for one day a year is taxed here whatever their status, residence, domicile, on all their worldwide income even if it is already subject to tax in another country but that kind of double taxation is very unfair.

None of those things are very palatable. There are very very few rich people and many of them generate more corporation tax through their businesses and work for British workers than any tax they might save by being taxed on their income only abroad and indeed some move here or used to for our lower tax than in say Scandinavia.

This is simply an issue of fairness and the poor being jealous of the rich. It is not about large revenue that would generated for the nation. Indeed the higher the tax rates the less money you get in to pay out to the poor. Tax the rich less and the poor will have mroe money in their benefits but may be more unhappy because people (being rather silly) are happier with less if others have less. The green sin of envy etc.

I know a few people in FInancial Services who have left are leaving. Chappie who was my boss last year now in HKG very happy with his take home. I think the banks have more inertia but the "private funds" are more mobile.

It is no different between PG using tax aviodence and a husaband and wife using tax aviodence - it is both wrong to aviod paying tax

PG may make a lot of money for the country - yes his staff on miinum wages are paying tax and they are claiming tax credits and child tax crdits if they are eligable - so who is supporting his companies wages bills - the tax payers of which he is avioding paying tax

I would be interested to know how many of his staff are being subsidised by the goverment as he is not paying a living wage but taking money out of the counrty that could be paying wages with

I wonder how much you have to earn to aviod paying that hugh amount of tax

"This is simply an issue of fairness and the poor being jealous of the rich."

It is nothing to do with jealous and everything to do with fairness, when they cleaner pays proportionally more tax than the CEO even you have to admit something is wrong with that scenario ?

it is the other way around -once you earn over £50k you don't achieve more or gain more happiness, in fac tthey want more and more

Unlike those earning under £50k who are not constantly striving to gain more and more wealth

So I am not to sure those poor are jealous of the rich, but perhaps they would like a fair sytem rather than the rich keep piling up their mass richesand ever stirving to gain more at the expense of others

"Unlike those earning under £50k who are not constantly striving to gain more and more wealth"

I'm sorry that really doesn't ring true after the consumer credit & bankruptcy boom of recent times. They may have been 'not constantly striving' to gain more wealth in a legitimate sense but many evidently overborrowed and overspent money to simulate the wealthy lifestyle nevertheless. And I know it's tempting to charicature every CEO as some grasping 'Mr Burns' figure, trampling all over their workers and salting their cash in offshore accounts... but that's as insulting & inaccurate as tarring all benefit claimants as 'scroungers'

There are areas of the tax system that need addressing but I don't think that's the crux of the problem here.

no the crux of the problem is that the goverment are making hugh cuts which effect a lot of people who are on benifits of one kind or another for legitimate reasons and they will be the people that suffer the most along with their children if they have them.

Over the last 13 years the Labour government systematically increased personal taxation and reduced hundreds of tax allowances. They took that money and spent like there was no tomorrow, increasing the benefit bill with their bizarre system of tax credits & growing the public sector into the unmanageable, overblown state it is today... at the same time relying on perpetual growth in the financial sector to provide the country's wealth. It would be ironic, not to say insulting if, to fix the mess created, another government were to come back to the same private individuals for yet more money.

Now that would be worthy of a riot...

They certainly made a mess of things.

I am sure most business women and men want a much simpler tax system. I do. Get rid of all the distortions and allowances and just have a clear flat rate which people are happy to pay. Then they come here and make their wealth here and benefit this country. If everyone paid 30% tax (we used to have 33% basic rate tax I remember from when I was first working and I would much perer a flat 10% than 30% and much much less state provision of all kinds of things) then things would feel a lot fairer.

To put it simply, the cuts in public services mean that your frontline services will be affected in a immediately visible way. For example:
Bins not collected as much
Benefits taking longer to process
Untrained teaching assistants doing more classroom work than teachers
Longer waits at hospitals and surgeries.

Sorry to have to break it down so simply but this is what the cuts mean. And that's why the unions won't stand for it.

And for the record, I'm a union rep and I work my arse off, and if you are anti-union, you are anti-equality in my opinion.

Labour proposed 20% cuts so I don't know what the unions are getting to hot under the collar over. They will have no choice but to accept them whether they feel they can stand for it or not.

The state does very little very well so the more we cut it back the better.

It doesn't really matter what the causes are or what party is cutting. It's like balancing the household budget. The cupboard is bear so now we need to get out of this mess and we can only do that by cutting in ways that affect enough people that it genuinely means savings are made.
We owe about £15k for every person in the UK - www.debtbombshell.com/

Just like a bad housewife/money manager we have spent more than we had and now we pay the price.

I do not mean to offend those who earn less 50k but it would be a massive shock if we had to wind back to 50k so not sure about the research that says I should expereince diminishing marginal returns over 50k....certainly not my experience

I find all this genuinely puzzling

The highest earners had a massive increase in income tax. They were hit hardest and hit first, those who hadn't already lost their jobs. My firm saw a 25% reduction in headcount, I'm having to work significantly harder and my tax bill has gone up by £10k.

The public sector, which was vastly overinflated, has been largely insulated from cuts so far, but the cuts do have to happen.

So I genuinely don't understand the rhetoric about the rich not being affected. They have been (rightly) the first to have to dig into their pockets.

True. The private sector has already been subject to the extra taxes. many are on 4 day weeks they can ill afford if they have kept their jobs at all. The public sector is now starting to be subject to similar issues but the others were hit first.

Quattrocento - i agree, I suffered about 50pc cut in earnings between 2008 and 2009 and at one point wasn't earning anything. I am on the centre left but I feel that we need to acknowledge that our Services (Financial, Legal etc) does earn us income by sucking in global cash....the French and the Canadians would love us to tax ourselves into an uncompetitive position....develop other industries but remember how much money the govt made from tax Fin Services...and they are nicely set to make a huge sum from rescuing RBS and Lloyds!! The share price is already "in the money"

Anyway - Danny Alexander has just announced the government plans to invest £900m in closing £7bn worth of tax loopholes and evasion, especially the use of offshore devices.

£7bn a year, that should be.

Hmmm...hope Danny Alexander et al understand that trying to close 7bn of loopholes ususally results in much less than 7bn of revenue....depends on what loopsholes but capital can move in expectation of closed loophole... SO spending 900bn could lead to say 1bn extra revenue...hmmm