50% tax rate - unexpected consequence

[MollieO]

Ds not well so we ended up at the OOH service this afternoon. As it happens we saw our usual GP - knew that he did Saturdays OOH but didn't realise he also did alternate Sundays. He said he won't be doing them for much longer because of the 50% tax rate and associated loss of the basic rate personal allowance. Apparently 16 out of the 20 GPs who cover OOHs are also quitting. This is because doing OOH work puts them just into the 50% bracket but because of the tax effect sees them actually being paid nett very little for the work they do.

It means that we will lose an excellent local facility and see it replaced with locums (at least I assume that is what will happen at best, at worst the facility will be reduced). Unlike the current GPs the locums will have no connection with the existing GPs surgeries and I can only see that as a bad thing.

I'm not against the 50% rate (never likely to affect me) and had assumed it is only the 'very rich' who are affected. However the impact of its introduction will perhaps have a far wider effect than we like to think.

Poor diddums. Have a GP friend who works one day a week and earns £27K per year. That was my starting salary as a university lecturer after, not 5 years (what doctors do), but 9 years of study, four degrees, and 3 years as an Oxbridge research fellow on £15K and I worked 80-hour weeks and took two weeks' holiday a year. Having moved institutions I now earn a little more, and work a little less 60-hour weeks, but still only taking a couple of weeks' holiday.

(And no, we don't have 6 months holiday a year -- our entitlement is 6 weeks per year including public holidays, and we work right through all the student vacations.)

OK, so I'm not working on the cure for cancer, but I do work on a serious area of community cohesion, not to mention teaching umpteen students -- and there are plenty of people (including my DH who teaches medical students!) who do indeed work on stuff that will save people's lives for FAR less than £150K per year.

GPs do work hard, no doubt about it. But not harder than loads of other people whose jobs are just as valuable to the economy and to society. GPs are massively overpaid. Sorry.

what about dentists etc - them too?

beanlet - cure for cancer will possibly be done in the area of research and thus on your sorts of rates of pay ... .

Don't worry. It's just election fall-out stuff. Most of us do know money ≠ worth.

Don't know what happened there - was after the "not equals" sign.

The cure for cancer will be discovered, no doubt, by some poor super-smart hugely qualified post-doc grinding away on less than £20K.

Mind you, I think I would find being a medical doctor dead boring, plus I'm squeamish

I'm pretty sure the problem is not the 50% tax bracket, but rather the 61.5% marginal tax rate above £100k.

Speaking for myself I can earn let's say £120k a year working 9-6pm. Or I can earn £135k working 8am-7pm. I go for less money because it's enough, and it doesn't make sense for me to work the extra hours for what is effectively less money.

Equally if you are a GP earning say £40/hour (net), extra hours paid at £23/hour (due to the high marginal tax rate) are not going to look terribly attractive, compared to beeing at home with the family.

If you earn £100000 pa you get £65310 nett
If you earn £150000 pa you get £92220 nett

If you earn £20000 pa you get £15724 nett

say your GP who earns £150000 pa works 100 hours per week. (7 days per week, 14 hours per day). They still earn £17.73 per hour.

The person on £20000 per year works 40 hrs per week. They earn £7.55 per hour.

Now tell me GPs aren't overpaid.

That does not mean they are overpaid.

GPs save lives and there is nothing more important than our health. As a result in order to become a GP you need to be pretty damn clever (multiple As at A Level, heavy competition to get into the likes of Cambridge), and you would have many other options in life, which would likewise pay well, because capable people are in demand.

It's ludicrous to say that GPs are overpaid because (say) they get paid 3* more than a McDonalds manager. Clearly the positions are not equal.

lou - just because someone is paid more, it doesn't follow that they are overpaid.

Different jobs attract different remuneration, that has always been the case and always should be.

If we are talking about overpaid, now that would be a top-flight footballer on £120k per week, not a GP on £120k per year.

don't know why you lot don't retrain if its such a doddle

Yes, GPs do have to get 3 As at A Level, but plenty of people get that, especially these days.

