What’s the point in earning above higher tax threshold?

[Pippippipi]

Really what’s the point? Anything above 43k till 50k ie uk high tax threshold has such high deductions it’s terrifying. 42% tax, 8% NI, non negotiable 11% superannuation pensions payment leaving me with 39% to take home. Even worse if you’ve student loan payments.

People in very normal jobs with responsibilities are being dragged into these thresholds, it doesn’t feel fair in anyway.

Anyone earning over £43,663 in Scotland is facing a marginal tax rates similar to that of Scandinavia. Anyone earning less is paying far, far, far less than had they been living in Scandinavia. In Scandinavia everyone pays proportional high taxes. Here they pay 19%/21% with a massive nil rate personal allowance. It’s these very low rates of income tax that are preventing us from having Scandinavian public services.

In Scandinavia they understand that EVERYONE has to pay high rates of tax for good public services not just high earners.

NI goes down to 2% when you are in the higher tax bracket

do You mean people on benefits won’t have to worry about the age they’ll retire? No they won’t they have nothing to retire from.
they won’t have worry about money as being on benefits will give them access to lots of things!

Only when you reach the rest of uk high bracket, this is the discrepancy that I find unfair.

The irony of someone whose wages are paid out of the tax pot complaining about tax. And those wages are higher than the equivalent NHS grade in England.
I also work for the NHS and earn in the same range.

I earn £125K.

I voted Yes/Yes in the Devolution Referendum.

I've no problem paying the higher tax.

Do do you have spare cash each month? Cause many earning well - like OP - don’t. Sounds scandalous doesn’t it, but not when you factor in that most of the jobs with that sort of salary are in Edinburgh, an exceedingly expensive place to live. And you have to factor in mortgage and stamp duty, commuting costs etc. lots of people are being taxed heavily when they need that money for day to day expenses.

Thanks for this thread, reading about the latest scotgov budget has finally given me the push to look properly at my numbers following a recent promotion and plan some changes. I absolutely want to pay my fair share towards society, but I do not have super broad shoulders, I work hard to support my family and recent career progress, taking on a high level of responsibility, has put me squarely in the bracket who are most hit by the punitive difference in thresholds and fiscal drag.

numbers speak loudest. I was on 45k a year ago, now 60k, the increase in my monthly take home salary is £460pcm but the increase in my income tax&NI is £544pm. (Plus increase in student loan makes overall deductions other than pension £650). The governments see much more of my pay rise than I do.

That’s not reasonable in my view. So I am changing my salary sacrifice pension contribution % significantly (will review this in 2029 but think will still be worth it) I will still contribute more than most to the pot but I’ve had enough. By upping my contributions I can get back to my previous take home pay which I can live on and bolster my pension significantly, rather than pouring most of my pay rise into the piggy bank of the current incompetent government to squander.

I just shovelled a load more into my pension scheme as that’s a tax efficient way of saving. Also my higher salary allowed me to drop to 4 days a week so that was another bonus. There are lots of reasons why earning a higher salary is more beneficial.

Baby boxes
Child / new baby payment which is set to increase
Raising the tax free amount for everyone which is set to rise by 7% and will make my family £96 better off a month.
Free books to all childen until age 5.

I am not saying these are all brilliant but it is stuff England doesn't have and probably where the money goes - although you specifically might not see it. I think it's all about improving outcomes for children. I am not an SNP supporter fyi - just what I have noticed.

For those earning in that bracket, it is jarring, fine for those earning a lot more to say that they are happy to pay it but if you earn in the 50 000s it is a huge deduction and you cant just opt out of your pension for a small part of your earnings. I, like many others, just put extra in to pensions - if you are NHS in Scotland, you can pay AVCs with Standard Life, I do wonder how much extra tax is missed by people loading their pensions to avoid this cliff edge?

It’s terrible.why should we pay more than if we lived in England for the same wage? Why is Scotland’s economy and social services so rubbish ( worse than England and I have lived both). Why don’t they concentrate on growth. Why are most people working part time or not at all in Scotland. do people realise how few percentage of the population works in Scotland.how many pensioners. The snp are a disgrace. Also people are so economically illiterate in general they don’t even realise the Scottish government is robbing workers with frozen bands and NI marginal tax rates. Why is the infrastructure falling to bits.Scotland under devolution is going down hill fast. Whenever you say anything people say they are happy to be robbed sorry I mean contribute more for baby boxes and benefits. Seriously the money is being squandered by economically illiterate SNP. most people who are happy with the tax system are net beneficiaries.

The snp have done the same calculation as Labour - between the net beneficiaries and public sector, that’s a solid majority.

I recently hit the same level of annual pension income projection I’d get on pension income
support after nearly 30 years of work - and I have about the average dc pot for my age. That’s a problem for the govt too that work doesn’t even pay for most people in dc schemes when it comes to pension savings.

both parties like to say we’re all in it together but where’s the evidence of that? Nothing has improved for middle to higher rate private sector tax payers in years now.

Yep it’s crap. We don’t have enough people earning or earning reasonable salaries so the Scottish government whilst earning much more themselves view people on middle income “rich”. On the plus side I’m looking into going part time to bring my wages below the threshold, it won’t be that much of a drop in take home

If you have kids expecting to go to university and live in Scotland then I’d suck it up! Your taxes help you get free university education - that’s worth a great deal of money!

But the only way this taxing of working people while they get less and less wlll change is if we start taxing wealth!!

Totally agree with you, OP. People are not understanding your point as they are not in Scotland. We are taxed to the hilt and public services are appalling. Yet people still seem to choose to vote for the SNP

There aren’t that many truly wealthy people in Scotland. There really aren’t. There’s not a magic money tree out there. If you want better services, increase the basic income tax by 10% and stop giving so much money away in free tuition and Scottish child payments. If you don’t want to do that, accept the shite public services.

They could stop giving all ten year olds screens .

Have you seen the headlines from the Scottish university sector? But hey, at least it’s ‘free’…

You’ve articulated so well my feelings- I’m happy to pay tax and contribute despite some posters impressions that I’m not. However it should be fair and proportional. Within this bracket it isn’t, maybe if I was earning well above this threshold I wouldn’t notice so much.

I am happy to earn more and pay a load of tax (150k last year), but am unhappy in how it's spent and how others who have more can often pay less. It's the basic unfairness of it all. There should really be one flat rate, with those in lower/no incomes getting credit.

The issue I have with the way it’s spend is that spend is concentrated on optional extras without the basic public services being met.

You cannot spend money messing around with overseas embassies, higher rate DLA equivalent, mad court cases trying to illegally rip rights from women, spending loads on a Scottish nhs app (when there’s a perfectly good UK nhs app you could use), baby boxes, tuition fees, Scottish child payments etc when there is a 2 year waiting list for hip replacements, where attainment in schools is plummeting and violence is soaring, where CAMHS is non existent, where people are regularly getting killed on the lethal A9, libraries and swimming pools are closing etc etc. basic public services not being provided. The only departments that got more money were health and benefits, and the health increases were nearly entirely swallowed up by BMA pay demands that the Scottish government rolled over and paid.

There are no plans to attract investment and grow the economy - I truly think this is way beyond the competence of the SNP anyway - they’re like rabbits in the headlights here, utterly clueless.

Why waste money on nice to haves when the essentials are not being provided? There are plenty of higher rate taxpayers who don’t need baby boxes etc, are ineligible for child payments etc who see ever higher taxes going to fund things that they don’t benefit from while the things they need aren’t there. No wonder they’re pissed off.

100% agree