It is now obvious that my income is completely pathetic when compared with the finances of many, perhaps most, of you here.
It's quite telling that PB spends more time discussing the tax rates on high earners than say PIP or ADP, despite the relative number of people the two things affect.
I'm guilty of this too in my own analysis of taxes and benefits - I never weight it by income decile and end up with an equal number of paragraphs and figures on each bracket.
It is now obvious that my income is completely pathetic when compared with the finances of many, perhaps most, of you here.
Oh, I don't know. My income is pretty low, but that's of my own choice, and it's enough for my needs. I get to spend my days doing pretty much what I like, and I'm far happier for it. Life is too precious to spend it doing stuff you don't want to do.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
Lots of idiots don't realise that many people on 30K can be better off than some on 100K who may well have far more outgoings/loans etc. Best off are those on benefits who get free house, free council tax and a pay every week with no taxation whatsoever, they never need worry about losing their jobs as others are paying for their lifestyles.
Banks and Credit Card companies certainly have an issue distinguishing between income and assets. Both my wife and myself have retired and by most peoples standards we are very well off, but we have practically no income and are not drawing on our pensions (other than to use up the personal allowance) because we don't need to. Trying to be accepted for a credit card or fill in any form sensibly that asks for income details is a nightmare, even when you start speaking to a human.
Same reason I dread another bookmaker affordability check.
On topic, you need to be very careful about tax and spend polling, as you get wildly different results depending on how the question is framed. This one has an element of "Do you believe the Government should prioritise public services... or are you a selfish arsehole?"
If Hunt does go for tax cuts, he's not going to frame it as, "I'm sacking nurses so bankers can have extra jam!" He'll say something like, "We're targeting waste, and have an economic plan that is working, so I'm delighted to be able to say that, as well as record spending on schools and hospitals, I can give something back to you, the hardworking families of Britain."
Others will try to frame it differently, of course - but Hunt gets first go at it, and has a fair bit of the press onside.
Additionally, Conservatives will reason, not without justification, that people are in fact rather more selfish than they admit to pollsters.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
I've been in this situation for years, yet despite being a woke lefty who no doubt hates Britain I am happy to contribute to our national coffers and have no intention of leaving. PB flag shaggers please explain!
One has to try not to get knocked down in the Gadarene stampede of Brexiters throwing petrol and lit matches around and then screaming 'Fire!' in a crowded auditorium and rushing for the exit.
The real tragedy is that you think this is a clever and witty post.
The 100k personal allowance withdrawal policy was brought in during 2009.
It's not meant to be clever and witty. It's entirely serious in its sarcasm. Have you no idea how offensive the rush to the exit by the Brexiters is? They got what they wanted, now they want to leave the rest of us in their mess?
As for the 100K allowance, (a) the lower end needs to be sorted out with even greater urgency, and (b) who's been in power since 2010? Not the woke libtards you seem to blame.
The only person mentioning Brexit and woke libtards is you. I'm surprised your resident anglophobia hasn't crept into this yet, but no doubt that's coming.
The 100k allowance withdrawal policy was introduced by the Brown government, which you seem to reluctantly admit, and, yes, I have criticised the present administration for not reversing it.
It must be sad living inside your head in an endless sea of blind prejudice and scapegoats. Maybe consider getting some help.
Two things are true: 1. We are living with the costs of Brexit. Realised, genuine costs. Trying to import the food we need to eat is slow and expensive post 31st January and its only going to get slower and more expensive from here 2. Voters have moved on from Brexit, so "Remainer" and "Brexiteer" labels are redundant.
Brexit doesn't pay your bills - few people are so triggered by it as to change their vote accordingly now.
The main thing we are living with is the cost of ageing demographics. I don’t see any way out of this (lack of) death spiral.
Something we all learned about as a theory in GCSE Geography but actually happening now. Rather like climate change and equally or more difficult to reverse.
We thought the UK public finances were less exposed than our continental neighbours because our pensions system is largely privatised, and in that sense they are, but we reckoned without the escalating cost of health and social care and the shrinking workforce able to support it.
We - by which I mean the entire West, and China and most of Asia, and Russia, and most of Latin America, in fact everywhere apart from Africa and the Middle East - are demographically screwed.
Except, AI
I know I keep banging on about it, but I am like someone banging on about the car in the 1900s, when everyone else is worried about the impossible management of all this horse dung
We cannot know what AI will do, but we can make highly educated guesses and at the top of the guess list is "AI will replace many many jobs", meaning demography becomes MUCH less of an issue, just as horse manure paled away as a problem really quite swiftly, once the car and the engine arrived
AI can do certain things better than humans, I get that, but can it do anything useful?
Looking at my biggest expenditures, Can it bring my food shopping bill down? Can it bring the cost of electricity down? Can it reduce my bill for landline, broadband and TV? Can it bring down my council tax? Can it make my mobile phone cheaper?
If it can't do any of those, what use is it, really?
Let's go thrpugh the list
1. Yes, food, almost certainly - you will have an AI sisstant which will work out your food spending much better than you, and order it online 2. Yes, energy, probably, for similar reasons - running your household more efficently 3. Maybe, TV, same reason - seeking out the best deals - also AI will deliver this stuff more efficiently, from the other end, movies and drama will be made for pennies = Netflix charging less 4. Dunno, weird, no one can say, too many imponderables 5. Yes, it will make this stuff basically free
So that's Yes Yes Maybe Dunno Yes, and that's in the short-medium term - 5 years?
Long term it will transform humanity in ways which make all this irrelevant, for good or ill
So it wont be long before people are asking their AI
"What the hell have you ordered that for ?"
It will be great tho. There will be apps that run your entire life, like a brilliant butler
They will talk to you, and say, what do you fancy eating tonight?, and you will tell them, and it will order all the ingredients for you, and get them delivered, then it will ask you how you are feeling, are you sad about being dumped, and it will cheer you up, and tell you jokes, and give you good advice, and then it will tell you it's found a cheaper energy network, shall we move? And you will say Yes, let's save money, then it will ask you if you want your favourite novel turned into an instant movie, but starring your ex girlfriend, nude, and you will agree...
The worry must be that no one will ever go out and meet actual humans, as the AI will be much better company
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
I've been trading for 3.5 years and the amount I have put into a pension in that time is zero. Is that ideal? No, but I've started 2 businesses, needed both to pay the bills and have working capital, so pension contribution was bottom of the pile.
There seems to be this impression that small business owners are living it large. I wish that was true...
Mr. (Ms?) jb, if it makes you feel any better, I'm also quite some distance from £100k tax rates being a problem.
It is also worth noting that this is quite an old site now, in terms of its inception and the age of its commenters
When I first started on here my income was much closer to £0 than to £100,000. Indeed at times it was basically £0
Yes I remember watching you move gradually from one point to the other. I remember you posting about your books where you had sold some rights or another or it had got published in some country or whatever. It was nice to see.
As discussed before the mean for this site in both age and wealth is I suspect well above the mean.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
By working about one and a half times full time hours I've managed to get my pay for the year up to around 37k, which I think is somewhere between median and mean full time salary in the UK. I pay about a third of what's left after tax on rent
I spend much of my working day delivering Amazon packages, and letters from housing associations and the benefits office, to much bigger houses than mine where there's always someone in
Which clearly points to a failure of the jobs market and capitalism; right? Like, I don't know the situations of the people you deliver to, but I've worked in housing associations and local councils before and some people - due to illness, due to family situations, due to a myriad of things - cannot work. Those people shouldn't be left on the streets to perish, right, so the only alternative is a society that is built to allow them to live in comfort if not luxury.
The fact that you work and seem to not have that level of comfort has very little to do what the government is doing and much more to do with what it isn't doing - namely forcing Amazon, a giant conglomerate that not only runs a business but owns the digital marketplace for multiple forms of online interaction and takes a form of tax all of its own by allowing to use that digital marketplace (which once upon a time looked more like a digital commons), to pay you a decent wage for your work.
I also generally disagree with the attitude that work is necessarily a good thing. If we can automate more work, good, if there are more workers to do the work and therefore workers can work less, also good. That doesn't mean people should be paid less or get a lower standard of living - indeed if the production of material goods can be organised via automation it should produce a higher standard of living for people. It's the fact that the means of production are in private hands and they only care about profit that is the issue.
Mr. (Ms?) jb, if it makes you feel any better, I'm also quite some distance from £100k tax rates being a problem.
I'm not earning 100k, even in Euros, and I'm no longer subject to HMRC tax rates, but I have this human quality known as empathy, and I can recognise a counter-productive distortion of the tax system when I see one.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The reason the majority want more spent rather than tax cuts is that very few public services work (in the sense of providing an adequate service) and the standard excuse for the ineptitude is "cuts".
The real problems are much more complex involving poor management, unfocused thinking, absurd numbers of add- ons which have distracted from the original task, pointless bureaucracy and data collection, general inefficiency and laziness, ridiculous overheads arising from human resources, welfare and countless other well meaning interventions, etc etc.
These problems are not capable of easy resolution. Although considerable progress was made in the Osborne years where the size of the Civil Service was shrunk drastically, all of that good work has now been undone and then some. We pay more and more for services which are often producing less and less.
The idea that a bit more money could fix any of this is as pervasive as it is naive. But attitudes will not change before the election.
Of course, as a sound money hawk I have a whole series of other reasons why a government that is running an eyewatering deficit should not be cutting taxes outside a recession. But that, I accept, is a minority viewpoint.
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
Lots of idiots don't realise that many people on 30K can be better off than some on 100K who may well have far more outgoings/loans etc. Best off are those on benefits who get free house, free council tax and a pay every week with no taxation whatsoever, they never need worry about losing their jobs as others are paying for their lifestyles.
Banks and Credit Card companies certainly have an issue distinguishing between income and assets. Both my wife and myself have retired and by most peoples standards we are very well off, but we have practically no income and are not drawing on our pensions (other than to use up the personal allowance) because we don't need to. Trying to be accepted for a credit card or fill in any form sensibly that asks for income details is a nightmare, even when you start speaking to a human.
This entire discussion is descending into parody - am I being Poe'd here and just don't know?
I mean it's one banana, Michael, what could it cost, 10 dollars?!?
Point taken. It is a 1st world problem of the first order I agree. Not exactly breadline stuff. Bloody annoying though. Once upon a time I used to play the 0% credit card game and still have one to be paid off where credit cards would give me ridiculous credit limits and I would effectively borrow from them at 0% interest.
My wife made the mistake of cancelling most of her cards because they weren't being used anymore and then when she wanted a new one she couldn't get one. No income no card! Bonkers.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
You're missing the point. No one's asking you to feel sympathy for Casino - just recognise that incentives which tend to get people like him to move overseas don't work out to our advantage either.
If we prioritise the interests of the rich, it still won't help the average person. Yes, globalisation has increased in the last half century, but all the mechanisms to tax people and corporations still exist - governments just refuse to use them based on that very logic (if we did they'd just leave!). If you have Student Loans you have to tell SFE if you're going abroad and they still take your money - I don't see why the taxman shouldn't be able to as well. If an individual benefitted from public spending (in the form of growing up here with a NHS, national education, general operational road infrastructure and so on) then that, in part, helped get them to where they are as an adult - wherever they are.
Who's arguing we "prioritise the interests of the rich" ? Saying that we should remove a tax distortion is not that.
As far as taxing income from those resident abroad is concerned, only the US tries that. It's not a spectacular success. All that would do is ensure such people never return to the UK.
You're confusing what you would like in an ideal world run by you, with what is possible.
Saying "if we tax them more they'll just leave" is prioritising the rich. We don't say about poverty, for example, that we can't afford not to feed all the children in the UK that are going hungry (which is estimated to affect around 25% of households, roughly £3.7 million children) because it will make the country a worse place. But we bend over backwards to accommodate rich people and an ideology where they piss down on us and we should be grateful for that trickle.
They should stop ordering junk via deliveroo and just eats, stop smoking , bevvying, 85" teles then , UK is like a holiday camp nowadays, full of people wanting something for nothing. While the decent people have to work their socks off to pay for these people to live for free. There are obviously some really ill people , disabled etc but far too many getting a free lunch.
It is now obvious that my income is completely pathetic when compared with the finances of many, perhaps most, of you here.
