June 08 - if your name's not down you're not coming in!

[EddieIzzardismyhero]

Welcome to our new cliquey thread !

Great news, Deb! Libra your back troubles sound horrific, although I hope you continue to improve and are pain free soon.

Iestyn can jump holding on to things, but not on the spot. He also laughs, Neenz, and requests jumps from other people! Sybil you're right though, Iestyn is (suddenly) linguistically advanced. My next-door neighbour is watching him like a hawk - he clearly knows the difference between English and Welsh now. It's nothing special, I should add - bilinguals do; but it's interesting that it's this early on. It's also interesting seeing what he does with his two languages. In case anyone is curious, Iestyn just ignores English. He picked up 'no' in English last week. Classic first English word... (Interestingly, he uses it for extra emphasis - will say 'no' a lot in Welsh and then get shouty and say 'NO' in English! )

Poppy I really liked your post. How about you do a 'budget for beginners' post - just explain it all for thickies like me? (I might be the only one on the thread though! ) Please?
I can manage money but only at a basic level and I just don't understand things like cuts and CGT and all sorts of details like that. (That might include tax too...but it's all because nobody has explained it to me.) In all honesty I don't really understand the credit crunch either. I want to learn, and would love to be able to follow the budget and what it's about.

I'm really, really good at medieval Welsh though!

I'm posting now because I can, btw - I was offline at work from lunchtime yesterday to 5 minutes ago. No phone either. It was embarrassing how tense I got!

Sybil I'm not a hot weather girl. It's been awful here all morning, but we've suddenly had a temperature drop. I'm hoping for a thunderstorm.

Back to the tidying up now...

Great news Deb!

Temperature is much cooler here too - hope it brightens up again for the weekend.

Am absolutely shattered - evil neighbours returned to their garden and stayed there until 2am keeping us awake with their loud drunken chat. Definitely children still there too. .

That's fab news Deb. Enjoy your house hunting!!!

Re the budget. We lose ctc as dp is just over the limit, am I right in thinking he won't get an increase in his tax allowence beacuse he pays 40% tax? Not too worried about vat going up to 20% as I mostly buy food and kids clothes so won't be too affected.

Amber Could you get a mothers help instead, it will be cheaper and she will stay with you longer than a maternity nurse. We've just bought a new car and can only just get three carseats in the back row, it is a 7 seater but a faff to put the boot seats up! Good boot space without the seats up(perfect for camping), really crap boot space when the boot seats are up.

Great news Deb. I am excited that when you move you will be visiting distance from my PILs, assuming you are still thinking about Teesdale and round there?

Football just started, got Peter to sleep a bit late. I wonder how long I can watch this for without being interupted?

15 minutes.

Ooh, that's bad, Spider.

Wasn't so bad as he fell asleep on the sofa, so the first half was v chilled, but the second half was tricky to watch as P woke up and insisted I draw pictures for him on the mega sketcher.

A much more positive performance. What a relief.

Libra that sounds horrid- hope you are on mend now.

Neenz will post more on your questions later when have time.

SW I've managed to secure a position as a senior payroll officer for a 3rd party paying the NHS salaries. So indirectly I am employed by the NHS. But have private medical cover (as do most NHS employees!!!!!) so that is the way I have gone.

going - that's right in that there will be some adjustment to higher rate tax payers to stop them benefiting from the tax allowance increase.

I don't actually even know what the footie score was - I take it England won?

Came home from work today and S came straight in and turned the tv on Thinking if I teach him how to make breakfast we could get a lie in at the weekend

Deb am very at the thought of some house-hunting - I hope you'll share links to properties so we can be nosy helpful

Am quite at private health being offered as a benefit to NHS employees!

I'm pretty sure that most NHS employees don't have private health cover libra! I don't, and neither do the nurses/radiographers etc that I work with! You must be lucky!

Our lead clinician organised the football to be projected onto the big screen in our seminar room this afternoon for all to watch, as long as clinical commitments were covered - very nice for a Scotsman in Glasgow to do so I thought!

jumping can I just say that as usual I agree with Sybil*! good talker, no jumping here!

I am also a budget thickie Dewin

C has been poorly for the last couple of days, horrid nappies, off food and vomited a few times seemed much better yesterday and went to nursery today. vomited up her lunch I think she might have just eaten too much to make up for her fasting over the weekend. Hope so.

