Tax Credits

Thrugelmir

dktreesea wrote: »

Tesco, in spite of consumers deserting their supermarkets in droves, made £354 million in the first six months of this year. They can certainly afford to pay their employees properly.

Do you know how many employees Tesco's has?

Around 507,000

That equates to a profit per head of £698.

Based on a 37.5 hour week. Each employee contributes 37 pence per hour.

Best to understand what numbers mean before spouting off.

Osborne may have made a fatal error with his minimum wage plans.......

Oscargrouch

I don't usually join these debates; cos they usually get too much out of hand. Here goes then.....

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Do you know how many employees Tesco's has?
Around 507,000
That equates to a profit per head of £698.
Based on a 37.5 hour week. Each employee contributes 37 pence per hour.
Best to understand what numbers mean before spouting off.
Osborne may have made a fatal error with his minimum wage plans.......

Yea, think you are correct there; he has set it too low.....

CLAPTON

Oscargrouch wrote: »

I don't usually join these debates; cos they usually get too much out of hand.

probably best to keep to that

dktreesea

CLAPTON wrote: »

it would seem to me that
£9.5 x 35 x 52 = £17,290
but maybe I am just old fashioned

the rest of the 30,000 net comes from other people's labour with no contribution to the NHS or Education etc at all.

glad you shop at JL and Waitrose

Sorry, my mistake. Maybe the parents could both work three days? Even on the "new" NMW this still works out to £23,712 and they would both get their tax free allowances so hardly any income tax, a better result than if one person worked full time and the other didn't work.


Maybe it's just too late to change tax credits. We've got so used to such generous handouts, no one is prepared to give them up. The thing is with the Conservatives, they preach cut your coat according to your cloth, but do they actually believe in it? Just the way they rolled over and slunk back into the shadows when the house of Lords scuttled their plans. They're not exactly fighting their corner. Or using their brains to work out a way to cut tax credits without the burden falling mainly on the poorest.

dktreesea

Generali wrote: »

Whitbread (owners of Costa Coffee) made £463,800,000 in profit in 2014-5. They have 45,000 employees.

https://www.whitbread.co.uk/content/dam/whitbread/download_centre/reports_and_results/2015/Interactive-Annual-Report-2015.pdf

According to the TUC, the average working week is 43.6 hours:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/burnout-britain-long-work-hours-culture-returns-warns-tuc-1519158

If each of those staff members was to get a payrise of £2.80 the wage bill of Whitbread would rise by £263,692,800 so their profits would be cut by a bit over 55%.

But this isn't communism. We only want to poorest to get a payrise, not everyone. Presumably they have a huge number of staff on well over the NMW who won't be needing a payrise.


What if they gave their 10,000 poorest paid workers a payrise of £2.80 an hour? Even if it cost them £60 million, why should they make such huge profits while their employees are so poorly paid they need other taxpayers to subsidise them?

Generali

dktreesea wrote: »

But this isn't communism. We only want to poorest to get a payrise, not everyone. Presumably they have a huge number of staff on well over thcatering o won't be needing a payrise.


What if they gave their 10,000 poorest paid workers a payrise of £2.80 an hour? Even if it cost them £60 million, why should they make such huge profits while their employees are so poorly paid they need other taxpayers to subsidise them?

I suspect that a lot more than 10,000 of Whitbread's workers are on the minimum wage and certainly on less than £9.50/ hr as that is well over the average wage in the catering sector.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

I suspect that a lot more than 10,000 of Whitbread's workers are on the minimum wage and certainly on less than £9.50/ hr as that is well over the average wage in the catering sector.

I would also suspect that a large number are on part time contracts.

CLAPTON

dktreesea wrote: »

Sorry, my mistake. Maybe the parents could both work three days? Even on the "new" NMW this still works out to £23,712 and they would both get their tax free allowances so hardly any income tax, a better result than if one person worked full time and the other didn't work.


Maybe it's just too late to change tax credits. We've got so used to such generous handouts, no one is prepared to give them up. The thing is with the Conservatives, they preach cut your coat according to your cloth, but do they actually believe in it? Just the way they rolled over and slunk back into the shadows when the house of Lords scuttled their plans. They're not exactly fighting their corner. Or using their brains to work out a way to cut tax credits without the burden falling mainly on the poorest.

seems a strange argument that we can't change things that are wrong.

the burden isn't falling on the poorest : it's falling on people who are producing value to the community (nurses, junior doctors, utility workers etc) who after a lot of hard work and study, can easily be worse off than some-one serving coffee.

basically you seem more interersted in criticising the tories than addressing whether the benefits bill should continue rising year on year and we should maintain the positive disincentives to get an education/ skill etc and contribute positively to society.

Thrugelmir

dktreesea wrote: »

But this isn't communism. We only want to poorest to get a payrise, not everyone.

No it's communism. Far from it. Just a nonsense ideology that has no foundation. Why bother having any incentive to better one self. i.e. train and learn skills. Many Tories are self made, not inherited wealth believe it or not. Go and see the film Suffragette. That's being poor. As people were barely a 100 years ago. That's why people worked to the bone to achieve something for themselves. No handouts.

Generali

ukcarper wrote: »

I would also suspect that a large number are on part time contracts.

TBH I simply don't understand who works in the UK now.

Everyone seems to be on the minimum wage working 16 hours a week or is funny-money unemployed or works for the NHS or strikes instead of driving a tube train.

Surely the UK economy doesn't now consist of Poles living 8 to a room, work shy locals and a bunch of bankers having their income redistributed.