"...Collectively we are richer than the UK norm, with some over the £1million mark, around three around the £10million mark, and I think one around the £50million mark...",
By working about one and a half times full time hours I've managed to get my pay for the year up to around 37k, which I think is somewhere between median and mean full time salary in the UK. I pay about a third of what's left after tax on rent
I spend much of my working day delivering Amazon packages, and letters from housing associations and the benefits office, to much bigger houses than mine where there's always someone in
Which clearly points to a failure of the jobs market and capitalism; right? Like, I don't know the situations of the people you deliver to, but I've worked in housing associations and local councils before and some people - due to illness, due to family situations, due to a myriad of things - cannot work. Those people shouldn't be left on the streets to perish, right, so the only alternative is a society that is built to allow them to live in comfort if not luxury.
The fact that you work and seem to not have that level of comfort has very little to do what the government is doing and much more to do with what it isn't doing - namely forcing Amazon, a giant conglomerate that not only runs a business but owns the digital marketplace for multiple forms of online interaction and takes a form of tax all of its own by allowing to use that digital marketplace (which once upon a time looked more like a digital commons), to pay you a decent wage for your work.
I also generally disagree with the attitude that work is necessarily a good thing. If we can automate more work, good, if there are more workers to do the work and therefore workers can work less, also good. That doesn't mean people should be paid less or get a lower standard of living - indeed if the production of material goods can be organised via automation it should produce a higher standard of living for people. It's the fact that the means of production are in private hands and they only care about profit that is the issue.
Work is definitely a good thing. My wife's medical condition makes it impossible for her to do a conventional job, and one consequence of this is a lack of time structure in her days, which is very important for good mental health.
It's very hard for people to find a way to do a little bit of work, and this shutting people out of work often leeds to a deterioration in their condition and quality of life.
So, yes, work is good - but like many good things, a little goes a long way.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
You're missing the point. No one's asking you to feel sympathy for Casino - just recognise that incentives which tend to get people like him to move overseas don't work out to our advantage either.
The £100k-£125k isn't the only ludicrous band, either. We also have the £50-£60k child benefit withdrawal and, of course, the benefits withdrawal when moving to work, which makes low paid work barely worth the effort.
The child benefit withdrawal was painful enough for me as the sole earner (wife presently a full time mum) but we needed every bit of money so had to suck it up rather than increasing my AVCs etc. I have a colleague now with three children earning around £55k gross who is putting the over £50k in AVCs and her husband, at a similar income, has dropped down to 4 days from 5 per week to also avoid the withdrawal of child benefit, so they're both just under £50k taxable income. So that particular policy, rather than saving the portion of £200 or so per month child benefit for the government is losing 50% roughly of whatever their earnings over £50k each would have been (almost certainly more than the child benefit that would be withdrawn).
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
If he had any sense he would move to God's country and have a mansion.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
You're missing the point. No one's asking you to feel sympathy for Casino - just recognise that incentives which tend to get people like him to move overseas don't work out to our advantage either.
The £100k-£125k isn't the only ludicrous band, either. We also have the £50-£60k child benefit withdrawal and, of course, the benefits withdrawal when moving to work, which makes low paid work barely worth the effort.
The child benefit withdrawal was painful enough for me as the sole earner (wife presently a full time mum) but we needed every bit of money so had to suck it up rather than increasing my AVCs etc. I have a colleague now with three children earning around £55k gross who is putting the over £50k in AVCs and her husband, at a similar income, has dropped down to 4 days from 5 per week to also avoid the withdrawal of child benefit, so they're both just under £50k taxable income. So that particular policy, rather than saving the portion of £200 or so per month child benefit for the government is losing 50% roughly of whatever their earnings over £50k each would have been (almost certainly more than the child benefit that would be withdrawn).
And there is the NI stuff that distorts the marginal rate.
As mentioned earlier the graph of the marginal rate goes up and down like a yo-yo and would not be difficult to smooth.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
You're missing the point. No one's asking you to feel sympathy for Casino - just recognise that incentives which tend to get people like him to move overseas don't work out to our advantage either.
If we prioritise the interests of the rich, it still won't help the average person. Yes, globalisation has increased in the last half century, but all the mechanisms to tax people and corporations still exist - governments just refuse to use them based on that very logic (if we did they'd just leave!). If you have Student Loans you have to tell SFE if you're going abroad and they still take your money - I don't see why the taxman shouldn't be able to as well. If an individual benefitted from public spending (in the form of growing up here with a NHS, national education, general operational road infrastructure and so on) then that, in part, helped get them to where they are as an adult - wherever they are.
Who's arguing we "prioritise the interests of the rich" ? Saying that we should remove a tax distortion is not that.
As far as taxing income from those resident abroad is concerned, only the US tries that. It's not a spectacular success. All that would do is ensure such people never return to the UK.
You're confusing what you would like in an ideal world run by you, with what is possible.
Saying "if we tax them more they'll just leave" is prioritising the rich. We don't say about poverty, for example, that we can't afford not to feed all the children in the UK that are going hungry (which is estimated to affect around 25% of households, roughly 3.7 million children) because it will make the country a worse place. But we bend over backwards to accommodate rich people and an ideology where they piss down on us and we should be grateful for that trickle.
They should stop ordering junk via deliveroo and just eats, stop smoking , bevvying, 85" teles then , UK is like a holiday camp nowadays, full of people wanting something for nothing. While the decent people have to work their socks off to pay for these people to live for free. There are obviously some really ill people , disabled etc but far too many getting a free lunch.
So poor people deserve it because they're feckless, whereas rich people all deserve every penny they earn and, in fact, it should be easier to keep all their money? The 3.7 million children that regularly go hungry is not a result of a systemic failure of our government or economic model but instead just people being thick?
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
The bit in bold doesn't necessarily follow. When I was younger, my wife and I both earned well, with a combined income of over £100k (and that was many years ago). But we continued living as we had as students - rented flat, small car and cheap holidays - while saving and investing the rest. You don't have to rush out and spend it as soon as you get it. It is largely thanks to the thrift of my younger self that I am now able to enjoy a relaxed lifestyle in my middle age. Far too many people feel that as soon as they are earning well, they need to up their outgoings to match. Don't. It's a trap.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
By working about one and a half times full time hours I've managed to get my pay for the year up to around 37k, which I think is somewhere between median and mean full time salary in the UK. I pay about a third of what's left after tax on rent
I spend much of my working day delivering Amazon packages, and letters from housing associations and the benefits office, to much bigger houses than mine where there's always someone in
Which clearly points to a failure of the jobs market and capitalism; right? Like, I don't know the situations of the people you deliver to, but I've worked in housing associations and local councils before and some people - due to illness, due to family situations, due to a myriad of things - cannot work. Those people shouldn't be left on the streets to perish, right, so the only alternative is a society that is built to allow them to live in comfort if not luxury.
The fact that you work and seem to not have that level of comfort has very little to do what the government is doing and much more to do with what it isn't doing - namely forcing Amazon, a giant conglomerate that not only runs a business but owns the digital marketplace for multiple forms of online interaction and takes a form of tax all of its own by allowing to use that digital marketplace (which once upon a time looked more like a digital commons), to pay you a decent wage for your work.
I also generally disagree with the attitude that work is necessarily a good thing. If we can automate more work, good, if there are more workers to do the work and therefore workers can work less, also good. That doesn't mean people should be paid less or get a lower standard of living - indeed if the production of material goods can be organised via automation it should produce a higher standard of living for people. It's the fact that the means of production are in private hands and they only care about profit that is the issue.
Work is definitely a good thing. My wife's medical condition makes it impossible for her to do a conventional job, and one consequence of this is a lack of time structure in her days, which is very important for good mental health.
It's very hard for people to find a way to do a little bit of work, and this shutting people out of work often leeds to a deterioration in their condition and quality of life.
So, yes, work is good - but like many good things, a little goes a long way.
I mean if people cannot work (as in for a wage) people will still do things with their time - they might make art or build stuff or tend to their gardens, etc. Like, waged work, for the purpose of creating profit (either for yourself or someone else) is not necessary for finding meaning in life. I would personally argue that when these things are tied together, as they so strongly are in our society, that is when people typically feel bad - because their self-worth is tied up with waged work and being unable to do waged work makes them feel useless.
If people had more free time (for example) I don't think they'd just sit in front of the television - they would see friends and family, maybe do their garden, learn a new skill, get a hobby, etc. These are all socially productive activities.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
On topic, you need to be very careful about tax and spend polling, as you get wildly different results depending on how the question is framed. This one has an element of "Do you believe the Government should prioritise public services... or are you a selfish arsehole?"
If Hunt does go for tax cuts, he's not going to frame it as, "I'm sacking nurses so bankers can have extra jam!" He'll say something like, "We're targeting waste, and have an economic plan that is working, so I'm delighted to be able to say that, as well as record spending on schools and hospitals, I can give something back to you, the hardworking families of Britain."
Others will try to frame it differently, of course - but Hunt gets first go at it, and has a fair bit of the press onside.
Additionally, Conservatives will reason, not without justification, that people are in fact rather more selfish than they admit to pollsters.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
I've been in this situation for years, yet despite being a woke lefty who no doubt hates Britain I am happy to contribute to our national coffers and have no intention of leaving. PB flag shaggers please explain!
One has to try not to get knocked down in the Gadarene stampede of Brexiters throwing petrol and lit matches around and then screaming 'Fire!' in a crowded auditorium and rushing for the exit.
The real tragedy is that you think this is a clever and witty post.
The 100k personal allowance withdrawal policy was brought in during 2009.
It's not meant to be clever and witty. It's entirely serious in its sarcasm. Have you no idea how offensive the rush to the exit by the Brexiters is? They got what they wanted, now they want to leave the rest of us in their mess?
As for the 100K allowance, (a) the lower end needs to be sorted out with even greater urgency, and (b) who's been in power since 2010? Not the woke libtards you seem to blame.
The only person mentioning Brexit and woke libtards is you. I'm surprised your resident anglophobia hasn't crept into this yet, but no doubt that's coming.
The 100k allowance withdrawal policy was introduced by the Brown government, which you seem to reluctantly admit, and, yes, I have criticised the present administration for not reversing it.
It must be sad living inside your head in an endless sea of blind prejudice and scapegoats. Maybe consider getting some help.
Two things are true: 1. We are living with the costs of Brexit. Realised, genuine costs. Trying to import the food we need to eat is slow and expensive post 31st January and its only going to get slower and more expensive from here 2. Voters have moved on from Brexit, so "Remainer" and "Brexiteer" labels are redundant.
Brexit doesn't pay your bills - few people are so triggered by it as to change their vote accordingly now.
The main thing we are living with is the cost of ageing demographics. I don’t see any way out of this (lack of) death spiral.
Something we all learned about as a theory in GCSE Geography but actually happening now. Rather like climate change and equally or more difficult to reverse.
We thought the UK public finances were less exposed than our continental neighbours because our pensions system is largely privatised, and in that sense they are, but we reckoned without the escalating cost of health and social care and the shrinking workforce able to support it.
We - by which I mean the entire West, and China and most of Asia, and Russia, and most of Latin America, in fact everywhere apart from Africa and the Middle East - are demographically screwed.
Except, AI
I know I keep banging on about it, but I am like someone banging on about the car in the 1900s, when everyone else is worried about the impossible management of all this horse dung
We cannot know what AI will do, but we can make highly educated guesses and at the top of the guess list is "AI will replace many many jobs", meaning demography becomes MUCH less of an issue, just as horse manure paled away as a problem really quite swiftly, once the car and the engine arrived
AI can do certain things better than humans, I get that, but can it do anything useful?
Looking at my biggest expenditures, Can it bring my food shopping bill down? Can it bring the cost of electricity down? Can it reduce my bill for landline, broadband and TV? Can it bring down my council tax? Can it make my mobile phone cheaper?
If it can't do any of those, what use is it, really?
Let's go thrpugh the list
1. Yes, food, almost certainly - you will have an AI sisstant which will work out your food spending much better than you, and order it online 2. Yes, energy, probably, for similar reasons - running your household more efficently 3. Maybe, TV, same reason - seeking out the best deals - also AI will deliver this stuff more efficiently, from the other end, movies and drama will be made for pennies = Netflix charging less 4. Dunno, weird, no one can say, too many imponderables 5. Yes, it will make this stuff basically free
So that's Yes Yes Maybe Dunno Yes, and that's in the short-medium term - 5 years?
Long term it will transform humanity in ways which make all this irrelevant, for good or ill
So it wont be long before people are asking their AI
"What the hell have you ordered that for ?"