Deb congratulations on the offer! enjoy house hunting.

Meh, mumsnet ate my post.

Among other things, I posted this reasonably easy to read guide to the budget published by the institute of fiscal studies.

Now, lets see if this one posts...

Biscuits - overeating and heat make a lot of washing here too so hope c is better.

Yay deb at your offer .

Domestic are you still going to have word re neighbours with mp? Are you keeping a diary btw of them being painful (and good link).

Ah how was peppa?

Dewin happy to answer any tax questions and more general budget ones if you ask.

Neenz will try to answer your questions- they are quite good ones as part of it is the theory of tax(how and what should we tax) which not all would agree with(looks at domestic who I know must have some strong views on this- btw what are your thoughts on leadership race?). Some of it is easier as is what law is. But am tired and hot (we had no water due to Power cut when got home so only just settled e due to late bath) so sorry if I ramble.

Your boss would not get relief on full £50m - it does depend on who pays it (ie him or company) and into what kind of pension scheme . But If paid into "normal " approved scheme would until last year only get higher rate relief on £200k at most (and then you are
capped on amount in your fund to something like £2m). Now you only get high rate relief on 20k and the rest up to the £200k limit is at 20%

That said those rules are horrendous and under review so detail may be different but basically no higher rate relief over 20k or so.

Avoidance is a theory thing. If you want to get economy up and running and fund it partly by tax through enterprise(am sticking to funding side here not arguments about how much a public sector can interrelate with private sector) then you presumably want to do something that let's businesses get on.

One method is allowing tax avoidance as part of strategy to promote business. Tax avoidance may be moving funds abroad and paying less tax an reinvesting this or using it to fund charitable donations (eg John Paul getty). However it may also mean something like you or I putting money in an ISA . Or a company choosing to use legislation in some other way to fund business (claiming a tax deduction over a number of years for cost of new plant, providing employees with benefits that don't Carry tax or nic costs rather than salary etc).

Now you might say that a company choosing to buy kit now and get tax dedn is ok as it's a business decision . However it's still tax avoidance as you could have invested in something that didn't get a dedn or not claimed it.

Even If you argue that the new plant example is different to the non Dom you would still have to legislate for outlawing the avoidance. This would be tricky as it would be difficult to do without running contrary to or contradicting UK law and potentially eu law. Even if you could resolve this it would be quite difficult to police and would highlight again theaxk of hmrc resource. That is before you got into political fallout of such a move.

How much do you know about non dom taxation now as labour brought in big changes? I am interested to know as would help me answer your question if I understood what you think they are/ aren't taxed on and who you think these people are.

As for your bloke with £2m in Shares and £150k salary. There are a few things here. Firstly there is w
theory question of whether you think longer term investments and capital you put at risk is taxable as gains - at present the UK system allows for a different rate and that rate depends on overall income/gains so that barring a particular kind of relief aimed at one off investors who say sell their family business on retirement (and get a lower rate of gain on first £5m of this but it is quite difficult to qualify for this), you arre taxed at 28%.
At time of comment on cleaner paying more the Tate was 10% and hence disparity more obvious.
As for whether you can disguise salary as gains there is a LOT of legislation on this (and it's pretty wide as even covers stuff like having your family members work in business and giving them income etc) but most kind of disguised bonuses or too low pay are legislated for.

Re pain point I do think it's very hard for those that have less. That said stats show that 53% of tax is paidby top 10 % and
22% is paid by top 1%. The biggest shift in this ratio was when they dropped top rate in

1988 and at that point percentiles paid a lot less (14%).

That said it doesn't take away from fact that losing £20 a month in benefits or paying more tax hurts poorest most but how you fix poverty is a bigger issue.

Sorry for monster post - also re higher rate pension relief going forward you basically get no relief after 20k has gone in.

Impressed if you are still reading.

