Ed Balls pledges to raise taxes if Labour win election

Tancred

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danothy wrote: »

You're still misunderstanding the concept of what middle ground you have fallaciously excluded. It's a conceptual middle ground, and there is no reason to exclude it, thus your argument doesn't warrant the premise that you can't be fair to everyone.

Total gobbledygook. To me the middle ground has to be quantifiable, not conceptual. I prefer hard facts and statistics, not flights of fancy, unlike you.

danothy wrote: »

I do dream, of a better world. Specifically, a world without people like you. I think the accusations of amorality you levelled at me earlier would more aptly be turned to you now. Your apparent propensity to sacrifice the equal treatment of a minority for a 'greater good' is troubling.

Troubling to you perhaps, but not to many others - individualism can only go so far. If 1% of the population need to be executed in order to save 99% I would be the first to say yes.

danothy wrote: »

I think you have rejected it unjustly, evidenced by your fallacious reasoning and the vitriol of your presentation of that reasoning. For example, you are now suggesting that the rich that benefit more from society should pay more. This would be logical if the benefit was directly derived from society, even in intangibles, and the directive included the less well paid who took benefit from society too. But you didn't say that, you just looked for an excuse to justify charging the rich more. You're so one dimensional it's laughable.

But the rich are part of society - whether they like it or not. They are not a special caste that needs to be protected simply because they are special in some way. A company director earning £1M a year is not paid that because he is worth 50 times what a £20k employee is worth; he is paid because market forces have forced the employer to pay such a huge sum. A human being cannot have such a huge value placed on him that he is somehow 'worth' multiples of what others receive as remuneration. This is the fallacy of capitalism - it magnifies every little difference simply because of market forces. Hence the need for controls, checks and balances.

Tancred

Fella wrote: »

No-one knows exactly how much any tax rate will raise. But it's a simple fact that the higher tax rates are the less incentive there is for employers to choose the UK (or indeed employees, since in £200K+ roles you can often choose where you're located).

Right, so are companies going to base all of their executives in tax havens such as Monaco? I think not. And you cannot always choose where to be based even in £200k a year roles.

Tancred

J_i_m wrote: »

I think this is probably the most sensible post in this thread.

Whilst I personally would reach a different conclusion on fairness to you, I accept your reasoning and appreciate the logic behind it.

I can accept that there are many valid arguments to show that rising the higher tax rate could be considered as unfair. I would not be surprised if people earning enough to be affected by it resented it.

Equally I can sympathise with the point of view that actually this "1%" are paid very well indeed, and if not "super rich" are still very comfortably well off and that the view that they are overpaid is not entirely unjustified.

I personally would welcome a slight "redistribution of wealth", however I would also concede that the concept is extremely unrealistic and ultimately unworkable. We'd effectively have to reset society in it's entirety.

We would have to reset society? And why? I don't see it as an unrealistic concept. The major issue is, of course, tax avoidance, and this is where new laws are needed to ensure that the government is able to pursue people even outside its borders, as the USA does. There are no hiding places in the world any more. We need a law to enable the government to enforce tax payment from all UK citizens regardless of where they live in the world, with severe punishments if the persons concerned try to avoid tax by giving up their citizenship.

J_i_m wrote: »

I can understand why people would be upset at having to pay even more tax. But equally a little humility wouldn't go amiss.. because ultimately if you're being charged this higher tax rate then it's because you have a lot lot than the average person.. and you'll still have a lot lot more after you've paid your tax.

I cannot understand it except in the context of human nature: greed. It is human nature to be upset when asked to pay tax, irrespective of how much you earn. This is the old self-preservation instinct that our cavemen ancestors gave us: look after no.1 first. Humans are mentally programmed to be greedy, so that we have as much money as possible and feel 'protected' against some unknown emergency, crisis, etc.

wotsthat

Tancred wrote: »

I cannot understand it except in the context of human nature: greed. It is human nature to be upset when asked to pay tax, irrespective of how much you earn. This is the old self-preservation instinct that our cavemen ancestors gave us: look after no.1 first. Humans are mentally programmed to be greedy, so that we have as much money as possible and feel 'protected' against some unknown emergency, crisis, etc.