It will be great tho. There will be apps that run your entire life, like a brilliant butler
They will talk to you, and say, what do you fancy eating tonight?, and you will tell them, and it will order all the ingredients for you, and get them delivered, then it will ask you how you are feeling, are you sad about being dumped, and it will cheer you up, and tell you jokes, and give you good advice, and then it will tell you it's found a cheaper energy network, shall we move? And you will say Yes, let's save money, then it will ask you if you want your favourite novel turned into an instant movie, but starring your ex girlfriend, nude, and you will agree...
The worry must be that no one will ever go out and meet actual humans, as the AI will be much better company
Big Tech wants to make bring human redundant. I know its unstoppable, but what's the point to it all?
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
Lots of idiots don't realise that many people on 30K can be better off than some on 100K who may well have far more outgoings/loans etc. Best off are those on benefits who get free house, free council tax and a pay every week with no taxation whatsoever, they never need worry about losing their jobs as others are paying for their lifestyles.
Banks and Credit Card companies certainly have an issue distinguishing between income and assets. Both my wife and myself have retired and by most peoples standards we are very well off, but we have practically no income and are not drawing on our pensions (other than to use up the personal allowance) because we don't need to. Trying to be accepted for a credit card or fill in any form sensibly that asks for income details is a nightmare, even when you start speaking to a human.
Bookmakers too with KYC. A retired multimillionaire may have problems depositing £1,000 to bet with nowadays.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
Yes, Rishi's speech today to the NFU conference will in no way have influenced this decision.
BTW, its the right decision. DCPUs are everywhere up here, and the proposed tax (37% BIK tret as a car) would have made them disappear, threaten a load of rural businesses, and make people make an awful lot of pointless trips to switch vehicles.
By working about one and a half times full time hours I've managed to get my pay for the year up to around 37k, which I think is somewhere between median and mean full time salary in the UK. I pay about a third of what's left after tax on rent
I spend much of my working day delivering Amazon packages, and letters from housing associations and the benefits office, to much bigger houses than mine where there's always someone in
Which clearly points to a failure of the jobs market and capitalism; right? Like, I don't know the situations of the people you deliver to, but I've worked in housing associations and local councils before and some people - due to illness, due to family situations, due to a myriad of things - cannot work. Those people shouldn't be left on the streets to perish, right, so the only alternative is a society that is built to allow them to live in comfort if not luxury.
The fact that you work and seem to not have that level of comfort has very little to do what the government is doing and much more to do with what it isn't doing - namely forcing Amazon, a giant conglomerate that not only runs a business but owns the digital marketplace for multiple forms of online interaction and takes a form of tax all of its own by allowing to use that digital marketplace (which once upon a time looked more like a digital commons), to pay you a decent wage for your work.
I also generally disagree with the attitude that work is necessarily a good thing. If we can automate more work, good, if there are more workers to do the work and therefore workers can work less, also good. That doesn't mean people should be paid less or get a lower standard of living - indeed if the production of material goods can be organised via automation it should produce a higher standard of living for people. It's the fact that the means of production are in private hands and they only care about profit that is the issue.
Work is definitely a good thing. My wife's medical condition makes it impossible for her to do a conventional job, and one consequence of this is a lack of time structure in her days, which is very important for good mental health.
It's very hard for people to find a way to do a little bit of work, and this shutting people out of work often leeds to a deterioration in their condition and quality of life.
So, yes, work is good - but like many good things, a little goes a long way.
I mean if people cannot work (as in for a wage) people will still do things with their time - they might make art or build stuff or tend to their gardens, etc. Like, waged work, for the purpose of creating profit (either for yourself or someone else) is not necessary for finding meaning in life. I would personally argue that when these things are tied together, as they so strongly are in our society, that is when people typically feel bad - because their self-worth is tied up with waged work and being unable to do waged work makes them feel useless.
If people had more free time (for example) I don't think they'd just sit in front of the television - they would see friends and family, maybe do their garden, learn a new skill, get a hobby, etc. These are all socially productive activities.
It doesn't necessarily have to be waged work - other ways of organising the economy are possible, voluntary work is still work - but things like hobbies, or visiting people, don't provide the time structure that work as part of a group does.
Someone like Leon, who works on his own, has to be incredibly disciplined to impose time structure on his day, but most people benefit from it being externally imposed to an extent (and even he will have deadlines from editors, etc).
And like I say, I've seen this play out over the last several years with my wife. She has plenty of productive hobbies, such as knitting, but the lack of time structure and other benefits of work have been incredibly damaging to her. This isn't a theoretical argument for me.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
Only rich people work hard. The cleaner on minimum wage is just too lazy to better themselves.
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
The bit in bold doesn't necessarily follow. When I was younger, my wife and I both earned well, with a combined income of over £100k (and that was many years ago). But we continued living as we had as students - rented flat, small car and cheap holidays - while saving and investing the rest. You don't have to rush out and spend it as soon as you get it. It is largely thanks to the thrift of my younger self that I am now able to enjoy a relaxed lifestyle in my middle age. Far too many people feel that as soon as they are earning well, they need to up their outgoings to match. Don't. It's a trap.
We decided to up our expenditure by having kids...
On topic, you need to be very careful about tax and spend polling, as you get wildly different results depending on how the question is framed. This one has an element of "Do you believe the Government should prioritise public services... or are you a selfish arsehole?"
If Hunt does go for tax cuts, he's not going to frame it as, "I'm sacking nurses so bankers can have extra jam!" He'll say something like, "We're targeting waste, and have an economic plan that is working, so I'm delighted to be able to say that, as well as record spending on schools and hospitals, I can give something back to you, the hardworking families of Britain."
Others will try to frame it differently, of course - but Hunt gets first go at it, and has a fair bit of the press onside.
Additionally, Conservatives will reason, not without justification, that people are in fact rather more selfish than they admit to pollsters.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
I've been in this situation for years, yet despite being a woke lefty who no doubt hates Britain I am happy to contribute to our national coffers and have no intention of leaving. PB flag shaggers please explain!
One has to try not to get knocked down in the Gadarene stampede of Brexiters throwing petrol and lit matches around and then screaming 'Fire!' in a crowded auditorium and rushing for the exit.
The real tragedy is that you think this is a clever and witty post.
The 100k personal allowance withdrawal policy was brought in during 2009.
It's not meant to be clever and witty. It's entirely serious in its sarcasm. Have you no idea how offensive the rush to the exit by the Brexiters is? They got what they wanted, now they want to leave the rest of us in their mess?
As for the 100K allowance, (a) the lower end needs to be sorted out with even greater urgency, and (b) who's been in power since 2010? Not the woke libtards you seem to blame.
The only person mentioning Brexit and woke libtards is you. I'm surprised your resident anglophobia hasn't crept into this yet, but no doubt that's coming.
The 100k allowance withdrawal policy was introduced by the Brown government, which you seem to reluctantly admit, and, yes, I have criticised the present administration for not reversing it.
It must be sad living inside your head in an endless sea of blind prejudice and scapegoats. Maybe consider getting some help.
Two things are true: 1. We are living with the costs of Brexit. Realised, genuine costs. Trying to import the food we need to eat is slow and expensive post 31st January and its only going to get slower and more expensive from here 2. Voters have moved on from Brexit, so "Remainer" and "Brexiteer" labels are redundant.
Brexit doesn't pay your bills - few people are so triggered by it as to change their vote accordingly now.
The main thing we are living with is the cost of ageing demographics. I don’t see any way out of this (lack of) death spiral.
Something we all learned about as a theory in GCSE Geography but actually happening now. Rather like climate change and equally or more difficult to reverse.
We thought the UK public finances were less exposed than our continental neighbours because our pensions system is largely privatised, and in that sense they are, but we reckoned without the escalating cost of health and social care and the shrinking workforce able to support it.
We - by which I mean the entire West, and China and most of Asia, and Russia, and most of Latin America, in fact everywhere apart from Africa and the Middle East - are demographically screwed.
Except, AI
I know I keep banging on about it, but I am like someone banging on about the car in the 1900s, when everyone else is worried about the impossible management of all this horse dung
We cannot know what AI will do, but we can make highly educated guesses and at the top of the guess list is "AI will replace many many jobs", meaning demography becomes MUCH less of an issue, just as horse manure paled away as a problem really quite swiftly, once the car and the engine arrived
AI can do certain things better than humans, I get that, but can it do anything useful?
Looking at my biggest expenditures, Can it bring my food shopping bill down? Can it bring the cost of electricity down? Can it reduce my bill for landline, broadband and TV? Can it bring down my council tax? Can it make my mobile phone cheaper?
If it can't do any of those, what use is it, really?
Let's go thrpugh the list
1. Yes, food, almost certainly - you will have an AI sisstant which will work out your food spending much better than you, and order it online 2. Yes, energy, probably, for similar reasons - running your household more efficently 3. Maybe, TV, same reason - seeking out the best deals - also AI will deliver this stuff more efficiently, from the other end, movies and drama will be made for pennies = Netflix charging less 4. Dunno, weird, no one can say, too many imponderables 5. Yes, it will make this stuff basically free
So that's Yes Yes Maybe Dunno Yes, and that's in the short-medium term - 5 years?
Long term it will transform humanity in ways which make all this irrelevant, for good or ill
So it wont be long before people are asking their AI
"What the hell have you ordered that for ?"
It will be great tho. There will be apps that run your entire life, like a brilliant butler
They will talk to you, and say, what do you fancy eating tonight?, and you will tell them, and it will order all the ingredients for you, and get them delivered, then it will ask you how you are feeling, are you sad about being dumped, and it will cheer you up, and tell you jokes, and give you good advice, and then it will tell you it's found a cheaper energy network, shall we move? And you will say Yes, let's save money, then it will ask you if you want your favourite novel turned into an instant movie, but starring your ex girlfriend, nude, and you will agree...
The worry must be that no one will ever go out and meet actual humans, as the AI will be much better company
Big Tech wants to make bring human redundant. I know its unstoppable, but what's the point to it all?
It's a very good question, and there is not necessarily an obvious answer, or at least not an obvious positive answer
It's a bit like harnessing nuclear energy. Has it really benefited us? Yes we have some nuclear power stations, which provide cheap energy, but they are also dangerous in themselves - Chernobyl. Meanwhile we now have the abilty to wipe ourselves out, as a species, with atom bombs
On the whole I'd say Homo sapiens would be better off if we had never discovered nuclear
But it is far too late to stop nuclear now, and AI is likely the same
PS you should also listen to Elon Musk on this subject. He is fascinating on it. Some years ago, he says, he went through a deep depression for months as he extrapolated the likely impact of AI on human life. He got over it, he says, by
1. Accepting that there was nothing he could do to stop it, so we might as well enjoy the ride
and
2. Doing his best to mitigate it. One of the main reasons he wants to put humanity on another planet is the risk we destroy this one with AI, this is also why he is developing Neuralink. He thinks our best bet might be UNITING man with computer
This is also why - with others - he set up OpenAI. The whole point was: it was meant to be ethical AI and non profit. Ironically it is now OpenAI which is driving AI into hazardous new realms, and - far from being non-profit - the company is raking in many billions and asking for trillions
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
Mr. JohnL, my tax minimisation strategy is flawless, and totally legal. By not earning very much, I don't have to pay much tax at all.
Mr. Password, oh, I agree entirely. The £100k situation is dumb as a post.
I minimise my tax by: Not driving, Not smoking, Not drinking much, Living (alone) in a house which is council tax Band C, and Having a current account which does not pay interest.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Someone earning £100k is in the top 5% of earners in the UK.
This is where, I fear, the level of income on this forum being wildly out of sync with the vast majority of people leads to a huge bias against taxing and spending. Most people want more taxes on the richest people, not less.
The £100K trap that Casino mentions (withdrawing personal allowance gradually) is just weird, as it leads to a 60% tax rate in the £100-£125K bracket, before dropping back to 40% thereafter. I can't see any political or economic justification for it, and I must admit that in retirement year with an income of £120K I'm considering putting £20K into my pension pot to avoid it, as that will save me £12K tax (and I can then on retirment claim back £5K tax-free from the retirement pot, as well as getting higher pension from the rest). I've always despised people who go through elaborate maneouvres to pay less tax, but this particular one seems so daft that I'm tempted.
Simply having an extra band of say 43p from 100K would be much more logical and probably raise more cash too.
The reason it happens is because the desired increase in Personal Allowances for the less well off actually benefited the better off more. This was cured by phasing out the personal Allowance from £100k at a £1 for every £2 earned.
