Super Tax @ 69%

[MissFM]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

Couple of weird things have just happened to me - BTW - :

1) Have turned into a Scottie dog (Whee heee -:whoo: feel like donkey in Shrek when he took the potion!)

2) My thanks buttons not there again - so thanks Labman another sterling post!resents3:

Also BTW am posing a bit as not that badly off just self employed with NO income at all at the mo!

[Magrew]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

MF, don't worry you will never offend me, just ask Labman, he pulls my chain regularly.

I don't agree that many of us could do a better job heading up the banks however. Most people are too ethical and honest to make the returns that these b(w)ankers do. Thing is now they are getting caught for what they are, problem is it effects the economy so it effects us all when they get their come uppance.

[MissFM]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

Glad you popped that W in Magrew - I nearly did but thought I'd be told off (again!).

I do disagree with you though about doing a good job by being dishonest - I think it is more of a conjuring trick - misdirection - emporers clothes - plenty more cliches where they came from! where are the returns? We have had to bale them out. x

[labman]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

My thanks button keeps disappearing - refresh your page, it usually reappears. You've gone Scottie not cos your dealing with a Scotsman here who refuses, despite my most valiant of efforts, to be insulted lol! It's because you turn into different dogs the more posts or thanks you make / get. Not sure exactly how it works.

Magrew, as you know, I had a supposedly privileged education. I went to a top public school, not, I hasten to add, because my parents were rich. There I learnt to mix with VERY seriously wealthy people, some of whose children (my schoolmates) are now my friends. However, they made their money usually by being bar stewards to those around them. Outside of business they may have been pleasant, but in business they were absolutely ruthless.

I'm inclined to agree with you about the b****ers, but they lost money. I believe avarice is one of the seven deadly sins, and boy did they commit that one!

We, the taxpayers, pay for their mistakes while they get rich by getting a slap on the hand for being a naughty boy, and a few million severance pay. Tough old life innit!

[MissFM]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

It works with low income families as well, as you'll know. What in economics is known as 'the poverty trap.' Here, if people have a slight increase in income, they lose all right to a raft of benefits and end off worse off for doing better at work.

Whichever way you look at it, unless you have a significantly high income, and £40-50K is not that high nowadays - I earned significantly more than that over 10 years ago when I was retired on ill health grounds, you get stuffed by the government.

The sad thing is, I don't think it makes much difference which colour is in power.

Having said that, if put in the place of the Prime Minister today, inheriting the deficit we have, what do you do?

Radical, but I would look after this country before giving billions to other countries. Only get involved in battles that should be fought. Get rid of fat cats who sit on their ar$es doing very little and pulling in massive salaries. Stop bonus payments to the upper echelons of banks who have been bailed out. If Chairs etc... leave under a cloud, don't give them a huge golden handshake for destrying our country.

The list is almost endless. I think most people would agree with most of the above and other similar things. Sadly, it hasn't a hope in hell of ever happening.

Right then, Labman - if you had Carte Blanche - what would you do in practical terms? (I know I'd start with all the above - why ain't it going to happen?)

[labman]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

I've mentioned a few above, the thin end of a very thick wedge. It won't happen for one simple reason in my view corruption. I see this right the way through 'politics' from your local councillor upwards. Not all are bent, but a good few are, and it is nigh on impossible for an honest person to enter this arena. If they do manage to, the corruption is such that they would never climb very far up the ladder before the ladder turned into a very slippery pole which was impossible to climb without the help of those at the top of it. Those at the top pick and choose who gets that far, the old boys network is alive and kicking IMO, and there simply aren't the possibilities of enough honest folk getting into enough senior positions to make significant change.

Nothing short of some sort of civil rebellion would change things now, and that is both unlikely and largely undesirable.

[MissFM]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

What foxes me is why it has to be like this and why people don't want to do good when they have the opportunity. Surely it's obvious - I mean these are human beings and they can't be stupid - that it would be so much better to do the right thing? And what, actually, are the rewards of what you describe? Emptiness. x

[leclerc]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

I want to ask the question then; how do other EU nationals cope without a welfare system where you can claim for having children?

