We're All In This Together .....

[ahinton]

Is a précis possible please, ahinton? :erm:

Mais bien sur!

Teamsaint and others should check their facts and figures before making pronouncements about rates of taxes on income and which kinds of earner generates the greater amounts of NIC liabilities.

I don't imagine that you need a précis of the final two paragraphs...

[John Skelton]

Whilst I have no doubt that there are indeed some people who would try to get of of paying every penny of tax, there are far more who dont mind paying what they see as a fair amount but resent being expectged to pay anexcessive amount and therefore don't do so.

Oh. Well I have very little doubt that the people who supposedly will hop on a plane to Dubai or 'Asia' if the 50p top rate of tax isn't scrapped don't make such distinctions and would do their damnedest to pay as little tax as they can get away with / 'plan', whatever the rate. The idea that a process associated with 'fair amounts' goes on inside their ... consciousnesses? souls perhaps? seems to me a fantastically starry eyed and idealistic one. But it's good of you to take such a generous view :smiley:.

[amateur51]

Mais bien sur!

Teamsaint and others should check their facts and figures before making pronouncements about rates of taxes on income and which kinds of earner generates the greater amounts of NIC liabilities.

I don't imagine that you need a précis of the final two paragraphs...

Perfick, juss perfick! :ok::laugh:

Many thanks

[Serial_Apologist]

Perfick, juss perfick! :ok::laugh:

Many thanks

If nothing else (eg BBC R3 commissions) AH could always set up as a tax consultant.

[teamsaint]

choose your tax statistics carefully, and you will find the result you want.
Low end self employed get hit hard by NIC........2 types.

As for ahintons point about other non income tax liabilities for the well off, he well knows that almost all of these, except perhaps inheritance tax, are pretty "regressive", at least according to most observers, so hit the very well off in a modest way.

The very wealthy in our country do very well because
a) the maze of reliefs and avoidance mechanisms make taxes on income and corporate profits much less progressive than they in fact ought to be.
b)taxes on property, which ought to constitute a greater part of the mix in my view, are very modest. Our tax is mostly gathered on spending and PAYE.

The problem with income tax is that until it is part of a simpler , less avoidable system of tax collection, rates need to be higher than they could be.(as actually I don't believe in high rates of tax, since the governments who collect them are pretty untrustworthy).But i do believe in the rich paying more, pro rata, than others.

Oh and an income over £150 k PA looks pretty pampered from where I am sitting.
But then I don't run two or three homes, and have boarding school fees to pay.
Just a mortgage and three kids to pay for at university on UK average wages. Nice.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/images/u...rib_report.png



a view of where the pennies fall from the Archbishop of York

[teamsaint]

There are some interesting slants in how the archbishops report is presented.
It shows, for instance, the proportion of income tax paid by the top 1%, but not the proportion of income they enjoy, or their total tax contribution compared to their income. This is misleading.

It also shows national debt increasing rapidly in recent years, and draws the conclusion that taxes must rise or spending fall.....failing to mention that the root cause of the debt increase was the bail out of the banks, and the recession caused by the credit crunch.

anyway, take from it what you want, statistics can prove anything.
The rich are getting richer, which is both unfair, and bad for society.

[ahinton]

Oh. Well I have very little doubt that the people who supposedly will hop on a plane to Dubai or 'Asia' if the 50p top rate of tax isn't scrapped don't make such distinctions and would do their damnedest to pay as little tax as they can get away with / 'plan', whatever the rate. The idea that a process associated with 'fair amounts' goes on inside their ... consciousnesses? souls perhaps? seems to me a fantastically starry eyed and idealistic one. But it's good of you to take such a generous view :smiley:.

But as you yourself said (or was it someone else?) in this thread, not all of those who resent such high rates of tax on incomes as pertain in Britain today will "hop on a plane to Dubai or 'Asia'), so we're talking not just about one particular group of disgruntled highest rate taxpayers but about all highest rate taxpayers. One person to whom I spoke not long ago told me that he had paid nearly £100,000 in taxes on income in the previous tgax year and that he'd implemented very little planning to reduce this sum as he'd not expected to receive anything like as much income as he did ultimately receive; he added that he felt that £60,000 or so would have been a fairer gigure and he'd not have complained about that but, as he'd paid tens of thousands more than that, he'd be implementing planning to get some of the excess back and ensure that his next tax bill would be more reasonable. That's only one case, I admit, but I'm sure that there's no great shortage of othes who take a not dissimilar view.