However this causes the bizarre marginal rate issue of going from 40% to 60% and then dropping again once the allowance is all used up. This is made worse by similar issues in NI where that drops from 12% to 2% as you earn more so if you draw a graph of marginal rates they go up and down like a yo-yo rather than being a neat straight line or curve upwards as you earn more.
It is perfectly easy to fix, but all this stuff is done piecemeal and by politicians who want to make sexy announcements or hide tax rises which makes this horrendous mess.
I'm not sure why so many are on K coded personal allowances. It should only happen if you owe tax from previous years or you have (or HMRC believe you have) taxable income that is not being taxed. Obviously if you are at £120k you won't have any personal allowance left so any owed tax or taxable untaxed income will result in a K code straight away, but that is right surely. After all you owe the tax. If you don't, a call to HMRC (after a 3 hour wait on the phone) and it can be corrected.
And yes if you are over the £100k earnings an AVC can simply sort out the 60% band issue, but I agree it is nonsense and the marginal rate tax graph needs smoothing out.
I'm on a K code because my state pension is not taxed at source. In effect it is my state pension that is taxed at 60% - which is fair enough. I don't really need it.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
I suppose we can wait and see what happens.- it's true that this hasn't happened yet in the UK.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
More Brexit wins. From client's Head of Technical:
"They [UK's Animal and Plant Health Agency] informed me that there was meant to be an agreement between the EU and the UK that any UK establishments would not require validation on TRACES [EU Plant and Animal certification service]
This hasn’t happened and they have now been inundated with calls from companies trying to get validations.
After my lengthy call with them, they said that all requests were having to be sent to DEFRA for them to do a ‘work around’."
So once again, we have fucked up the details of our own Brexit deal. The comedy is that the UK authorities aren't formally checking paperwork in the 3 months from 31st January. They accept that they are incapable of doing so and that the system is not ready.
But - and its a big but - the EU and member states are treaty-bound to implement our Brexit deal. And they are. Which is how importing food is such a massive expensive slow pain in the arse now. Having to individually appeal to DEFRA for a "work around" of their own fucked up failure to implement their own system.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
It is not envy to discuss how people earning £100k are being stupendously out of touch when they say they're worse off than people earning £30k. It is not envy to point out that millions of working poor in this country are living hand to mouth. It is not envy to note that public services have gotten worse over the last decade, which hits the poorest who cannot afford private services.
I think the issue is that rich/er people think the money they make is something they deserve, and therefore tax is somehow taking something from them (the deserving) and giving it to someone else (the undeserving). This is most clear with posters like malcolmg who clearly thinks poverty is a personal moral failing and not a product of an overall system. I fundamentally disagree; lots of people work extremely hard and get paid a pittance - and not because their labour isn't needed but because whoever they work for can get away with not paying them the value of their labour.
Wage theft is endemic in the UK, but nobody talks about it. People are under paid and over worked, and instead of forcing businesses to pay people more, somehow the answer is tax cuts. It's not only absurd, it's obscene. We live in an era of mass precarity, instability and poverty for the have nots and the haves have wealth beyond imagination. That isn't about envy - it's about injustice. Who did the work that created that wealth? The worker. Who gets the wealth? Someone else.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
Lots of idiots don't realise that many people on 30K can be better off than some on 100K who may well have far more outgoings/loans etc. Best off are those on benefits who get free house, free council tax and a pay every week with no taxation whatsoever, they never need worry about losing their jobs as others are paying for their lifestyles.
Banks and Credit Card companies certainly have an issue distinguishing between income and assets. Both my wife and myself have retired and by most peoples standards we are very well off, but we have practically no income and are not drawing on our pensions (other than to use up the personal allowance) because we don't need to. Trying to be accepted for a credit card or fill in any form sensibly that asks for income details is a nightmare, even when you start speaking to a human.
Bookmakers too with KYC. A retired multimillionaire may have problems depositing £1,000 to bet with nowadays.
Affordability checks rather than KYC which is more about money laundering but yes, no income means no money means no bets.
By working about one and a half times full time hours I've managed to get my pay for the year up to around 37k, which I think is somewhere between median and mean full time salary in the UK. I pay about a third of what's left after tax on rent
I spend much of my working day delivering Amazon packages, and letters from housing associations and the benefits office, to much bigger houses than mine where there's always someone in
Which clearly points to a failure of the jobs market and capitalism; right? Like, I don't know the situations of the people you deliver to, but I've worked in housing associations and local councils before and some people - due to illness, due to family situations, due to a myriad of things - cannot work. Those people shouldn't be left on the streets to perish, right, so the only alternative is a society that is built to allow them to live in comfort if not luxury.
The fact that you work and seem to not have that level of comfort has very little to do what the government is doing and much more to do with what it isn't doing - namely forcing Amazon, a giant conglomerate that not only runs a business but owns the digital marketplace for multiple forms of online interaction and takes a form of tax all of its own by allowing to use that digital marketplace (which once upon a time looked more like a digital commons), to pay you a decent wage for your work.
I also generally disagree with the attitude that work is necessarily a good thing. If we can automate more work, good, if there are more workers to do the work and therefore workers can work less, also good. That doesn't mean people should be paid less or get a lower standard of living - indeed if the production of material goods can be organised via automation it should produce a higher standard of living for people. It's the fact that the means of production are in private hands and they only care about profit that is the issue.
Work is definitely a good thing. My wife's medical condition makes it impossible for her to do a conventional job, and one consequence of this is a lack of time structure in her days, which is very important for good mental health.
It's very hard for people to find a way to do a little bit of work, and this shutting people out of work often leeds to a deterioration in their condition and quality of life.
So, yes, work is good - but like many good things, a little goes a long way.
I mean if people cannot work (as in for a wage) people will still do things with their time - they might make art or build stuff or tend to their gardens, etc. Like, waged work, for the purpose of creating profit (either for yourself or someone else) is not necessary for finding meaning in life. I would personally argue that when these things are tied together, as they so strongly are in our society, that is when people typically feel bad - because their self-worth is tied up with waged work and being unable to do waged work makes them feel useless.
If people had more free time (for example) I don't think they'd just sit in front of the television - they would see friends and family, maybe do their garden, learn a new skill, get a hobby, etc. These are all socially productive activities.
Agree in part, but crucially disagree. One of the many virtues of capitalism and a wealthy, free, liberal society is that it allows individuals to choose their own path, including that of sort of opting out of most rat races most of the time.
However, you massively underestimate the level of work and complexity required to make any state which has that amount of prosperity and freedom function. Contemplate the collective activities of: health and social care, energy and transport, food and drink, education, civil and local administration. Together this probably spends well over £1trillion, requiring tens of millions of able employees. It doesn't do itself while the population does the garden and learns fretwork.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
It is not envy to discuss how people earning £100k are being stupendously out of touch when they say they're worse off than people earning £30k. It is not envy to point out that millions of working poor in this country are living hand to mouth. It is not envy to note that public services have gotten worse over the last decade, which hits the poorest who cannot afford private services.
I think the issue is that rich/er people think the money they make is something they deserve, and therefore tax is somehow taking something from them (the deserving) and giving it to someone else (the undeserving). This is most clear with posters like malcolmg who clearly thinks poverty is a personal moral failing and not a product of an overall system. I fundamentally disagree; lots of people work extremely hard and get paid a pittance - and not because their labour isn't needed but because whoever they work for can get away with not paying them the value of their labour.
Wage theft is endemic in the UK, but nobody talks about it. People are under paid and over worked, and instead of forcing businesses to pay people more, somehow the answer is tax cuts. It's not only absurd, it's obscene. We live in an era of mass precarity, instability and poverty for the have nots and the haves have wealth beyond imagination. That isn't about envy - it's about injustice. Who did the work that created that wealth? The worker. Who gets the wealth? Someone else.
Indeed. Which is why we need to completely change the basis on which we generate taxation. For so many people, the harder they work the less money they receive.
The problem is structural. "Just pay more" is a slogan, not a solution. We have a major need to invest in training and development. But we don't incentivise companies to do it. Instead of Asda receiving massive wage subsidies (in work UC) for nothing, make them invest on their staff or that money gets taxes back off them.
But in SME world? The opposite. A lot of businesses - especially post Covid - are teetering on the edge. Slam more costs on them - whether that is higher wage costs or training or business rates or whatever - and many are folding. The companies who deal with business failures are having a great time. Every business that fails is lost jobs.
The biggest tax subsidies go to the biggest companies. It needs to be the opposite way round.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
I suppose we can wait and see what happens.- it's true that this hasn't happened yet in the UK.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
There isnt the cult of the monster car, in the U.K. The urban SUV thing is people buying a shorter, higher vehicle to get the same space as an estate car in less length.
No one buys a long cab for fun in the U.K.. They are van sized, but with more seats and reduced load space, compared to the same footprint.
The reason for buying them is carrying more than 3 people. Unless you want to go back to vans with people squatting in the back?
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
Yes. I probably felt richest about 7-8 years ago, on a salary no more than 2/3 what I earn now - though my wife's salary plus mine was a bit more than I earn now. At that point I'd have put us certainly at 'comfortable'. We could afford anything we wanted, really, although our tastes are not particularly expensive. From a guess, my personal income put me maybe top 40% then, compared to top 20% and not far off top 10% now. But I felt much richer back then.
The main difference since then is expenditure, with three children, mostly through the mortgage on a bigger house and the increased food costs.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
There are two other important considerations.
1. Whatever people's circumstances are they will sell to take action to improve them, and the tax system is a big lever the government can use to create those incentives. Is it being used in the right way to create the right incentives to encourage behaviour that helps the country? The current tax system scores a big fat zero in this regard at multiple levels as people have pointed out repeatedly - personal allowance taper, child benefit taper, Universal Credit taper, eligibility for disability benefits, etc.
2. Ideally I want a government to foster a sense of the country working together, of being a community with a common cause, so that people will support making a contribution for the good of others. Dividing the country between different groups of the deserving and undeserving, of those who don't deserve a logical tax system - it's extremely corrosive to creating a cohesive society where people are prepared to act less selfishly.
Those self-identified left-wing posters who are eager to create dividing lines between the rich and the rest should pause to consider how they are undermining their own cause.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
You're missing the point. No one's asking you to feel sympathy for Casino - just recognise that incentives which tend to get people like him to move overseas don't work out to our advantage either.
If we prioritise the interests of the rich, it still won't help the average person. Yes, globalisation has increased in the last half century, but all the mechanisms to tax people and corporations still exist - governments just refuse to use them based on that very logic (if we did they'd just leave!). If you have Student Loans you have to tell SFE if you're going abroad and they still take your money - I don't see why the taxman shouldn't be able to as well. If an individual benefitted from public spending (in the form of growing up here with a NHS, national education, general operational road infrastructure and so on) then that, in part, helped get them to where they are as an adult - wherever they are.
Who's arguing we "prioritise the interests of the rich" ? Saying that we should remove a tax distortion is not that.
As far as taxing income from those resident abroad is concerned, only the US tries that. It's not a spectacular success. All that would do is ensure such people never return to the UK.
You're confusing what you would like in an ideal world run by you, with what is possible.
Saying "if we tax them more they'll just leave" is prioritising the rich. We don't say about poverty, for example, that we can't afford not to feed all the children in the UK that are going hungry (which is estimated to affect around 25% of households, roughly £3.7 million children) because it will make the country a worse place. But we bend over backwards to accommodate rich people and an ideology where they piss down on us and we should be grateful for that trickle.
No; you're mixing up different things.
All I'm arguing is that tax distortions (and this goes for the other end of the tax scale too) tend to be counterproductive, irrespective of the tax take. A higher percentage on earnings above 100k would be preferable to a very high marginal rate on the small band of income above £100k, and a lower rate above that band - which is what we have now.
Even Nick P, who is much closer to your politics than I am, sees that it's stupid.
Should we be spending more most to provide (for example) free school meals to all primary school children ? Yes, we should. But that's an entirely seperate argument.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
On topic, you need to be very careful about tax and spend polling, as you get wildly different results depending on how the question is framed. This one has an element of "Do you believe the Government should prioritise public services... or are you a selfish arsehole?"
If Hunt does go for tax cuts, he's not going to frame it as, "I'm sacking nurses so bankers can have extra jam!" He'll say something like, "We're targeting waste, and have an economic plan that is working, so I'm delighted to be able to say that, as well as record spending on schools and hospitals, I can give something back to you, the hardworking families of Britain."
