Budget 2021: How much will it cost the UK and how will we pay?

[srb7677]

Great!! Let's have 25% across the board. Everyone pays a quarter of their income. I'll buy that.

Only if it includes all indirect and non income taxes too like VAT, fuel duty, and council tax. At the moment the rich pay a higher proportion of their incomes in income taxes because they pay a lower proportion in other taxes. So it balances out.

[Nick]

Proportion means everything. All fair contributions are proportionate to incomes.

Great!! Let's have 25% across the board. Everyone pays a quarter of their income. I'll buy that.

[johnofgwent]

You don't know what you are talking about. On all income above £962 per week - about 50k a year - the National Insurance rate drops from 12% to 2%.

https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay

Ah yes.


About £4100 a month, the point where you start paying 20% more income tax. Nice try at making out the people at that pay rate are ripping you off. Pity it's not quite accurate...

[patman post]

Proportion means everything. All fair contributions are proportionate to incomes.

By that reasoning, because someone on a wage of £25,000 a year only takes home £20,642, someone getting £100,000 should thus be paying £79,538,000 income tax — just to to even things up.
Luckily, the £100K p.a. earner should manage to take home £66,642.
As for National Insurance Contributions, the scheme is long past its usefulness and fairness. It should be incorporated into the normal tax take and so paid on earnings over the personal allowance...

[srb7677]

But you need to accept that the top 10% shoulder the vast majority of the tax burden, proportion means nothing.

Proportion means everything. All fair contributions are proportionate to incomes.

[Nick]

They actually pay a similar proportion of their incomes as most other people once all taxes are taken into account. If the sums are vast it is only a reflection of their vast incomes.

But you need to accept that the top 10% shoulder the vast majority of the tax burden, proportion means nothing.

[srb7677]

Good job I don't do my own payroll then.

Regardless of that, the top and bottom is that the rich pay the vast majority of tax to the exchequer.

They actually pay a similar proportion of their incomes as most other people once all taxes are taken into account. If the sums are vast it is only a reflection of their vast incomes.

[Nick]

You don't know what you are talking about. On all income above £962 per week - about 50k a year - the National Insurance rate drops from 12% to 2%.

https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay

Good job I don't do my own payroll then.

Regardless of that, the top and bottom is that the rich pay the vast majority of tax to the exchequer.

[srb7677]

No one pays 2% on NIC's apart from self employed so again you're comparing apples with oranges. And what you'd call the top earners don't tend to be self employed, they tend to be heads of corporation earning 7 figure sums and therefore employed as directors.

You can just make things up to fit your view of the world.

You don't know what you are talking about. On all income above £962 per week - about 50k a year - the National Insurance rate drops from 12% to 2%.

https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay

[Nick]

What your statement on income tax conveniently fails to take into account is the other de facto income tax, ie National Insurance, where most of us pay 12% starting from a very low threshold, but the wealthy only pay 2% on most of their incomes. So if you take all income taxes together, instead of simply including the progressive one only whilst excluding the regressive one, the contribution of the rich is far less enhanced.

And higher taxes on excess wealth and correspondingly lower taxes on incomes needed for the essentials of life are fair enough. You sound like you'd rather heap any additional costs on the already struggling majority, thinking the rich pay enough already. But they pay what they do because they earn so vastly more.

As a percentage of income the wealthy pay no more than the lower earners in spite of having vastly more disposable wealth.

No one pays 2% on NIC's apart from self employed so again you're comparing apples with oranges. And what you'd call the top earners don't tend to be self employed, they tend to be heads of corporation earning 7 figure sums and therefore employed as directors.

You can just make things up to fit your view of the world.

[johnofgwent]

What your statement on income tax conveniently fails to take into account is the other de facto income tax, ie National Insurance, where most of us pay 12% starting from a very low threshold, but the wealthy only pay 2% on most of their incomes. So if you take all income taxes together, instead of simply including the progressive one only whilst excluding the regressive one, the contribution of the rich is far less enhanced.

And higher taxes on excess wealth and correspondingly lower taxes on incomes needed for the essentials of life are fair enough. You sound like you'd rather heap any additional costs on the already struggling majority, thinking the rich pay enough already. But they pay what they do because they earn so vastly more.

As a percentage of income the wealthy pay no more than the lower earners in spite of having vastly more disposable wealth.

Did you not see the letters N, I and C in pat's post ?

[B-4]

We on the left are not motivated by jealousy or envy - that tired old canard - but by altruistic motivations of social justice and equitability. You may regard us as misguided but try for once not to do what you always do and misrepresent our motivations. And as for greed, that mostly lurks on the political right in my experience.

Wanting a better deal for the poorest and desiring to shield them from additional costs, at the expense of the better off - those who already have most - paying a little more is hardly any definition of greed.

Well, in my experience the Left are economic dullards who lie through their teeth in an attempt to be seen as the morally righteous among the collectivist useful idiots that nobody in their right mind would ever vote for.  But that's just me, I guess. Those who proselytise their cult in politics always seem to believe they're supporting the messiah, and I find that incredibly creepy.

[srb7677]

It's only in the last few posts you change to proportional, in fact below you were stating that the guy on a million pays 50 times more tax.

Actually the guy on a million pays more than 50 times more income tax. But taking all taxes together the proprtion of tax paid by the top decile is not markedly greater than the proportion of tax paid by the rest of us, I have never argued any differently. It was the entire basis of my argument from the beginning. You just failed to understand that.

And the fact that the rich pay vastly more in income taxes is simply due to the fact that they earn vastly more. The clue is in the name. Income tax.

[Nick]

I have not changed what I was saying. It is what I was saying from the fecking beginning. You simply failed to understand it and imagined I said something else.

It's only in the last few posts you change to proportional, in fact below you were stating that the guy on a million pays 50 times more tax.

After all someone on £1 million earns as much as 50 people on 20k. So the fact that he pays 50 times as much in tax is not at all unreasonable.

[srb7677]

Firstly I have not attacked you, I said what you are saying is rubbish: only you can change that fact.


Finally you have twigged and adjusted what you're saying, now you are talking about proportion of income being taxed. Obviously there will be very little difference as we are all subject to the same rules which are based on percentages.
I assume you will now concede and retract your view that lower paid people pay the same amount of tax?

I have not changed what I was saying. It is what I was saying from the fecking beginning. You simply failed to understand it and imagined I said something else.