[ahinton]

There are some interesting slants in how the archbishops report is presented.
It shows, for instance, the proportion of income tax paid by the top 1%, but not the proportion of income they enjoy, or their total tax contribution compared to their income. This is misleading.

It also shows national debt increasing rapidly in recent years, and draws the conclusion that taxes must rise or spending fall.....failing to mention that the root cause of the debt increase was the bail out of the banks, and the recession caused by the credit crunch.

Taxes quite simply cannot rise to the point at which they would generate sufficient revenue to redeem Britain's debt; were they to rise sufficiently to meet (in theory) even 10% of that debt over the next couple of years, tax revenues would actually fall dramatically as such a measure would put people out of business, thereby not only reducing liabilities for tax on incomes but also increasing the benefit burden.

The rich are getting richer, which is both unfair, and bad for society.

Not all of them - oh, no siree!

[ahinton]

If nothing else (eg BBC R3 commissions) AH could always set up as a tax consultant.

God forbid (and lack of any appropriate qualifications or motivation in that field will do so if He doesn't)! All I did was cite examples of an employed and a self-employed person with a £200,000 annual taxable earned income and do a few very simple sums!

[teamsaint]

[QUOTE=ahinton;136849]Taxes quite simply cannot rise to the point at which they would generate sufficient revenue to redeem Britain's debt; were they to rise sufficiently to meet (in theory) even 10% of that debt over the next couple of years, tax revenues would actually fall dramatically as such a measure would put people out of business, thereby not only reducing liabilities for tax on incomes but also increasing the benefit burden.


but no one is really talking about shifting the debt burden.(although the government try to sound like they are).The only realistic goal is to get public spending and expenditure somewhere vaguely near balance over the medium term.
Anyway, my point was that these stats are disingenuous........the cause of the rapid spike in national debt was the banking crisis.This is a critical point.the spike is NOT in any major way down to a particular party.

[ahinton]

choose your tax statistics carefully, and you will find the result you want.

I didn't "choose" "statistics"; I simply used a tax rate card and did some simple arithmetic to show the liability for tax on earned income for an employee and a self-employed sole trader whose annual gross salary and taxable profits respectively totalled £200,000!

[QUOTE=teamsaint;136797]Low end self employed get hit hard by NIC........2 types.
Everyone gets hit hard; however, you omit to provide any argument against my example above which shows that, at least at £200Kp.a., the self-employed person generates much less NIC liability than does an employee.

As for ahintons point about other non income tax liabilities for the well off, he well knows that almost all of these, except perhaps inheritance tax, are pretty "regressive", at least according to most observers, so hit the very well off in a modest way.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "regressive" in this context, CGT and IHT, for example, have no upper limits any more than income tax or NIC and the extent to which any hit the "well off" (who are they, in the sense of the threshold of income and asset values?) is determined by the maximum percentages at which they are levied, subject to careful planning on the part of the taxpayer (for instance, CGT is chargeable only upon disposal of assets, so if a taxpayers hangs onto them, no such tax is attracted).

The very wealthy in our country do very well because
a) the maze of reliefs and avoidance mechanisms make taxes on income and corporate profits much less progressive than they in fact ought to be.

Many of these reliefs are available to lower paid people as well, as I mentioned previously when referring to ISAs and pension contributions, on the latter of which reliefs for thebetter off have been slashed considerably in recent times.

b)taxes on property, which ought to constitute a greater part of the mix in my view, are very modest. Our tax is mostly gathered on spending and PAYE.

Whilst quite a substantial amount of tax is gathered that way (though not PAYE for those poor long-suffering self-employed, of course - of whom I am one, incidentally) and whilst it's hard not to agree in principle that property taxes are not graded in line with their values, if they were increased in that way, many people would be unable to afford them and would have to sell their properties, which would mean that their value would decrease and the government would then get less tax out of their new owners.

The problem with income tax is that until it is part of a simpler , less avoidable system of tax collection, rates need to be higher than they could be.

Rates need to be lower than they are and they could be reduced a little simply by merging NIC with income tax and simplfying the resultant merged system, because the cost of running the tax system would fall greatly; how, though could you (or anyone) make taxes less avoidable?

But i do believe in the rich paying more, pro rata, than others.

But they do - as the rates I quoted earlier demonstrate! (except in cases of substantial avoidance and, even then, the fees paid by higest rate taxpayers to their tax advisers themselves generate extra tax revenues from those advisers' incomes.

