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

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

we did not run out of rich people between 1945 and 1951 .... or later but they were not happy and invested in the tories to reverse their fortunes ... from 51 to 63

if we are in a black hole of debt with an accelerating deficit of expenditure over income for the governments accounts then paying more tax is not an option it is a requirement ... as also is a fairness of contribution to the national emergency ..... [or is it just a doctrinaire view of public spending?] .... i will give the coalition the benefit of the doubt since i think the Cabinet Secretary and the Governor of the Bank of England gave them serious willies before they agreed to form the government ... as it is a National Emergency normal ideologies can be left on the outskirts of town it seems to me ... [and not before time there are some seriously crap theories in economics about money tax and societies ...]

the national debt is a scary number

this is a useful summary of financial data on the debt and deficit even tho it is the graun

Alasdair Darling come back please ....

this is a useful reference

on the whole it seems to me that what the government gives with one tax break it takes back with another abolished allowance so it is much more not how much but how would you like to pay ....

[teamsaint]

as I have said before, the complexity of our tax laws is the rich person's friend.

[ahinton]

No. The rich, whether they be the Duke of Westminster or a footballer or the man paid a huge bonus for losing his company several million pounds, have an annual income, which would be taxed (the clue is in the name 'income tax'). When they are taxed in one year they still get the same amount of money (or thereabouts) the following year. They would not become 'no longer rich'. The Duke will still have huge properties in London which provide him with a massive income, the footballer will still be kicking a ball about (leaving asside injury etc) and the director will still be paid his bonus.

Well, the Duke of Westminster is a pretty high asset and income example, to be sure, but he's surely one onf a majority of such people who'd simply sell his property portfolio to an offshore location if the threatened tax take got too high.

[ahinton]

Mind, it wouldn't be such a bad thing if ahinton was right. :smiley:

Oh, yes it would!

Just think if, across the world, governments were prepared to tax rich people till their pips squeaked, instead of saying, "Aah - does your government take all your money away from you? Poor diddums! Come here to our country: we'll make you welcome". Then we'd have a situation in which the ability to run a business was treated just as another skill, like being a lathe operator, and chairpersons and managing directors could take in pride in giving of their god-given skills to the community in return for a modicum of a better lifestyle for putting in the years of promotion and acquiring experience, and being thereby appreciated by the community instead of envied.

If governments across the world were all prepared to do this (which would never happen, because if even quite a few did it, the rest would be welcoming all those tax exiles and making a not at all small fortune out of their relocation into the welcoming arms), those rich enough would just get together and either buy a few of them up or form their own; being rich enough to buy a country is by no means an impossibility for a few and even less of one if a bunch of the wealthiest people were to react against being taxed to pieces by clubbing together to do it.

Wasn't it Neil Kinnock who once said that the benefit of high taxes to the rich was to surround them with a safe society in which they would have no need to shut themselves away in gated communities with thugs, guard dogs and CCTV to keep the marauding hoards at bay? I think it was Kinnock, because I remember that as being the one sensible thing he ever said.

It might have been; I have no idea. Whoever it may have been, it doesn't make much sense to me, because he was talking about the benefit to high taxpayers of high taxes and it wasn't even true anyway, for if some low income and asset holding people know that they have high taxpayers in their midst, those high taxpayers will almost certainly still risk requiring at least some of those security measures, especially as long as rampant resentment of them by the poorer in the community continues to be encouraged.

[ahinton]

as I have said before, the complexity of our tax laws is the rich person's friend.

Yes, you have said it before and it was as wrong when you did as it is when you repeat it now. The undue complexity of British tax laws - on which I agree with you entirely, by the way - is the rich and the poor person's enemy (and that of every0one in between), especially when it gives rise to costly and embarrassing errors and incompetence on a grand scale on the part of HMRC; almost no one benefits from it other than that tiny handful of people who use it in order to exploit specific loopholes unnoticed while so many others make use of much larger and more obvious loopholes the advantaging from which is not specifically dependent upon HMRC's routine mismanagement of tax complexities.

[Flosshilde]

ahinton, all your comments & arguments strongly suggest that you believe that taxation is an inefficient & unwelcome method for the government to raise funds. How do you suggest they should raise the money they need, or do you, like the extreme Republicans in the USA, believe that government expenditure is a bad thing?

