Should the rich be squeezed more?

Procrastinator333

Stupid poll.

What is better. 40% of £150k or 60% of Zero?

There will come a point where people leave or just don't bother trying. Loopholes should be closed, but for me, 40% should be the max tax take.

1 person on £100k, probably pays as much tax as 20 people on £15k. Without the higher paid around to make these contributions, the lower paid simply would not be able to afford many of the services that are taken for granted.

If the lower paid want more cash they should do something about it. Before I get flamed, yes I know this is not a route open to all, but Joe bloggs who works 9-5 in a call centre for £18k a year. If Joe is happy with that, good for him. But if he wants more cash, they should pull their finger out, get a promotion, or start a new career, not try to get the higher earners to pay even more tax for services that they receive.

CLAPTON

a great number of the rich are not entrpreneurs but people who simply manage businesses

they are on a merry go round, where a lot of non-execs who make up the remuneration committee are themselves the execs of other companies who's remuneration is set by a lot on non-execs who are execs on other companies whose remuneration is set up non-execs who.........

it would be most interesting to see breakdown of top pay and see the number of genuine entrepreneurs who have built up a business from scratch and the career managers like fred the shred, rover gang of 4, the pair who destroyed GEC/Marcony etc etc.

Sadly the fact that they are well paid doesn't of itself mean they are worth it.
It appears that the average board pay is now 80 times average salary whilst it was 'only' 40 times ten yers ago.

Does that mean they are really worth that doubling?

Lets leave enterpreneurs to benefit from their labours but the remuneration of many/most directors is another matter.

Batchy

Your forgetting company car tax... tax at 40% of some ridiculous figure including what might be fuel tax too.
Your forgetting the fact that these people who are paying for NHS probably have BUPA too and are making provisions for their own retirement rather than relying on the state pension scheme.
Your forgetting RFL on cars, £1k first year on a pretty nice car... like a hot hatch even, sporty car
Your forgetting the extra STAMP duty on higher priced propertys
Your forgetting the 40% tax on inheritance over 300k ish

They do tax the higher earners, quite severely... IMO 50% and 60% is counter productive.

Jonbvn

Seems like a good plan to sink UK plc without a trace!

ukcarper

PrivatisetheNHSnow wrote: »

Good luck persuading people that earn that money to stay in the UK then.

It's 60% + 11% NI + no personal allowance.

Isn't NI only 1% on eranings over £44k and that will rise to 2% in april 2011

Sapphire

I think those who can afford to pay more tax should do so. There are some obscenely wealthy people around. There should also be a heavy clamp-down on tax avoidance by the wealthy.

Kohoutek

FATBALLZ wrote: »

The useless rich should have much of their wealth repossesed, the ones who own vast swathes of land due to being born into the right families, but who don't have any useful economic output.

Yeah it would be nice if the Dukes of Westminster and the royal family paid inheritance tax like the rest of us.

stueyhants

Instead of taxing more, why don't we just spend less. Cut the public sector to essential services and remove all those extra social engineering activites labour have invented.

drc

marklv wrote: »

The top 1% of people in this country own 23% of the wealth - in the mid 1980s, under Mrs Thatcher, the figure was 18%. This has gone up under the closet Tory, Tony Blair.

Funny, I could have sworn Tony Blair was elected leader of the LABOUR party.

marklv

drc wrote: »

Funny, I could have sworn Tony Blair was elected leader of the LABOUR party.

Yes, he was - and that's why I said he was a closet Tory!