Others will try to frame it differently, of course - but Hunt gets first go at it, and has a fair bit of the press onside.
Additionally, Conservatives will reason, not without justification, that people are in fact rather more selfish than they admit to pollsters.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
I've been in this situation for years, yet despite being a woke lefty who no doubt hates Britain I am happy to contribute to our national coffers and have no intention of leaving. PB flag shaggers please explain!
One has to try not to get knocked down in the Gadarene stampede of Brexiters throwing petrol and lit matches around and then screaming 'Fire!' in a crowded auditorium and rushing for the exit.
The real tragedy is that you think this is a clever and witty post.
The 100k personal allowance withdrawal policy was brought in during 2009.
It's not meant to be clever and witty. It's entirely serious in its sarcasm. Have you no idea how offensive the rush to the exit by the Brexiters is? They got what they wanted, now they want to leave the rest of us in their mess?
As for the 100K allowance, (a) the lower end needs to be sorted out with even greater urgency, and (b) who's been in power since 2010? Not the woke libtards you seem to blame.
The only person mentioning Brexit and woke libtards is you. I'm surprised your resident anglophobia hasn't crept into this yet, but no doubt that's coming.
The 100k allowance withdrawal policy was introduced by the Brown government, which you seem to reluctantly admit, and, yes, I have criticised the present administration for not reversing it.
It must be sad living inside your head in an endless sea of blind prejudice and scapegoats. Maybe consider getting some help.
Two things are true: 1. We are living with the costs of Brexit. Realised, genuine costs. Trying to import the food we need to eat is slow and expensive post 31st January and its only going to get slower and more expensive from here 2. Voters have moved on from Brexit, so "Remainer" and "Brexiteer" labels are redundant.
Brexit doesn't pay your bills - few people are so triggered by it as to change their vote accordingly now.
The main thing we are living with is the cost of ageing demographics. I don’t see any way out of this (lack of) death spiral.
Something we all learned about as a theory in GCSE Geography but actually happening now. Rather like climate change and equally or more difficult to reverse.
We thought the UK public finances were less exposed than our continental neighbours because our pensions system is largely privatised, and in that sense they are, but we reckoned without the escalating cost of health and social care and the shrinking workforce able to support it.
We - by which I mean the entire West, and China and most of Asia, and Russia, and most of Latin America, in fact everywhere apart from Africa and the Middle East - are demographically screwed.
Except, AI
I know I keep banging on about it, but I am like someone banging on about the car in the 1900s, when everyone else is worried about the impossible management of all this horse dung
We cannot know what AI will do, but we can make highly educated guesses and at the top of the guess list is "AI will replace many many jobs", meaning demography becomes MUCH less of an issue, just as horse manure paled away as a problem really quite swiftly, once the car and the engine arrived
AI can do certain things better than humans, I get that, but can it do anything useful?
Looking at my biggest expenditures, Can it bring my food shopping bill down? Can it bring the cost of electricity down? Can it reduce my bill for landline, broadband and TV? Can it bring down my council tax? Can it make my mobile phone cheaper?
If it can't do any of those, what use is it, really?
Let's go thrpugh the list
1. Yes, food, almost certainly - you will have an AI sisstant which will work out your food spending much better than you, and order it online 2. Yes, energy, probably, for similar reasons - running your household more efficently 3. Maybe, TV, same reason - seeking out the best deals - also AI will deliver this stuff more efficiently, from the other end, movies and drama will be made for pennies = Netflix charging less 4. Dunno, weird, no one can say, too many imponderables 5. Yes, it will make this stuff basically free
So that's Yes Yes Maybe Dunno Yes, and that's in the short-medium term - 5 years?
Long term it will transform humanity in ways which make all this irrelevant, for good or ill
So it wont be long before people are asking their AI
"What the hell have you ordered that for ?"
It will be great tho. There will be apps that run your entire life, like a brilliant butler
They will talk to you, and say, what do you fancy eating tonight?, and you will tell them, and it will order all the ingredients for you, and get them delivered, then it will ask you how you are feeling, are you sad about being dumped, and it will cheer you up, and tell you jokes, and give you good advice, and then it will tell you it's found a cheaper energy network, shall we move? And you will say Yes, let's save money, then it will ask you if you want your favourite novel turned into an instant movie, but starring your ex girlfriend, nude, and you will agree...
The worry must be that no one will ever go out and meet actual humans, as the AI will be much better company
Big Tech wants to make bring human redundant. I know its unstoppable, but what's the point to it all?
Maximising profit. Automation allows you to reduce the labour force, which are an expenditure, and still sell products (although to a dwindling market of people, because under capitalism the more you automate, the less workers earn, the less workers can buy, the smaller the consumer base, the lower the profit, etc. etc. and this keeps spiralling). They are thinking no further than their next quarterly report, and that does not allow for long term considerations.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
Yes. I probably felt richest about 7-8 years ago, on a salary no more than 2/3 what I earn now - though my wife's salary plus mine was a bit more than I earn now. At that point I'd have put us certainly at 'comfortable'. We could afford anything we wanted, really, although our tastes are not particularly expensive. From a guess, my personal income put me maybe top 40% then, compared to top 20% and not far off top 10% now. But I felt much richer back then.
The main difference since then is expenditure, with three children, mostly through the mortgage on a bigger house and the increased food costs.
My experience is that adult life, if you have reasonable career progression, is a game of snakes and ladders. A few years of rising disposable income and a growing feeling of comfort, which triggers the next life move (house move, children or ramping up retirement savings) and a step down in disposable income for a few years before the curve starts turning upwards again. We all get used to this and it at least feels under our control. The trouble happens when something comes along to overturn this - a big unexpected snake. Either loss of one or both incomes, or a bout of inflation which is what's hit us all in the last year.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
There are two other important considerations.
1. Whatever people's circumstances are they will sell to take action to improve them, and the tax system is a big lever the government can use to create those incentives. Is it being used in the right way to create the right incentives to encourage behaviour that helps the country? The current tax system scores a big fat zero in this regard at multiple levels as people have pointed out repeatedly - personal allowance taper, child benefit taper, Universal Credit taper, eligibility for disability benefits, etc.
2. Ideally I want a government to foster a sense of the country working together, of being a community with a common cause, so that people will support making a contribution for the good of others. Dividing the country between different groups of the deserving and undeserving, of those who don't deserve a logical tax system - it's extremely corrosive to creating a cohesive society where people are prepared to act less selfishly.
Those self-identified left-wing posters who are eager to create dividing lines between the rich and the rest should pause to consider how they are undermining their own cause.
Agreed on both points, but dividing people into deserving vs undeserving is hardly something on which the left enjoys a monopoly. Recall Mr Osborne's attack on people "sleeping off a life on benefits" despite most working age benefit recipients being in work.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
It is not envy to discuss how people earning £100k are being stupendously out of touch when they say they're worse off than people earning £30k. It is not envy to point out that millions of working poor in this country are living hand to mouth. It is not envy to note that public services have gotten worse over the last decade, which hits the poorest who cannot afford private services.
I think the issue is that rich/er people think the money they make is something they deserve, and therefore tax is somehow taking something from them (the deserving) and giving it to someone else (the undeserving). This is most clear with posters like malcolmg who clearly thinks poverty is a personal moral failing and not a product of an overall system. I fundamentally disagree; lots of people work extremely hard and get paid a pittance - and not because their labour isn't needed but because whoever they work for can get away with not paying them the value of their labour.
Wage theft is endemic in the UK, but nobody talks about it. People are under paid and over worked, and instead of forcing businesses to pay people more, somehow the answer is tax cuts. It's not only absurd, it's obscene. We live in an era of mass precarity, instability and poverty for the have nots and the haves have wealth beyond imagination. That isn't about envy - it's about injustice. Who did the work that created that wealth? The worker. Who gets the wealth? Someone else.
Other models of running a complex, wealthy, modern society exist but on the whole have not proved as popular as the one in which both state (who manage about half the economy) and private enterprise (from white van man to Amazon) have a huge role.
Would you let us know which are the countries that, from your point of view, do it all really well and what the UK, especially Starmer, can learn from them?
Scott Benton loses appeal against 35 day suspension. Meaning. Recall petition and possible by election in Blackpool South.
Frustratingly this is yet another obvious Labour target. The Lib Dem by-election options have really dried up in the last 12 months after a purple patch earlier in the parliament.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
On topic, you need to be very careful about tax and spend polling, as you get wildly different results depending on how the question is framed. This one has an element of "Do you believe the Government should prioritise public services... or are you a selfish arsehole?"
If Hunt does go for tax cuts, he's not going to frame it as, "I'm sacking nurses so bankers can have extra jam!" He'll say something like, "We're targeting waste, and have an economic plan that is working, so I'm delighted to be able to say that, as well as record spending on schools and hospitals, I can give something back to you, the hardworking families of Britain."
Others will try to frame it differently, of course - but Hunt gets first go at it, and has a fair bit of the press onside.
Additionally, Conservatives will reason, not without justification, that people are in fact rather more selfish than they admit to pollsters.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
I've been in this situation for years, yet despite being a woke lefty who no doubt hates Britain I am happy to contribute to our national coffers and have no intention of leaving. PB flag shaggers please explain!
One has to try not to get knocked down in the Gadarene stampede of Brexiters throwing petrol and lit matches around and then screaming 'Fire!' in a crowded auditorium and rushing for the exit.
The real tragedy is that you think this is a clever and witty post.
The 100k personal allowance withdrawal policy was brought in during 2009.
It's not meant to be clever and witty. It's entirely serious in its sarcasm. Have you no idea how offensive the rush to the exit by the Brexiters is? They got what they wanted, now they want to leave the rest of us in their mess?
As for the 100K allowance, (a) the lower end needs to be sorted out with even greater urgency, and (b) who's been in power since 2010? Not the woke libtards you seem to blame.
The only person mentioning Brexit and woke libtards is you. I'm surprised your resident anglophobia hasn't crept into this yet, but no doubt that's coming.
The 100k allowance withdrawal policy was introduced by the Brown government, which you seem to reluctantly admit, and, yes, I have criticised the present administration for not reversing it.
It must be sad living inside your head in an endless sea of blind prejudice and scapegoats. Maybe consider getting some help.
Two things are true: 1. We are living with the costs of Brexit. Realised, genuine costs. Trying to import the food we need to eat is slow and expensive post 31st January and its only going to get slower and more expensive from here 2. Voters have moved on from Brexit, so "Remainer" and "Brexiteer" labels are redundant.
Brexit doesn't pay your bills - few people are so triggered by it as to change their vote accordingly now.
The main thing we are living with is the cost of ageing demographics. I don’t see any way out of this (lack of) death spiral.
Something we all learned about as a theory in GCSE Geography but actually happening now. Rather like climate change and equally or more difficult to reverse.
We thought the UK public finances were less exposed than our continental neighbours because our pensions system is largely privatised, and in that sense they are, but we reckoned without the escalating cost of health and social care and the shrinking workforce able to support it.
We - by which I mean the entire West, and China and most of Asia, and Russia, and most of Latin America, in fact everywhere apart from Africa and the Middle East - are demographically screwed.
Except, AI
I know I keep banging on about it, but I am like someone banging on about the car in the 1900s, when everyone else is worried about the impossible management of all this horse dung
We cannot know what AI will do, but we can make highly educated guesses and at the top of the guess list is "AI will replace many many jobs", meaning demography becomes MUCH less of an issue, just as horse manure paled away as a problem really quite swiftly, once the car and the engine arrived
AI can do certain things better than humans, I get that, but can it do anything useful?
Looking at my biggest expenditures, Can it bring my food shopping bill down? Can it bring the cost of electricity down? Can it reduce my bill for landline, broadband and TV? Can it bring down my council tax? Can it make my mobile phone cheaper?
If it can't do any of those, what use is it, really?
Let's go thrpugh the list
1. Yes, food, almost certainly - you will have an AI sisstant which will work out your food spending much better than you, and order it online 2. Yes, energy, probably, for similar reasons - running your household more efficently 3. Maybe, TV, same reason - seeking out the best deals - also AI will deliver this stuff more efficiently, from the other end, movies and drama will be made for pennies = Netflix charging less 4. Dunno, weird, no one can say, too many imponderables 5. Yes, it will make this stuff basically free
So that's Yes Yes Maybe Dunno Yes, and that's in the short-medium term - 5 years?