[MissFM]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

cynical answer = they pop over here, claim CB and send it back home LOL

[leclerc]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

cynical answer = they pop over here, claim CB and send it back home LOL

And for those who cannot afford the ferry ride

[MissFM]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

And for those who cannot afford the ferry ride

Ah, well (up trots another hobby horse - FM duly mounts) The UK is probably the most child-unfriendly place in Europe - probably the only country that has sought to make it legal to hit children. Any supermarket visit will confirm the shouting, finger wagging and downright rudeness meted out to children just for being children. Whereas ...travel to almost any country in (southern, at least) Europe and you see FAMILIES enjoying each other's company at all times of day and evening and it certainly appears that children are considered a blessing even if you can't afford shiny new shoes and designer clothes. Maybe some of that is rose-tinted but it is a huge cultural difference. Child-rearing certainly doesn't seem to be the competetive, micro-managed chore that seems to be the norm over here - so maybe people don't feel the same need to be paid to have them.

[evilhamster]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

I haven't seen this reported in this form anywhere but consider this.

If you are an earner making £49,995 you are on your standard 40% tax for the upper end of your earnings.

Now if you got a pay rise of £500 then the next year you will loose 40% of that to income tax (ie £200), ok fair enough that is how life is I suppose.

But now you will also loose 1/12 of your child benefit allowance, If you have two children that works out at £143 pounds in the year so you will therefore receive £157 of the £500 pay rise that you were awarded.

That is the equivalent of being taxed at 69% (to round it up).

That is absolutely astounding!!!!!!!!!!!

thats still £150 more than my last payrise

[Sapphire]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

Ah, well (up trots another hobby horse - FM duly mounts) The UK is probably the most child-unfriendly place in Europe - probably the only country that has sought to make it legal to hit children. Any supermarket visit will confirm the shouting, finger wagging and downright rudeness meted out to children just for being children. Whereas ...travel to almost any country in (southern, at least) Europe and you see FAMILIES enjoying each other's company at all times of day and evening and it certainly appears that children are considered a blessing even if you can't afford shiny new shoes and designer clothes. Maybe some of that is rose-tinted but it is a huge cultural difference. Child-rearing certainly doesn't seem to be the competetive, micro-managed chore that seems to be the norm over here - so maybe people don't feel the same need to be paid to have them.

That could be that in Europe and other places you don't see children running riot in supermarkets, the parents teach them to sit and behave in restaurants and bars, over here it seems to be the norm to take kids out and let them do as they wish and annoy other people, expecting others to look after the kids, yet when something is said the answer is 'my Molly or Johnny is very well behaved' when the child has quite obviously been a little git.
Why is it so wrong for people to want to be able to go somewhere, have a meal, drink or even a holiday without having other peoples children running around screaming and shouting ? Some people enjoy peace and quiet, its not that they don't like children, it may be that they just want to go places without them there.

[Magrew]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

thats still £150 more than my last payrise

I think so many of you are missing the point.

This change effectively makes the £50-£60k earning bracket, with a single earner in a household, the highest taxed sector of the revenue system by a very long chalk.

This isn't a case of what I have against what you have, this is a measure of the disparity of fairness being implemented by our mad government.

[TUTTSI]

Re: Super Tax @ 69%

I agree with you Magrew it is a hefty tax and it is not entirely fair although I see where everone else is coming from. The same as some women now wont get their pensions for so many more years and will have to work longer.

I have never done the sums but I guess if you add up all the extra taxes that we pay such as VAT, Petrol etc we are taxed at source then on our purchases. So bet your calculation of 69% is indeed a lot higher if you took all your shopping into account as well.

They say 'Life is a bitch' and I have to agree the tax system is not fair at all for everyone.

I firmly believe that the lower paid workers should have a lower rate of tax.