Ed Balls pledges to raise taxes if Labour win election

ukcarper

wotsthat wrote: »

My boss is one of the 1% and a business owner. If all the tax got a bit too much for him he could retire tomorrow at 50 and live comfortably for the rest of his life.

I'd prefer that running a business (and employing me to help him) remains attractive by comparison.

Not that this has anything to do with the OP. The 50% tax rate was introduced for political reasons and subsequently removed for political reasons. The sums of money are inconsequential and I'd bet they'd hardly cover the admin costs.

I'm surprised your boss is on PAYE most people I know with in that position take less than that as Pay.

michaels

lostinrates wrote: »

Didn't you scale back work hours planning pretty much what it worked out for tax credits etc and when added to savings on your home project it worked out better? I may well have misremembered..you know I have a likelihood of doing that . In anycase, its no different a high earner deciding its simply not worth them continuing to work a punishing schedule for a loss of reward.

We (fir amd i) make our choices based both on what we want from home and work life now, but importantly what we want for the future. If that future becomes unlikely to be feasible then we'd e probably consider making other choices. It would be kind of nuts not to. If fifty percent tax rate became a long term established thing then it would factor in decisions for our future.

All true but I think you are missing my main point. At the 45/50% tax rate level of income an extra £ will make less of a difference to lifestyle than it will at 20k and yet there is less fuss about marginal effective tax rates often as high at 95% for those earning 20k than there is for a rate of 52% for those earning 150k.

movilogo

Didn't UKIP say they want to reduce taxes?

Tancred

wotsthat wrote: »

My boss is one of the 1% and a business owner. If all the tax got a bit too much for him he could retire tomorrow at 50 and live comfortably for the rest of his life.

I'd prefer that running a business (and employing me to help him) remains attractive by comparison.

Not that this has anything to do with the OP. The 50% tax rate was introduced for political reasons and subsequently removed for political reasons. The sums of money are inconsequential and I'd bet they'd hardly cover the admin costs.

Your boss can do what he wants now - tax has nothing to do with it. You are dreaming if you think that he is running a business as some kind of tax dodge!

lostinrates

michaels wrote: »

All true but I think you are missing my main point. At the 45/50% tax rate level of income an extra £ will make less of a difference to lifestyle than it will at 20k and yet there is less fuss about marginal effective tax rates often as high at 95% for those earning 20k than there is for a rate of 52% for those earning 150k.

I'm not sure its true that concern isn't given to the issues at the lower end of the scale. Much was made of increase of gap under labour government for example. It seems to me the more we tinker the harder it gets both to see what the real situation is and how to make it truly fair.


I think I'm right in saying its single people with no children not entitled to any support most likely to be penalised by all the forms of 'fairness' trying to be built into the system? But that's pretty much a guess.

Its true an extra pound makes less of a difference. But we're not talking an extra pound.


£150k a year is NOT super rich as seems to be being implied by much of the coverage. Its certainlY not scraping the barrel, I'm not arguing poor little higher rate tax payers, I'm just saying its not as if it buys foot ball clubs, or even some smart cars.

Tancred

Fella wrote: »

The comments under the BBC article are quite surprising:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25894312

If you toggle on to all comments then sort by highest rated, literally every comment on the front page slates this move. The first time I've ever seen a BBC article with a 100% anti-Labour response.

Could be that Balls has got this badly wrong. His credibility must be even less than I thought.

Nonsense - the BBC comments usually come from the idle rich and Tory voting internet using pensioners with time on their hands. Labour voters are generally too busy working.

Tancred

lostinrates wrote: »

£150k a year is NOT super rich as seems to be being implied by much of the coverage. Its certainlY not scraping the barrel, I'm not arguing poor little higher rate tax payers, I'm just saying its not as if it buys foot ball clubs, or even some smart cars.

£150k is not super rich but it is easily rich enough for them to pay the extra tax without making a fuss, as so many seem to do. It's only 5% more than 45%, so for someone on £200k a year this is £2.5k a year more tax - are you honestly saying that someone earning this much can't afford to pay that? It's beyond ridiculous!

Tancred

prowla wrote: »

I would suggest that paying more than 50p in the £1 in taxes (including income tax and NI) is a tipping point.

The fact that you are then charged a further 20% on what you spend (apart from the essentials, which presumably the earnings above the tax boundary don't contribute towards) means that the government takes something like 70% of those salaried higher earners' income.

Well, that's a pretty good business model for the government, for sure!

And people say they want more.

Again, nonsense. VAT is paid by everyone, not just the rich, and is built into the price, so you know exactly what you can afford to start with and have the option of not buying it. You are not forced to buy a VAT charged item!

prowla

Tancred wrote: »

Your boss can do what he wants now - tax has nothing to do with it. You are dreaming if you think that he is running a business as some kind of tax dodge!

I don't think that's what was meant; the point was that if the government put in place punitive taxation then he might decide it's maybe the time to move on...

Tancred

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.

Yeah right, so that means that Mr Average on £30k a year would be on a 33% tax rate, going up to 45% marginal rate with NI included. Moronic.