Oh and an income over £150 k PA looks pretty pampered from where I am sitting.

Gross or net? Big difference...

But then I don't run two or three homes, and have boarding school fees to pay.

Some people do the former for work reasons and some also board children at school for the same reasons; would you therefore close all boarding schools and insist that no one must have more than one residence from which they work or travel to work?

Just a mortgage and three kids to pay for at university on UK average wages. Nice.

Not nice at all - as of course you meant!

[ahinton]

[QUOTE=teamsaint;136855][QUOTE=ahinton;136849]Taxes quite simply cannot rise to the point at which they would generate sufficient revenue to redeem Britain's debt; were they to rise sufficiently to meet (in theory) even 10% of that debt over the next couple of years, tax revenues would actually fall dramatically as such a measure would put people out of business, thereby not only reducing liabilities for tax on incomes but also increasing the benefit burden.
but no one is really talking about shifting the debt burden.(although the government try to sound like they are).[/quote
Have a look at your post from which I quoted!

The only realistic goal is to get public spending and expenditure somewhere vaguely near balance over the medium term.

Sure, but do you have any iodeas as to how to achieve that? You could make swingeing cuts in public expenditure and the nation would still be in substantial hock.

Anyway, my point was that these stats are disingenuous........the cause of the rapid spike in national debt was the banking crisis.This is a critical point.the spike is NOT in any major way down to a particular party.

Broadly speaking, that's correct - but it still has to be resolved somehow.

[teamsaint]

[QUOTE=ahinton;136856]I didn't "choose" "statistics"; I simply used a tax rate card and did some simple arithmetic to show the liability for tax on earned income for an employee and a self-employed sole trader whose annual gross salary and taxable profits respectively totalled £200,000!

Low end self employed get hit hard by NIC........2 types.
Everyone gets hit hard; however, you omit to provide any argument against my example above which shows that, at least at £200Kp.a., the self-employed person generates much less NIC liability than does an employee.


I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "regressive" in this context, CGT and IHT, for example, have no upper limits any more than income tax or NIC and the extent to which any hit the "well off" (who are they, in the sense of the threshold of income and asset values?) is determined by the maximum percentages at which they are levied, subject to careful planning on the part of the taxpayer (for instance, CGT is chargeable only upon disposal of assets, so if a taxpayers hangs onto them, no such tax is attracted).


Many of these reliefs are available to lower paid people as well, as I mentioned previously when referring to ISAs and pension contributions, on the latter of which reliefs for thebetter off have been slashed considerably in recent times.

Whilst quite a substantial amount of tax is gathered that way (though not PAYE for those poor long-suffering self-employed, of course - of whom I am one, incidentally) and whilst it's hard not to agree in principle that property taxes are not graded in line with their values, if they were increased in that way, many people would be unable to afford them and would have to sell their properties, which would mean that their value would decrease and the government would then get less tax out of their new owners.


Rates need to be lower than they are and they could be reduced a little simply by merging NIC with income tax and simplfying the resultant merged system, because the cost of running the tax system would fall greatly; how, though could you (or anyone) make taxes less avoidable?


But they do - as the rates I quoted earlier demonstrate! (except in cases of substantial avoidance and, even then, the fees paid by higest rate taxpayers to their tax advisers themselves generate extra tax revenues from those advisers' incomes.


Gross or net? Big difference...


Some people do the former for work reasons and some also board children at school for the same reasons; would you therefore close all boarding schools and insist that no one must have more than one residence from which they work or travel to work?


Not nice at all - as of course you meant!

brass band concert to get to. Bound to be some Holst !! £3. Even I can afford that !!
look forward to resuming this later.I don't really understand why you seem to think we are so far apart.
I believe on low taxes, fair taxes (which means the rich pay more than others) and good, no very good public services.
Believing in low taxes, (where it is possible) is not the same as wanting the rich to carry on tearing this country apart with their greed.
Where there is a will........

[Lateralthinking1]

Surely it is simple. Those who are paying their taxes and don't like the situation can go elsewhere if they wish. Those who aren't paying their taxes and decide to go elsewhere should be arrested at the airport and taken to court.

It is claimed our tax rates are the fourth highest in the world. I'm not sure whether I believe this.

If I did, I might ask what good has been done by lower tax rates in the vast majority of countries with economies in an even worse state than ours. The evidence for any close correlation between low tax rates and prosperity seems flimsy.