As for capable people being in demand and therefore earning megabucks more than £150K. . . The starter salary for a junior trainee manager at McDonalds the year I got my PhD was £5000 more than the salary for my unbelievably competitive Oxbridge fellowship. I remember distinctly because I had a letter published in the press about it. Go figure.

GPs are overpaid - especially as I believe it is the NHS money (correct me if I am wrong). Of course they deserve decent money because they are clever and have long training. But there is no doubt in my mind that when it is public money it should be significantly less than they get. I have no problem with the Chief Exec of a successful private company taking what he and shareholders feel he/she deserves. Footballers are paid from private money - not taxpayers. GPs are paid by taxpayers so therefore should be paid less than they are - and certainly should not be paid extra for overtime. My poor mate working for local government is on grade 6 (approx £35000) and therefore cannot claim overtime as apparently paid too highly so is expected to work evenings till 2am on a shift basis and weekends as required for no extra. That is pretty standard in a lot of local government jobs apparently.

In our surgery there is always a waiting list to go to the nurse practioner but spaces to see the GPs. She is paid less but deserves more.

I am just pointing out that they don't get paid lots because they work long hours....

the students wanting to do medicine these days have to get a helluva lot more than 3 low As

any minute they will be 3 A* for a start
they need shit hot gcses - to have worked voluntarily for a couple of years etc etc etc - i could rant for hours - its damned hard to get offers from medical schools and students have to outshine the peers to get one...

3 As is pretty easy these days - getting into medical school is bloody difficult
( and no my child is not a medic)

Nurse practitioners tend to have longer appointment times than GPs, which could influence availability (and possibly also patient satisfaction).

how many hours does a GP work?

What this thread suggests to me is that we need better career advice in schools. So, if kids are capable of getting 4 A grade A levels (at least 2 science) and are up for medical training - they know that they could be earning £100k plus by their 30's. Then it's up to them to make an informed choice!

PPP - And why is this? As with all the professions it is to raise barriers to entry, therefore restrict the supply, and maintain their price in the Market. The doctors mentioned in the thread who would like a better work/home balance, and can't find any doctors should be asking the BMA and the government to look at ways to restructure and reform medical education and practice in order to reduce costs and improve results. If the NHS is to survive this MUST happen.

We need more doctors so we can pay each one of them less and not work them so hard. This is not an attractive idea for those who are now senior and have money and balanced lives, nor to those who aspire to that. Not every doctor is brilliant, and actually we don't need them ALL to be.

Professional footballers on the other hand are well paid as they are a genuinly scarce resource.

beanlet - I work in higher ed so appreciate the points you've made (and have also got a PhD and don't earn very much). There is so much competition for post-docs that they can pay very little. There are always more people wanting the posts than spaces available - and of course higher ed funding is being drastically cut all the time, my institution is only expecting to have the money to fill one of every five posts that comes vacant over the next three years.

As bigstripeytiger reasonably asks, why aren't there more people training? Because being a GP is not the job it used to be; it's not about seeing patients and building relationships, it's about meeting targets and filling in blasted forms. They get so much stick from certain ends of the press, patients assume they're all on 250k for a 35 hour week, and all the time they're having to make potentially life and death decisions about the treatment people need. It's a very major responsibility; I don't get paid much but the decisions I make will never be that significant.

ooj I think that would be wrong and could lower the calibre of candidates..

IMO 'modern' professionals cannot handle the stress of the patients and paperwork - they don't want it - they would rather earn less for an easier life

personally i take issue with your final comment

Our nurse practioner takes a doctor surgery slot so has exactly the same time slots as the GP. She is just simply far better than any of the GPs we have!! Which is why people will wait for ages to see her. It is a running joke that if you suspect you are seriously ill you see her and not one of the doctors as you could well be dead before the GPs diagnose you correctly !! We did have an excellent female GP but she left unfortunately.