2016 budget thoughts.....

Filo25

Mine would be a few things others have already gone for.

Look at property taxation, given a lot of people are earning more from owning a property than they are from working which doesn't seem entirely healthy.

Combine NI and Income tax, and get rid of so many of the arbitrary rises and falls in the effective marginal rate which we all pay, replace with a simple progressive income tax.

wymondham

My idea of years gone by which is to scrap Vehicle Duty and put it onto fuel. Cant be dodged, heavy users pay more, foreign users pay also, simple to administer and reduces overheads....

caronoel

wymondham wrote: »

My idea of years gone by which is to scrap Vehicle Duty and put it onto fuel. Cant be dodged, heavy users pay more, foreign users pay also, simple to administer and reduces overheads....

Interesting one.

As an alternative cost saving method, should vehicle tax (assuming it is retained) be collected by the insurance companies at the time you insure your vehicle. It would much obviate of the need for (and cost of) collecting vehicle duty.

michaels

caronoel wrote: »

My thoughts...



Pensions

• Pension tax credit of 25 to 30%, irrespective of marginal tax rate to encourage lower earners to contribute. Removing the tax benefits of “salary sacrifice schemes” and tax-free ISAs could fund some of this.

NHS

• £10 charge per GP visit – capped at £20 per month. Funds received would be ringfenced for the NHS.

Income tax

1. Announce intention to merge NI and PAYE
2. Widen standard rate tax band substantially

CGT

1. Harmonise CGT to be at an individual’s marginal income tax rate, to avoid gaming
2. PPR relief not available if you have held the house for less than 2 years

IHT:

1. Move the 7 year rule to 10 years, and greatly reduce “taper relief”. Start at 10% in yr 10 going to 50% in year 5, and 80% in year 3 or less.
2. Replace IHT with a Gift Tax, payable by the recipient on a lifetime basis. So the first £250k of gifts / inheritances received would be tax free – anything in excess would be taxed at 25-30%. This would encourage some folks to distribute their inheritances more widely

Interesting idea to make the 'inheritance/gifting' tax payable by annd allowance for the recipient - I need to think about it...

Also not sure about charging CGT at marginal tax rate - or rather I do think this makes sense but that the gain should be calcualted as having been made over the total period of ownership so if the gain is made over 24 months of ownership if should be taxed as if 50% of the gain was made in Y1 and 50% in Y2.

mwpt wrote: »

All good suggestions caronoel, except a minor thing. I'd make it £5 per GP visit to mitigate some of the problems people will perceive with such a "regressive" charge. Also, £10 is probably a surprisingly large sum to people living in or close to poverty.

I think the NHS should charge for extras - want to see a GP (non-emergency) evenings or weekends or short notice - pay £10. Don't want to queue for a blood test - pay £10. Don't want to wait at A&E for your broken arm to be set (obviosuly once you have been triaged and emergency cases always treated first) - pay £100 etc.

michaels

Personally I would remove PPR relief but only make the capital gains tax payable when removing equity (so on death or downsizing) and when downsizing there would be a tax credit available so that if you later put the equity back into a ppr you could reclaim the CGT. Thus there is no tax cost from moving temporaily into rented accomodation. Oh and of course like all capital taxes it should be indexed to CPI rather than the govt taxing inflation.

mwpt

michaels wrote: »

I think the NHS should charge for extras - want to see a GP (non-emergency) evenings or weekends or short notice - pay £10. Don't want to queue for a blood test - pay £10. Don't want to wait at A&E for your broken arm to be set (obviosuly once you have been triaged and emergency cases always treated first) - pay £100 etc.

I can see your intention but if I recall correctly, economists have something to say about these systems and it's not good. I believe if not carefully set they create the wrong incentives. For example, you may end up in a situation where the choice is pay £100 or wait 8 hours for your broken arm to be cast.

Going back to freakonomics days I think one similar example was expecting parents to pay for late pickups at day care. Suddenly late pickups increased because now they could put a firm figure on the cost and depersonalise the decision. Not exactly the same, but similar.

So therefore I favour small blanket (i.e., applies to all) charges on services which are seen to be abused. A small GP visitation fee discourages spurious visits but isn't that onerous to pay when you really need to. A&E could charge a very small fee too and I don't think that would be too onerous on us.

But of course, this touches the sacred cow and apparently the world will end if a party attempts something like this.

chucknorris

caronoel wrote: »

CGT

Harmonise CGT to be at an individual’s marginal income tax rate, to avoid gaming

This should only be done if an actual 'real term' gain was taxable, by allowing indexation to account for inflation. With the current system, someone could be paying CGT on an actual 'real term' loss, at 18% and 28% that is bad enough, but if someone had to pay 40% or 45% tax on a loss making asset, that would be even more absurd than the current system.

I'm not against taxing by the marginal rate, just against the way that the gain is (mis)calculated.

I_Love_comps

I do not agree with people having to pay to see there GP.
I think that good idea would be to charge people or fine people who do not turn up for there appointments - say £10. This could be extended to hospital appointments too.

mwpt

I_Love_comps wrote: »

I do not agree with people having to pay to see there GP.
I think that good idea would be to charge people or fine people who do not turn up for there appointments - say £10. This could be extended to hospital appointments too.

This is the reaction that prevents it from happening. You only look at the fact "we're being charged to see our GP" and the auto-response is "NO".

Take some time to consider what it is trying to achieve, the benefits to you along with the any negatives.

The negatives are that a few times a year a person pays £5 for a visit. That's it, that's the sum total of the negatives. If you have an issue that requires follow up treatments and visits, then those should be free.

The positives are that it makes people think before they visit their GP. It will reduce spurious visits, reduce waiting times and provide some money to the NHS for improvement.

caronoel

I_Love_comps wrote: »

I do not agree with people having to pay to see there* GP.
I think that good idea would be to charge people or fine people who do not turn up for there* appointments - say £10. This could be extended to hospital appointments too.

A real bug bear of mine.

Just sloppy.