There are probably around 98% of the world's population poorer than you. However, you're not greedy but those at 99% are?

You're either struggling with context or just enjoy irony.

michaels

chewmylegoff wrote: »

For each £1 you earn over £100k, you lose 50p of your personal allowance. So effectively you are paying 40% tax on £1.50 for every £1 you earn over £100k until your personal allowance is all gone, which makes the marginal rate of tax 60% on pay between £100k and £120k (for tax yr 14/15). A brilliant system for incentivising anyone with earnings in this band to make a lot of extra pension contributions and pay less tax than they otherwise would if their personal allowance was left alone.

No wonder NI is such a 'popular' tax for chancellors raising more revenue as it is always forgotten, the actual rate is 62%. Quite why it makes sense to tax extra pounds earned between 100 and 120k at 62% but those earned above 120k at 42% is not really clear to me - perhaps Tancred can explain?

CLAPTON

michaels wrote: »

No wonder NI is such a 'popular' tax for chancellors raising more revenue as it is always forgotten, the actual rate is 62%. Quite why it makes sense to tax extra pounds earned between 100 and 120k at 62% but those earned above 120k at 42% is not really clear to me - perhaps Tancred can explain?

an inevitable consequences of an attempt to make the change less painful or more acceptable

they could simply have abolished the allowance at 100,001: of course this would mean a margin rate of tax of over 100% which some would consider to be wrong in principle

N1AK

M0ney wrote: »

UKIP want to bring in such a system. Something like 33% (tax + NI) but the first 13,000 is not taxed. I would certainly take more home if it were implemented.

Which means you either earn less than ~£17,500 or more than £125,000 a year.

I have no issue with easing the tax burden on people earning low incomes. Which the current government has been doing, and UKIP only recently added to their "flat rate" proposal when they realised how stupid they looked talking about it without one. Why fund it by giving tax breaks to everyone earning over £125,000 and tax increases to everyone earning £17,500 to £125,000 though?

The argument that it is simpler is pretty much nonsense when you still have two bands (0% and 33%).

Generali

michaels wrote: »

No wonder NI is such a 'popular' tax for chancellors raising more revenue as it is always forgotten, the actual rate is 62%. Quite why it makes sense to tax extra pounds earned between 100 and 120k at 62% but those earned above 120k at 42% is not really clear to me - perhaps Tancred can explain?

Presumably these rich people won't be exempt TV licence, VAT, stamp duty, excise duties etc. They'll be paying more than 75% of their incomes to the Government! I reckon I'd be looking to move to a 3-4 day week and reduce my earnings rather than working my Arsenal off for a Labour Government.

N1AK

Tancred wrote: »

God you are boring!

I know. Using well reasoned and explained points in a discussion! That's practically cheating. We certainly wouldn't catch you doing it

He might be boring to you but he accurately and fairly summed up a number of the shortcomings in your argument thus far.

ukcarper

lostinrates wrote: »

Was doing something totally unrelated and it occurred they HAVE already offshore lots of jobs not at higher rate offshore.

We know that telephone support can be done off shore, for banks, and some times IT. We know that accounting can sometimes be done overseas.


So we already have it in practice 'lower down the pay scales'. We have precident for the superich and big business off shoring.

We've seen France make losses with their tax recently to our benefit.

What is it that makes this bracket in this country more immune in people's eyes?

They off shore these jobs because they can pay less and in many cases its to the detriment of the company its nothing to do with the tax their employees pay.


I still don't think that the effect would be anywhere near as bad as people are making out. Then again I don't think the Tax will raise enough money to make a difference and the whole thing is just politics.