Long term it will transform humanity in ways which make all this irrelevant, for good or ill
So it wont be long before people are asking their AI
"What the hell have you ordered that for ?"
It will be great tho. There will be apps that run your entire life, like a brilliant butler
They will talk to you, and say, what do you fancy eating tonight?, and you will tell them, and it will order all the ingredients for you, and get them delivered, then it will ask you how you are feeling, are you sad about being dumped, and it will cheer you up, and tell you jokes, and give you good advice, and then it will tell you it's found a cheaper energy network, shall we move? And you will say Yes, let's save money, then it will ask you if you want your favourite novel turned into an instant movie, but starring your ex girlfriend, nude, and you will agree...
The worry must be that no one will ever go out and meet actual humans, as the AI will be much better company
Big Tech wants to make bring human redundant. I know its unstoppable, but what's the point to it all?
Maximising profit. Automation allows you to reduce the labour force, which are an expenditure, and still sell products (although to a dwindling market of people, because under capitalism the more you automate, the less workers earn, the less workers can buy, the smaller the consumer base, the lower the profit, etc. etc. and this keeps spiralling). They are thinking no further than their next quarterly report, and that does not allow for long term considerations.
Excepting that this process has been going on since the mid 18th cent (in the U.K.)
The result has been massive drops in the cost of every essential - back in Tudor times, a simple shirt cost more than a Paul Smith T-shirt, today. Which is why people talked about clothing the poor.
Mechanised agriculture meant that a couple of percent need to work in the fields. Rather than about 96%. Which leaves @Foxy and chums the time to laze around healing the sick in the NHS rather than harvesting wheat with a sickle.
Scott Benton loses appeal against 35 day suspension. Meaning. Recall petition and possible by election in Blackpool South.
Rishi is not one of Napoleon's lucky generals.
Scott Benton was caught in a cash-for-questions sting by The Times iirc.
Relatively easy gain for #telavivkeith according to the form book. Assuming the Labour candidate hasn't said anything zionist-skeptical in the last 20 years.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
I suppose we can wait and see what happens.- it's true that this hasn't happened yet in the UK.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
There isnt the cult of the monster car, in the U.K. The urban SUV thing is people buying a shorter, higher vehicle to get the same space as an estate car in less length.
No one buys a long cab for fun in the U.K.. They are van sized, but with more seats and reduced load space, compared to the same footprint.
The reason for buying them is carrying more than 3 people. Unless you want to go back to vans with people squatting in the back?
The transit double cab is an option. Much more secure and rain free space for putting stuff and far lower to the ground for the heavy things. Propa' builders have a double cab flat bed van for heavy stuff.
I do think subsidising the double cab SUVs is a little perverse. They are less efficient, more dangerous and worse for carrying stuff. The positives, well, they have words like SPARTAN, WARRIOR & RANGER plastered on them. They'd paste a Yaris from a standing start. And my experience is they are driven by people who take the road wars seriously.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
There are two other important considerations.
1. Whatever people's circumstances are they will sell to take action to improve them, and the tax system is a big lever the government can use to create those incentives. Is it being used in the right way to create the right incentives to encourage behaviour that helps the country? The current tax system scores a big fat zero in this regard at multiple levels as people have pointed out repeatedly - personal allowance taper, child benefit taper, Universal Credit taper, eligibility for disability benefits, etc.
2. Ideally I want a government to foster a sense of the country working together, of being a community with a common cause, so that people will support making a contribution for the good of others. Dividing the country between different groups of the deserving and undeserving, of those who don't deserve a logical tax system - it's extremely corrosive to creating a cohesive society where people are prepared to act less selfishly.
Those self-identified left-wing posters who are eager to create dividing lines between the rich and the rest should pause to consider how they are undermining their own cause.
Agreed on both points, but dividing people into deserving vs undeserving is hardly something on which the left enjoys a monopoly. Recall Mr Osborne's attack on people "sleeping off a life on benefits" despite most working age benefit recipients being in work.
Oh, I did think of Osborne when I wrote that part of the comment, but I think division works better for the Right than the Left, which is why I picked out the Left.
To convince people to vote for left-wing policies you need to encourage them to trust their fellow citizens and care for them. Division benefits the Right.
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
It is not envy to discuss how people earning £100k are being stupendously out of touch when they say they're worse off than people earning £30k. It is not envy to point out that millions of working poor in this country are living hand to mouth. It is not envy to note that public services have gotten worse over the last decade, which hits the poorest who cannot afford private services.
I think the issue is that rich/er people think the money they make is something they deserve, and therefore tax is somehow taking something from them (the deserving) and giving it to someone else (the undeserving). This is most clear with posters like malcolmg who clearly thinks poverty is a personal moral failing and not a product of an overall system. I fundamentally disagree; lots of people work extremely hard and get paid a pittance - and not because their labour isn't needed but because whoever they work for can get away with not paying them the value of their labour.
Wage theft is endemic in the UK, but nobody talks about it. People are under paid and over worked, and instead of forcing businesses to pay people more, somehow the answer is tax cuts. It's not only absurd, it's obscene. We live in an era of mass precarity, instability and poverty for the have nots and the haves have wealth beyond imagination. That isn't about envy - it's about injustice. Who did the work that created that wealth? The worker. Who gets the wealth? Someone else.
Other models of running a complex, wealthy, modern society exist but on the whole have not proved as popular as the one in which both state (who manage about half the economy) and private enterprise (from white van man to Amazon) have a huge role.
Would you let us know which are the countries that, from your point of view, do it all really well and what the UK, especially Starmer, can learn from them?
For a start, Leon might suggest Cambodia.
I mean, even if we just think of other European countries (if we are going to live in the confines of capitalism), there are countries that do much more in a) upholding workers rights, b) taxing more and c) providing more public services. The Scandi countries are a great example of that - sympathy strikes are legal (as Musk learned to his chagrin), they feel a social obligation and pride in paying taxes based on their income, and they have a relatively high standard of living. Norway has legislated against wage theft, for example - that would be a good thing to bring in and enforce. Germany - whilst not perfect - has workers on boards of businesses to make sure that workers interests are considered. Even the US has done some protectionism and investment to a) make sure vital infrastructure gets built and b) it gets built in the US by US workers.
This is without me going full anti-capitalist. If you wanted a slightly better society, rather than a revolution, there are lots of simple and not that left wing things like the above you can do; but I'm sure people here would scream many of these policies are far left woke communism rather than very small tweaks by social democracies to make slightly less unstable forms of capitalism.
By working about one and a half times full time hours I've managed to get my pay for the year up to around 37k, which I think is somewhere between median and mean full time salary in the UK. I pay about a third of what's left after tax on rent
I spend much of my working day delivering Amazon packages, and letters from housing associations and the benefits office, to much bigger houses than mine where there's always someone in
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
Only rich people work hard. The cleaner on minimum wage is just too lazy to better themselves.
But that cleaner on minimum wage is also getting clobbered by the tax system, paying effective marginal rates of, what, up to ~70% on much of that income compared to having a job with fewer hours and being eligible for more benefits.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
An annual season ticket from Retford to London will be around £15,000.
The debate has quickly descended into envy and othering. This is why we need to reform the tax system, not any specific tax.
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
It is not envy to discuss how people earning £100k are being stupendously out of touch when they say they're worse off than people earning £30k. It is not envy to point out that millions of working poor in this country are living hand to mouth. It is not envy to note that public services have gotten worse over the last decade, which hits the poorest who cannot afford private services.
I think the issue is that rich/er people think the money they make is something they deserve, and therefore tax is somehow taking something from them (the deserving) and giving it to someone else (the undeserving). This is most clear with posters like malcolmg who clearly thinks poverty is a personal moral failing and not a product of an overall system. I fundamentally disagree; lots of people work extremely hard and get paid a pittance - and not because their labour isn't needed but because whoever they work for can get away with not paying them the value of their labour.
Wage theft is endemic in the UK, but nobody talks about it. People are under paid and over worked, and instead of forcing businesses to pay people more, somehow the answer is tax cuts. It's not only absurd, it's obscene. We live in an era of mass precarity, instability and poverty for the have nots and the haves have wealth beyond imagination. That isn't about envy - it's about injustice. Who did the work that created that wealth? The worker. Who gets the wealth? Someone else.
Other models of running a complex, wealthy, modern society exist but on the whole have not proved as popular as the one in which both state (who manage about half the economy) and private enterprise (from white van man to Amazon) have a huge role.
Would you let us know which are the countries that, from your point of view, do it all really well and what the UK, especially Starmer, can learn from them?
For a start, Leon might suggest Cambodia.
I mean, even if we just think of other European countries (if we are going to live in the confines of capitalism), there are countries that do much more in a) upholding workers rights, b) taxing more and c) providing more public services. The Scandi countries are a great example of that - sympathy strikes are legal (as Musk learned to his chagrin), they feel a social obligation and pride in paying taxes based on their income, and they have a relatively high standard of living. Norway has legislated against wage theft, for example - that would be a good thing to bring in and enforce. Germany - whilst not perfect - has workers on boards of businesses to make sure that workers interests are considered. Even the US has done some protectionism and investment to a) make sure vital infrastructure gets built and b) it gets built in the US by US workers.
This is without me going full anti-capitalist. If you wanted a slightly better society, rather than a revolution, there are lots of simple and not that left wing things like the above you can do; but I'm sure people here would scream many of these policies are far left woke communism rather than very small tweaks by social democracies to make slightly less unstable forms of capitalism.
Thanks. You have self restricted yourself to countries that run our system and maybe do it a bit better. This is all stuff a next Labour government can tinker with if they want. Which was not the issue. Which are the countries that really get it right, do it really well, from your point of view? And what can we learn from them?
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
I suppose we can wait and see what happens.- it's true that this hasn't happened yet in the UK.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
There isnt the cult of the monster car, in the U.K. The urban SUV thing is people buying a shorter, higher vehicle to get the same space as an estate car in less length.
No one buys a long cab for fun in the U.K.. They are van sized, but with more seats and reduced load space, compared to the same footprint.
The reason for buying them is carrying more than 3 people. Unless you want to go back to vans with people squatting in the back?
The transit double cab is an option. Much more secure and rain free space for putting stuff and far lower to the ground for the heavy things. Propa' builders have a double cab flat bed van for heavy stuff.
I do think subsidising the double cab SUVs is a little perverse. They are less efficient, more dangerous and worse for carrying stuff. The positives, well, they have words like SPARTAN, WARRIOR & RANGER plastered on them. They'd paste a Yaris from a standing start. And my experience is they are driven by people who take the road wars seriously.
There is a lived experience gap at play. I drove to town yesterday and on my 36 miles round-trip passed 10 or so of these trucks. All dirty. All with a top box. Several towing something.
I know two local contractors who use them - both run their business from home (no, not a garage gym in their suburban semi). The ideal vehicle for their needs. The people saying "less efficient" are not the people using them. From a fuel perspective? Sure - 30mpg. But practically speaking? A vehicle which lets you do jobs and haul stuff and carry passengers?
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
An annual season ticket from Retford to London will be around £15,000.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Someone earning £100k is in the top 5% of earners in the UK.
This is where, I fear, the level of income on this forum being wildly out of sync with the vast majority of people leads to a huge bias against taxing and spending. Most people want more taxes on the richest people, not less.
The £100K trap that Casino mentions (withdrawing personal allowance gradually) is just weird, as it leads to a 60% tax rate in the £100-£125K bracket, before dropping back to 40% thereafter. I can't see any political or economic justification for it, and I must admit that in retirement year with an income of £120K I'm considering putting £20K into my pension pot to avoid it, as that will save me £12K tax (and I can then on retirment claim back £5K tax-free from the retirement pot, as well as getting higher pension from the rest). I've always despised people who go through elaborate maneouvres to pay less tax, but this particular one seems so daft that I'm tempted.
Simply having an extra band of say 43p from 100K would be much more logical and probably raise more cash too.
The reason it happens is because the desired increase in Personal Allowances for the less well off actually benefited the better off more. This was cured by phasing out the personal Allowance from £100k at a £1 for every £2 earned.
However this causes the bizarre marginal rate issue of going from 40% to 60% and then dropping again once the allowance is all used up. This is made worse by similar issues in NI where that drops from 12% to 2% as you earn more so if you draw a graph of marginal rates they go up and down like a yo-yo rather than being a neat straight line or curve upwards as you earn more.
