MSE News: Report raises option of 7p income tax hike

Rafter

The 'growth' that has been paying for new hospitals, schools, more teachers and nurses, higher public sector salaries etc actually turned out to be an illusion created by cheap credit and the house price bubble.

Now that has burst we have to push the reset button and repay the £1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) that it has cost - which works out at about £16,700 for every man, woman and child in the country.

For me, this has to be done through a combination of reducing public services and handouts, higher taxes etc.

If there are 100,000 overpaid bankers in the country - they would have to each pay £10 million each - unlikely to be possible.

This is why Mervyn King went all Churchillian last night and said 'never has so much money been owed by so few to so many'

Still doesn't mean that they should be paying themselves big bonus' though!

R.

bonzer

It's the usual Yes Minister tactics. Say they want to raise income tax by 2%, no-one would be impressed so they commission a report that concludes it'll have to definitely rise by 7% and then the 2% they actually wanted doesn't seem so bad in comparison.

I can't see such a visible tax that applies to almost everyone being hiked by such a huge amount, it would be suicide. They're more likely to go with a wide spread of smaller tax rises to make it harder to notice the effect, a wide range of public sector cuts and hitting niche groups that aren't big enough to vote them out.

dizzie

I think 7p on the basic rate of income tax would be a disaster. I'm a higher rate taxpayer and pay 41% of my earnings (tax and NI) over the threshold. Could anyone really justify charging 27% tax and 10% NI (total taxation rate 37%) to BR taxpayers?

I think they'll have to spread the burden around a bit. Eg maybe put a bit on tax, cut down on public spending (a fair bit of which I think is disgracefully wasted anyway!).

Mmm wonder what lies in store for us after the bankers razzle their latest big bonuses away? Windfall tax for them would be an idea!

michaels

Yeah - if Labour were to get back in I can see the upper limit of the bit of income tax called NI being abolished - and probably a 5p increase for both the basic and higher rates of income tax...after all we all have to share the pain...except for the 16% of households where no one works and the public sector employees

dizzie wrote: »

I think 7p on the basic rate of income tax would be a disaster. I'm a higher rate taxpayer and pay 41% of my earnings (tax and NI) over the threshold. Could anyone really justify charging 27% tax and 10% NI (total taxation rate 37%) to BR taxpayers?

I think they'll have to spread the burden around a bit. Eg maybe put a bit on tax, cut down on public spending (a fair bit of which I think is disgracefully wasted anyway!).

Mmm wonder what lies in store for us after the bankers razzle their latest big bonuses away? Windfall tax for them would be an idea!

Primrose

If you checkout :http://www.debtbombshell.com/ you'll get a good idea of how our national debt is mounting up and a better understanding of what's involved. Whoever wins the next general election is going to have to implement a huge number of highly unpopular measures to bring us back on course. It's no good anybody whinging. All of us are going to have to pay the price for many years of government spending that has gone totally out of control. There are certain sectors of our economy which haven't yet started to bear any of the consequences and howl though they might, I reckon the axe has got to start falling pretty soon.