[ahinton]

ahinton, all your comments & arguments strongly suggest that you believe that taxation is an inefficient & unwelcome method for the government to raise funds. How do you suggest they should raise the money they need, or do you, like the extreme Republicans in the USA, believe that government expenditure is a bad thing?

That's not the case. It is the inspection, collection, general administration and sheer unbridled complexity of taxation arrangements in Britain today are inefficient, unwelcome and unwarrantably costly and taxpyers from the poorest to the richest could and would benefit from its massive simplification, not least by abolishing NIC and absorbing this into income tax. Other taxes could be simplified as well, for the general benefit of taxpayers at all levels. The government is unable to raise sufficiet funds from taxation any more in any case and is accordingly resorting to borrowing on a massive scale, to such an extent that state benefits are now partly funded out of borrowings as the tax take just won't do it on its own; do you think that this is good? The government simply cannot raise sufficient monies to fund its policies without the need to borrow, because taxpayers just don't have enough to part with in order to make that possible. I do not believe in principle that government expenditure is a bad thing, for all that too much of it is all too often mismanaged and allocated unwisely, but the goverment has no funds of its won and has to depend on what it can reasonably expect to extract from the taxpayer and when, as now, that's nowhere near enough, it has to borrow on a massive scale as it is now doing. If those who lend to the British govermnet stop doing so because they come to see Britain as a bad financial risk, Britain will be in deep trouble; fortunately, we're nowhere near that stage yet and plenty of other nations are well in front of us in that Gadarene queue.

[teamsaint]

Yes, you have said it before and it was as wrong when you did as it is when you repeat it now. The undue complexity of British tax laws - on which I agree with you entirely, by the way - is the rich and the poor person's enemy (and that of every0one in between), especially when it gives rise to costly and embarrassing errors and incompetence on a grand scale on the part of HMRC; almost no one benefits from it other than that tiny handful of people who use it in order to exploit specific loopholes unnoticed while so many others make use of much larger and more obvious loopholes the advantaging from which is not specifically dependent upon HMRC's routine mismanagement of tax complexities.

I didn't ever suggest that tax law complexity was good for the less well off, only that it provides great assistance to the (very) well off.

Tax simplicity would be good for (vitually)everyone, and could lead to lower rates for all, to ALL our benefits.

However, while the laws are as complex as they are, I think we need to keep higher rates for the very well off.

As for the very wealthiest, i mean the top 0.1% perhaps, i suspect that the scale of avoidance (and evasion) is so great that it might be very hard to judge how they would fare under a simpler regime. My suspicion is strongly that the current system is kept in place because it works for them.

[ahinton]

I didn't ever suggest that tax law complexity was good for the less well off, only that it provides great assistance to the (very) well off.

I know that you didn't do that; what I did, however, was to observe that it's bad news for every taxpayer and provides no obvious guaranteed advantage for any of them, even if a tiny handful of taxpayers at all income levels happen to manage to take advantage of certain of those complexities.

Tax simplicity would be good for (vitually)everyone, and could lead to lower rates for all, to ALL our benefits.

We're 100% in agreement over this; the only people who would be disadvantaged by it are tax advisers who will still have a rôle to fulfil but with much less work to do.

However, while the laws are as complex as they are, I think we need to keep higher rates for the very well off.

Why? That's the most unsound and, indeed, bizarre attempt to justify high rates for the very well off that I have ever hard! After all, the current complexities of the tax system against which we both rail are hardly the fault of individual taxpayers, whatever their individual tax liabilities might be at any time.

As for the very wealthiest, i mean the top 0.1% perhaps, i suspect that the scale of avoidance (and evasion) is so great that it might be very hard to judge how they would fare under a simpler regime. My suspicion is strongly that the current system is kept in place because it works for them.

But you'd have first to be able to provide sufficient incontrovertible evidence that this really is the case in order to try to justify such a stance and I am reasonably confident that you can no more do that than I can. The first thing that anyone attempting such a task would have to do is ascertain just how much tax revenue is generated by that top 0.1% of the taxpaying population and, whilst I do not have that figure to hand any more than you do, I suspect that it is not a significantly large proportion of total national tax revenues.