I didn't mean I get it as standard, I do have to pay for it through my salary but at at beneficial rate. As far as I am aware, this is certainly offered to the PCTs / Trusts I am responsible for, but each PCT/Trust is different. There is no such thing as one NHS, they all have their own rules as far as I can make it out.

debs that's fantastic news on the house sale - it must be exciting but scary at the same time now it's final you'll need to find somewhere to live!

biscuits sorry to hear C is poorly

welcome back libra

A is showing no signs of dropping his nap, thankfully - until 18mo he only had a 20-30 min nap, which has now increased to one hour. So after this eventual improvement I would be so disappointed if he dropped it!

I narrowly averted a personal disaster this weekend - had booked a bouncy castle for a family party for A this weekend (Sat) and I phoned yesterday to check what time it would arrive. Turns out I'd booked it for the wrong day [shame]. I was so disappointed, but managed to find another place which had a cancellation. Let's hope it doesn't p* it down. I'm another one kpie who feels guilty that I haven't found any toddler friends for A. For now I'm having A's parties in Ireland with his cousins. It's so hard to make connections with people you only pass fleetingly, especially I find because I only have one day off a week and I tend to be rushing around, so no time to meet anyone really

I've finally got a 2y health visitor check booked for him - can't really be bothered tbh, as I'm sure there's no real need (don't mean to put judgy pants on but I'm sure there are categories of parents for whom they're necessary but must largely be a waste of time for the majority)

I can't remember the specifics Neenz but the last government definitely brought in some measures to prevent people dumping wads of money into their pension ahead of some legislation that comes into force next year - something to do with pensions or tax or something for people earning 6 figures.

I actually started this post about half an hour ago so can't remember anything else at all.

Deb, great news on the house!

Hello Going! Lovely to see you back .

Allnew, phew on the bouncy castle. I agree the 2y check is probably unneccessary (they could just send you a list of things your child should be doing and a number to ring if they don't) but I wonder if some parents might not like to admit if their child isn't doing the things they should (or just don't get round to doing anything about it). Our 2y check was fun - I was surprised she didn't say they were geniuses though

Dewin, Iestyn's speech is so funny. Love it that he ignores English (except for no!). Monkey.

Poppy, thanks for the info! I agree there needs to be incentive for private business because private business has been shown to be more efficient than public sector in some areas (altho often at expense of the workers ) and helps the economy to grow. Dh says they tried out a public defender system to see if they could save on legal aid but they found it cost more money, I suppose because the public defenders (paid by the state) got their £50k a year for doing a 35hr week with little incentive to do any more. DH will often work a 50hr week but then of course he reaps the rewards financially and his company makes £1m a year profit, mostly from legal aid (well it is not HIS company). Obv the govt look at that £1m and think why are we giving them that money but they have tried and can't provide the service any cheaper. I would love for all services to be provided by the state and for wealth to be distributed equally but I think it has been shown that that a true socialist society doesn't provide enough output in return for what it costs. I accept that some private enterprise is necessary

I am still not clear on the £2m in shares thing - is that taxed at CGT rate or not? I agree that when there is long-term investment (in property or shares) there may be a case for lower tax (especially when you take into account inflation) but surely the £2m is cashed in therefore it is actually not long-term investment at all, it is just a ruse to pay less tax?

Non-doms as I see it pay tax in the country they live in (eg Belize) on all their income apart from what they earn in the UK, where they have to pay UK tax...? I know JK Rowling was told by her accountant she should move to Belize so she didn't have to pay so much tax. She refused .

Oh, on the leadership Poppy - I've still to dedicate some time to thinking about it seriously but I've discounted Ed Balls (thought he was dreadful on Newsnight and seriously disagreed with a few things he said), Diane Abbot (private schools and generally unsuitable), Andy Burnham (was rude to me once, and tbh don't think he's got enough presence, but that said, I have liked some of the things he's said on Iraq, NHS spending and a few other things) so that just leaves the Miliband brothers. My default position would be David, but I'm tempted to give Ed a bash. They both spoke in Edinburgh recently but unfortunately I couldn't go. I'm hoping they'll both return at some point.

I like Ed - he came across really well on an MN webchat when he was climate change secretary. All the MNers loved him. David probably a bit more polished tho? Ed more left-wing I'd say . I think I'll vote for Ed (if I get a vote), but will look into it more before I decide for sure.

I have nothing to say really, but am posting as I have written the 701st and 801st posts, and therefore am going to write the 901st post. (I noticed as I have my pages set up to 100 per page)

as you were.