It is perfectly easy to fix, but all this stuff is done piecemeal and by politicians who want to make sexy announcements or hide tax rises which makes this horrendous mess.
I'm not sure why so many are on K coded personal allowances. It should only happen if you owe tax from previous years or you have (or HMRC believe you have) taxable income that is not being taxed. Obviously if you are at £120k you won't have any personal allowance left so any owed tax or taxable untaxed income will result in a K code straight away, but that is right surely. After all you owe the tax. If you don't, a call to HMRC (after a 3 hour wait on the phone) and it can be corrected.
And yes if you are over the £100k earnings an AVC can simply sort out the 60% band issue, but I agree it is nonsense and the marginal rate tax graph needs smoothing out.
I'm on a K code because my state pension is not taxed at source. In effect it is my state pension that is taxed at 60% - which is fair enough. I don't really need it.
Exactly the scenario I was describing - taxable income that hasn't been taxed. Particularly critical if the PA has been wiped out.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
An annual season ticket from Retford to London will be around £15,000.
Three minutes of video. David Cameron told the BBC he'd stand down after 2015. This led to Boris leading the Brexiteers in order to replace him, according to George Osborne.
Labour should that any such large scale contracts signed between now and the election may be cancelled and any penalty clauses set aside.
Lawyers will love that.
And yet David Davis successfully stalled the implementation of ID cards in 2007-2010 by doing exactly this.
The letter from Mr Davis, sent on Monday, said the Cabinet secretary was "formally on notice" of the party's intentions.
It added: "You will be aware that there is a long-standing convention that one parliament may not bind a subsequent parliament.
"As you will also be aware, the Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID cards project immediately on our being elected to government."
Mr Davis also warned the firms likely to bid to run the ID cards project about the party's intentions.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
An annual season ticket from Retford to London will be around £15,000.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
I suppose we can wait and see what happens.- it's true that this hasn't happened yet in the UK.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
There isnt the cult of the monster car, in the U.K. The urban SUV thing is people buying a shorter, higher vehicle to get the same space as an estate car in less length.
No one buys a long cab for fun in the U.K.. They are van sized, but with more seats and reduced load space, compared to the same footprint.
The reason for buying them is carrying more than 3 people. Unless you want to go back to vans with people squatting in the back?
The transit double cab is an option. Much more secure and rain free space for putting stuff and far lower to the ground for the heavy things. Propa' builders have a double cab flat bed van for heavy stuff.
I do think subsidising the double cab SUVs is a little perverse. They are less efficient, more dangerous and worse for carrying stuff. The positives, well, they have words like SPARTAN, WARRIOR & RANGER plastered on them. They'd paste a Yaris from a standing start. And my experience is they are driven by people who take the road wars seriously.
There is a lived experience gap at play. I drove to town yesterday and on my 36 miles round-trip passed 10 or so of these trucks. All dirty. All with a top box. Several towing something.
I know two local contractors who use them - both run their business from home (no, not a garage gym in their suburban semi). The ideal vehicle for their needs. The people saying "less efficient" are not the people using them. From a fuel perspective? Sure - 30mpg. But practically speaking? A vehicle which lets you do jobs and haul stuff and carry passengers?
They'll get banned or heavily taxed in urban areas, a bit like what's happening in Paris. Which is probably the sensible approach.
I blame Liz Truss for this polling, she has damaged the argument for tax cuts for a generation.
Fucking Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Hang on - we pushed through a huge tax cut to the poorest in the form of raising the tax free allowance to £10k. Tax cuts are fine when they can be afforded and they give money to people who will circulate it through the economy. Tax cuts to the top who don't circulate it? Less optimal...
You sound like a lefty when Thatcher and Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 66% to 40%, it raised revenue.
The problem is that "the rich" are now considered to be anyone earning more than 100k, which, post-inflation, is probably only equivalent to 70k a few years ago.
I've just been put on a K-code for FY24-25 which is a negative personal allowance- I.e. they artificially raise my income so I get to pay extra tax.
It's why I'm seriously eyeing up Canada, the US and Oz now, even though I don't want to.
Earning more than £100k, or the equivalent of £70k, sure sounds like "rich" to me. £70k in 2021 would put you in the top 7% by income. If the top 7% in this country aren't rich, who are?
No, it places you as a higher-earner at the present moment in time. It doesn't make you "rich".
"Rich" is when you have lots of assets, equity and cash so you don't need to work. My 'assets' are very modest indeed and I'd run out of cash inside 3 months if I stopped working.
Lots of people on 100k+ are simply professionals in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay.
I'm in my 50s, have spent 30 years working hard to get there, and I'm getting closer, but am still some way off a £100k income. But I'm not moaning about that. I recognise that I'm easily in the top decile of the population. I pay lots of tax: that's appropriate.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
The problem with terms like "rich" is that they tend to be bundled up with implicit value judgements, so that "rich" tends to mean "too rich" which in practical terms means "richer than me". I think it makes more sense to view things objectively with reference to the overall income distribution. So for instance someone with a household income of £120k and two children and council tax of £200/month is around the 4th percentile of the income distribution. They may well not feel "rich" relative to their perceived needs or their peers and I would never seek to denigrate their lived experience, but they are better off in income terms than 96% of the population. Mr Micauber's dictum continues to be highly relevant here of course!
Yes. I probably felt richest about 7-8 years ago, on a salary no more than 2/3 what I earn now - though my wife's salary plus mine was a bit more than I earn now. At that point I'd have put us certainly at 'comfortable'. We could afford anything we wanted, really, although our tastes are not particularly expensive. From a guess, my personal income put me maybe top 40% then, compared to top 20% and not far off top 10% now. But I felt much richer back then.
The main difference since then is expenditure, with three children, mostly through the mortgage on a bigger house and the increased food costs.
My experience is that adult life, if you have reasonable career progression, is a game of snakes and ladders. A few years of rising disposable income and a growing feeling of comfort, which triggers the next life move (house move, children or ramping up retirement savings) and a step down in disposable income for a few years before the curve starts turning upwards again. We all get used to this and it at least feels under our control. The trouble happens when something comes along to overturn this - a big unexpected snake. Either loss of one or both incomes, or a bout of inflation which is what's hit us all in the last year.
In my case it was the death of my wife from cancer when our son was 2 years old, leaving me as a very sad single parent with considerably reduced earning capacity but, thankfully, savings to tide me over. Life goes on though, and I find myself now a very contented man with a lovely partner, a lad who is doing very well at Oxford and a great appreciation for the preciousness of life. Most things just aren't worth getting wound up about.
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
An annual season ticket from Retford to London will be around £15,000.
So effectively adds 300k onto the "effective price" of the property (assuming a 1 income household working another 20 years).
20-25 hours a week of commuting time is 10-15 hours a week excess commuting time, for someone with 100k a year earning potential call it 25k a year, 500k capitalised.
Adds up to 800k extra, £1.4m equivalent budget and you start to get similar in m25 fringes. Market working well......
Isn't the answer to marginal tax woes quite simply to salary sacrifice more into your pension ?
I mean the annual allowance is 60 grand a year !
Yes, time and time again I get this advice, but with two kids, a mortgage and big bills to pay I need the money now.
It's a choice between deferring near 100% for at least 15 years (and getting nothing now) and taking a 60% haircut, but getting 40% now.
Maybe you should just live within your means - stop buying avocado toast and such. That's the advice that always seems to come to my generation when we complain about our income being shit. Bootstraps, pull them up by, etc.
Green with envy, rather than going out and working hard like Casino you prefer to whine about people who work hard being better off than lazy barstewards like yourself.
@Casino_Royale ’s only problem is that he lives down south so has a mortgage that is way bigger than the equivalent mortgage would be further north.
And this is why I think the housing crisis is overstated. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from moving to Retford. Look at this bargain:
How many 100k jobs available near Retford? How many 100k jobs available in London? Wfh may change things (substantially?) but there absolutely is something stopping all the people on good household incomes in London and the other hotspots moving to somewhere more affordable. Jobs.
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
So its about a 4.5-5hr roundtrip commute to work each day when things go well. Works for some. For others life is too short.
Also, what is the cost of a season ticket on that route at that time? I find these arguments ludicrous to be honest. There was once a PBer who said, in apparent honesty, that the answer to society’s problems was living in Mansfield.
An annual season ticket from Retford to London will be around £15,000.
PB might be interested to find that the government has performed a dangerous u-turn on tax breaks for double cab pick-up trucks.
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
The difference is that in the US, they are used by every fool to go and buy a Starbucks.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
I suppose we can wait and see what happens.- it's true that this hasn't happened yet in the UK.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
There isnt the cult of the monster car, in the U.K. The urban SUV thing is people buying a shorter, higher vehicle to get the same space as an estate car in less length.
No one buys a long cab for fun in the U.K.. They are van sized, but with more seats and reduced load space, compared to the same footprint.
The reason for buying them is carrying more than 3 people. Unless you want to go back to vans with people squatting in the back?
The transit double cab is an option. Much more secure and rain free space for putting stuff and far lower to the ground for the heavy things. Propa' builders have a double cab flat bed van for heavy stuff.
I do think subsidising the double cab SUVs is a little perverse. They are less efficient, more dangerous and worse for carrying stuff. The positives, well, they have words like SPARTAN, WARRIOR & RANGER plastered on them. They'd paste a Yaris from a standing start. And my experience is they are driven by people who take the road wars seriously.
There is a lived experience gap at play. I drove to town yesterday and on my 36 miles round-trip passed 10 or so of these trucks. All dirty. All with a top box. Several towing something.
I know two local contractors who use them - both run their business from home (no, not a garage gym in their suburban semi). The ideal vehicle for their needs. The people saying "less efficient" are not the people using them. From a fuel perspective? Sure - 30mpg. But practically speaking? A vehicle which lets you do jobs and haul stuff and carry passengers?
As I said before - people abuse the system so HMRC clamp down and people get caught in the cross fire.
Given that you can still buy them up to 1st July and the final deadline is April 2028 - HMRC have been way more generous than they’ve ever been when I’ve been caught in the cross fire of an HMRC clampdown
The DCPU phenomenon is a consequence of the globalisation of product ranges. Body on chassis pick ups are massively important in the South African, Australian and NZ markets so the OEMs have to build them in RHD. They can reduce the unit cost by pushing them in the UK and 26 counties markets to get more volume. They are very high margin vehicles so the manufacturers love them.
Comments
I'm guilty of this too in my own analysis of taxes and benefits - I never weight it by income decile and end up with an equal number of paragraphs and figures on each bracket.
One person one vote.
They will talk to you, and say, what do you fancy eating tonight?, and you will tell them, and it will order all the ingredients for you, and get them delivered, then it will ask you how you are feeling, are you sad about being dumped, and it will cheer you up, and tell you jokes, and give you good advice, and then it will tell you it's found a cheaper energy network, shall we move? And you will say Yes, let's save money, then it will ask you if you want your favourite novel turned into an instant movie, but starring your ex girlfriend, nude, and you will agree...
The worry must be that no one will ever go out and meet actual humans, as the AI will be much better company
There seems to be this impression that small business owners are living it large. I wish that was true...
As discussed before the mean for this site in both age and wealth is I suspect well above the mean.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/20/uk-middle-classes-jobs-housing-costs-abrdn-financial-fairness-trust
The fact that you work and seem to not have that level of comfort has very little to do what the government is doing and much more to do with what it isn't doing - namely forcing Amazon, a giant conglomerate that not only runs a business but owns the digital marketplace for multiple forms of online interaction and takes a form of tax all of its own by allowing to use that digital marketplace (which once upon a time looked more like a digital commons), to pay you a decent wage for your work.
I also generally disagree with the attitude that work is necessarily a good thing. If we can automate more work, good, if there are more workers to do the work and therefore workers can work less, also good. That doesn't mean people should be paid less or get a lower standard of living - indeed if the production of material goods can be organised via automation it should produce a higher standard of living for people. It's the fact that the means of production are in private hands and they only care about profit that is the issue.
Mr. Password, oh, I agree entirely. The £100k situation is dumb as a post.
Where better to source their Tory policies?
These kinds of vehicles are responsible in the large increase in child road casualties in the US (estimates of around 8x more deadly in a collision, plus reduced visibility over high bonnets). More dangerous than XL Bullies, I'll wager.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/update-on-hmrc-double-cab-pick-up-guidance
I'm 47. I briefly signed on when I let university. I lived part of a year working in central London full time where had there not been a free canteen at lunchtime I would have starved due to lack of money. I've worked flat out for a couple of decades where financially its always been jam tomorrow - clear this debt, get past this marker and then the good times roll.