Clearly, more tax is avoided by the better off than by the worse off, but this is simply because there's more tax for them to avoid. As to the scale of evasion, that's far harder to ascertain because it involves no legitimate tax planning or avoidance measures and is therefore not amenable to assessment until the amounts are discovered when the perpetrators are found out, because all tax evasion represents a breach of the law.

[teamsaint]

However, while the laws are as complex as they are, I think we need to keep higher rates for the very well off.

Why? That's the most unsound and, indeed, bizarre attempt to justify high rates for the very well off that I have ever hard! After all, the current complexities of the tax system against which we both rail are hardly the fault of individual taxpayers, whatever their individual tax liabilities might be at any time.

It might help keep pressure on policy makers until a bette,r simpler, fairer system could be put in place.

[ahinton]

However, while the laws are as complex as they are, I think we need to keep higher rates for the very well off.

Why? That's the most unsound and, indeed, bizarre attempt to justify high rates for the very well off that I have ever hard! After all, the current complexities of the tax system against which we both rail are hardly the fault of individual taxpayers, whatever their individual tax liabilities might be at any time.

It might help keep pressure on policy makers until a bette,r simpler, fairer system could be put in place.

You're confusing readers here! The first and third paragraphs above are yours and the middle one mine.

I do not for the life of me see how maintaining the highest rates of tax as a kind of threat to policymakers with a view to persuading them to simply the tax system, because it would be those very policymakers who would be charged with the responsibility to keep those tax rates high until they - er - there's a hole in my bucket, dear za, dear Liza...

[teamsaint]

sorry about the quote thing......trying to avoid quoting complete posts and failed !!

I disagree. I think that policy makers respond to the pleadings of those with the money.

If those very rich, very powerful people REALLY believe that lower tax rates are good for everybody, then they need a push to get the simpler, generally lower rate system that you and I both think would work.Until then, I think they will continue to "work" the current complex system.
If we just lower rates, and hope that politicians will simplify the system, I am afraid it will never happen.

But sadly, its an academic argument , because a more efficient system is just a pipe dream.

[ahinton]

sorry about the quote thing......trying to avoid quoting complete posts and failed !!

Don't worry about it!

I disagree. I think that policy makers respond to the pleadings of those with the money.

Even if that were to be true in all cases in the matter of taxation policy, my point still stands that those policymakers who keep the rates high are those self-same ones who would be simplfying the system if only they would make up their minds to do so, unless you really think that "those with the money" would rather that those policymakers maintained the high rates and leave them to outlay fortunes on their tax advisers ensuring that they didn't suffer from them unduly, a notion that I simply do not buy; I'm certain that most if not all highest rate taxpayers would be happier is the tax system were to be fundamentally simplified so that the rates could be lowered as a direct consequence of the cost saving arising therefrom and they could also cut the amounts that they need to pay to their tax advisers.

If those very rich, very powerful people REALLY believe that lower tax rates are good for everybody, then they need a push to get the simpler, generally lower rate system that you and I both think would work.Until then, I think they will continue to "work" the current complex system.

If we just lower rates, and hope that politicians will simplify the system, I am afraid it will never happen.

But sadly, its an academic argument , because a more efficient system is just a pipe dream.

Everyone will continue to "work" whatever the current system may be, however simplified it might become, although the simpler it is the less room for such manouvering or indeed motivation to "work" it there will be. I agree that there has to be a massive thrust towards simplifying the system as a no. 1 priority (and the same applies to the benefits system) and let's hope that it is more than the mere pipe-dream that you fear.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a reminder for Nick Danny George and Dave just how much some of us are in it ..... and where we live so you can worry about the votes boyos

[ahinton]

a reminder for Nick Danny George and Dave just how much some of us are in it ..... and where we live so you can worry about the votes boyos

"Worry about the votes"? All that they'll "worry about" on that front is where to make the boundary changes that they perceive would best suit their agendas - and this data will surely help them with that quite considerably! - and lete's not forget that, as a rule, higher proportions of those caught in any one or more of those poverty traps are less likely to cast their vote at all than those who are not.

A few surprises on the table there - two that stand out to me are that Herefordshire is so far away from high risks and that Solihull isn't a good deal farther away from them.