Define good times. Yes I have a big house - at the north pole. Cheaper than a small house where I used to live, much cheaper than a hovel in London. Yes I have a nice car - on finance. Yes, I am not counting every single penny. But that isn't the same as being comfortably off, where money isn't an issue.
We had a few years back in England where it felt like that. On lower income than we have now. What's my point? As your income rises, your expenditure also rises. The people on median income must think people earning twice their wage are flush - in my experience that isn't true.
Which is why I talk about the structure of the tax system, the structural inequalities of the economy, and not about x has something I can't afford, its not fair. If you get out of bed in the morning to work to pay your bills you are working class, whatever job you do. The factory manager is not the class enemy of the workforce. Other countries get this, the sooner we do the better off we will all be.
My wife made the mistake of cancelling most of her cards because they weren't being used anymore and then when she wanted a new one she couldn't get one. No income no card! Bonkers.
Unofficial PB below-the-line commentator profile, @viewcode , 13Feb2024, see https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4685678/#Comment_4685678
It's very hard for people to find a way to do a little bit of work, and this shutting people out of work often leeds to a deterioration in their condition and quality of life.
So, yes, work is good - but like many good things, a little goes a long way.
The child benefit withdrawal was painful enough for me as the sole earner (wife presently a full time mum) but we needed every bit of money so had to suck it up rather than increasing my AVCs etc. I have a colleague now with three children earning around £55k gross who is putting the over £50k in AVCs and her husband, at a similar income, has dropped down to 4 days from 5 per week to also avoid the withdrawal of child benefit, so they're both just under £50k taxable income. So that particular policy, rather than saving the portion of £200 or so per month child benefit for the government is losing 50% roughly of whatever their earnings over £50k each would have been (almost certainly more than the child benefit that would be withdrawn).
As mentioned earlier the graph of the marginal rate goes up and down like a yo-yo and would not be difficult to smooth.
Most people "in their late 30s/early 40s who've spend 15-20 years working hard to get there and still have student loans, big mortgages and childcare costs to pay" aren't earning anywhere near £100k and have to make it work. It's difficult, but they manage. If you are finding it tough, what do you think the 93% or so of people earning less than you experience? Do you have any empathy for them?
If people had more free time (for example) I don't think they'd just sit in front of the television - they would see friends and family, maybe do their garden, learn a new skill, get a hobby, etc. These are all socially productive activities.
Double cab pickups are only used (to a high degree of confidence) in the U.K. by businesses which need to transport combinations of people and materials. Builders are the classic example.
The difference is that in the US, culture and taxation encourages absurd vehicles.
Interestingly, in the UK, their introduction led to a drop in injuries from the good old practise of piling people and tools together in the back of the Transit. An actual seat with crash protection, a seat belt and no piles of sharp heavy things is safer. Who knew?
BTW, its the right decision. DCPUs are everywhere up here, and the proposed tax (37% BIK tret as a car) would have made them disappear, threaten a load of rural businesses, and make people make an awful lot of pointless trips to switch vehicles.
Someone like Leon, who works on his own, has to be incredibly disciplined to impose time structure on his day, but most people benefit from it being externally imposed to an extent (and even he will have deadlines from editors, etc).
And like I say, I've seen this play out over the last several years with my wife. She has plenty of productive hobbies, such as knitting, but the lack of time structure and other benefits of work have been incredibly damaging to her. This isn't a theoretical argument for me.
It's a bit like harnessing nuclear energy. Has it really benefited us? Yes we have some nuclear power stations, which provide cheap energy, but they are also dangerous in themselves - Chernobyl. Meanwhile we now have the abilty to wipe ourselves out, as a species, with atom bombs
On the whole I'd say Homo sapiens would be better off if we had never discovered nuclear
But it is far too late to stop nuclear now, and AI is likely the same
PS you should also listen to Elon Musk on this subject. He is fascinating on it. Some years ago, he says, he went through a deep depression for months as he extrapolated the likely impact of AI on human life. He got over it, he says, by
1. Accepting that there was nothing he could do to stop it, so we might as well enjoy the ride
and
2. Doing his best to mitigate it. One of the main reasons he wants to put humanity on another planet is the risk we destroy this one with AI, this is also why he is developing Neuralink. He thinks our best bet might be UNITING man with computer
This is also why - with others - he set up OpenAI. The whole point was: it was meant to be ethical AI and non profit. Ironically it is now OpenAI which is driving AI into hazardous new realms, and - far from being non-profit - the company is raking in many billions and asking for trillions
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/120535733#/?channel=RES_BUY
Not driving,
Not smoking,
Not drinking much,
Living (alone) in a house which is council tax Band C, and
Having a current account which does not pay interest.
Transits have much better visibility than pick-up trucks.
"They [UK's Animal and Plant Health Agency] informed me that there was meant to be an agreement between the EU and the UK that any UK establishments would not require validation on TRACES [EU Plant and Animal certification service]
This hasn’t happened and they have now been inundated with calls from companies trying to get validations.
After my lengthy call with them, they said that all requests were having to be sent to DEFRA for them to do a ‘work around’."
So once again, we have fucked up the details of our own Brexit deal. The comedy is that the UK authorities aren't formally checking paperwork in the 3 months from 31st January. They accept that they are incapable of doing so and that the system is not ready.
But - and its a big but - the EU and member states are treaty-bound to implement our Brexit deal. And they are. Which is how importing food is such a massive expensive slow pain in the arse now. Having to individually appeal to DEFRA for a "work around" of their own fucked up failure to implement their own system.
Vote Conservative.
I think the issue is that rich/er people think the money they make is something they deserve, and therefore tax is somehow taking something from them (the deserving) and giving it to someone else (the undeserving). This is most clear with posters like malcolmg who clearly thinks poverty is a personal moral failing and not a product of an overall system. I fundamentally disagree; lots of people work extremely hard and get paid a pittance - and not because their labour isn't needed but because whoever they work for can get away with not paying them the value of their labour.
Wage theft is endemic in the UK, but nobody talks about it. People are under paid and over worked, and instead of forcing businesses to pay people more, somehow the answer is tax cuts. It's not only absurd, it's obscene. We live in an era of mass precarity, instability and poverty for the have nots and the haves have wealth beyond imagination. That isn't about envy - it's about injustice. Who did the work that created that wealth? The worker. Who gets the wealth? Someone else.
My house isn't dissimilar to this one, worth about 200k less, bit further from the train station.
However, you massively underestimate the level of work and complexity required to make any state which has that amount of prosperity and freedom function. Contemplate the collective activities of: health and social care, energy and transport, food and drink, education, civil and local administration. Together this probably spends well over £1trillion, requiring tens of millions of able employees. It doesn't do itself while the population does the garden and learns fretwork.
The problem is structural. "Just pay more" is a slogan, not a solution. We have a major need to invest in training and development. But we don't incentivise companies to do it. Instead of Asda receiving massive wage subsidies (in work UC) for nothing, make them invest on their staff or that money gets taxes back off them.
But in SME world? The opposite. A lot of businesses - especially post Covid - are teetering on the edge. Slam more costs on them - whether that is higher wage costs or training or business rates or whatever - and many are folding. The companies who deal with business failures are having a great time. Every business that fails is lost jobs.
The biggest tax subsidies go to the biggest companies. It needs to be the opposite way round.
No one buys a long cab for fun in the U.K.. They are van sized, but with more seats and reduced load space, compared to the same footprint.
The reason for buying them is carrying more than 3 people. Unless you want to go back to vans with people squatting in the back?
The main difference since then is expenditure, with three children, mostly through the mortgage on a bigger house and the increased food costs.
For just £4000 his family could buy and live in this attractive ROOM in Manchester, freeing up his capital for other things
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/66677482/?search_identifier=e5f9d588497c57ab30ac1d5242abfc8f4e5d39946adc3a58350eb65eb7c2259b
1. Whatever people's circumstances are they will sell to take action to improve them, and the tax system is a big lever the government can use to create those incentives. Is it being used in the right way to create the right incentives to encourage behaviour that helps the country? The current tax system scores a big fat zero in this regard at multiple levels as people have pointed out repeatedly - personal allowance taper, child benefit taper, Universal Credit taper, eligibility for disability benefits, etc.
2. Ideally I want a government to foster a sense of the country working together, of being a community with a common cause, so that people will support making a contribution for the good of others. Dividing the country between different groups of the deserving and undeserving, of those who don't deserve a logical tax system - it's extremely corrosive to creating a cohesive society where people are prepared to act less selfishly.
Those self-identified left-wing posters who are eager to create dividing lines between the rich and the rest should pause to consider how they are undermining their own cause.
All I'm arguing is that tax distortions (and this goes for the other end of the tax scale too) tend to be counterproductive, irrespective of the tax take. A higher percentage on earnings above 100k would be preferable to a very high marginal rate on the small band of income above £100k, and a lower rate above that band - which is what we have now.
Even Nick P, who is much closer to your politics than I am, sees that it's stupid.
Should we be spending more most to provide (for example) free school meals to all primary school children ? Yes, we should.
But that's an entirely seperate argument.
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C28967/2024-02-27/detailed
That property is only a 15 minute walk from the station. Plenty of people do similar journeys from Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here's what you get for a similar price in Salisbury which is a similar commute to London:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137356181#/?channel=RES_BUY
Okay, maybe there are more good jobs in Salisbury than Retford but plenty commute up to London.
Meaning. Recall petition and possible by election in Blackpool South.
Scott Benton was caught in a cash-for-questions sting by The Times iirc.
Would you let us know which are the countries that, from your point of view, do it all really well and what the UK, especially Starmer, can learn from them?
For a start, Leon might suggest Cambodia.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68337794
The result has been massive drops in the cost of every essential - back in Tudor times, a simple shirt cost more than a Paul Smith T-shirt, today. Which is why people talked about clothing the poor.
Mechanised agriculture meant that a couple of percent need to work in the fields. Rather than about 96%. Which leaves @Foxy and chums the time to laze around healing the sick in the NHS rather than harvesting wheat with a sickle.
I do think subsidising the double cab SUVs is a little perverse. They are less efficient, more dangerous and worse for carrying stuff. The positives, well, they have words like SPARTAN, WARRIOR & RANGER plastered on them. They'd paste a Yaris from a standing start. And my experience is they are driven by people who take the road wars seriously.
To convince people to vote for left-wing policies you need to encourage them to trust their fellow citizens and care for them. Division benefits the Right.
This is without me going full anti-capitalist. If you wanted a slightly better society, rather than a revolution, there are lots of simple and not that left wing things like the above you can do; but I'm sure people here would scream many of these policies are far left woke communism rather than very small tweaks by social democracies to make slightly less unstable forms of capitalism.
I know two local contractors who use them - both run their business from home (no, not a garage gym in their suburban semi). The ideal vehicle for their needs. The people saying "less efficient" are not the people using them. From a fuel perspective? Sure - 30mpg. But practically speaking? A vehicle which lets you do jobs and haul stuff and carry passengers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGCvjSpt5wk
Three minutes of video. David Cameron told the BBC he'd stand down after 2015. This led to Boris leading the Brexiteers in order to replace him, according to George Osborne.
The letter from Mr Davis, sent on Monday, said the Cabinet secretary was "formally on notice" of the party's intentions.
It added: "You will be aware that there is a long-standing convention that one parliament may not bind a subsequent parliament.
"As you will also be aware, the Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID cards project immediately on our being elected to government."
Mr Davis also warned the firms likely to bid to run the ID cards project about the party's intentions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6332927.stm
20-25 hours a week of commuting time is 10-15 hours a week excess commuting time, for someone with 100k a year earning potential call it 25k a year, 500k capitalised.
Adds up to 800k extra, £1.4m equivalent budget and you start to get similar in m25 fringes. Market working well......
"Freddie Sayers and Konstantin Kisin: What happened to Tucker Carlson?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPwMLAv6wWg
You’re a bit like @carnyx complaining that the daily mail, which he never reads, now has a frustrating paywall
To be fair, Salisbury is quite a bit cheaper, though I'd point out that working on an LNER Azuma is more do-able than working on an SWR 159.
Given that you can still buy them up to 1st July and the final deadline is April 2028 - HMRC have been way more generous than they’ve ever been when I’ve been caught in the cross fire of an HMRC clampdown