The forthcoming budget

Filo25

antrobus wrote: »

Look at how much a universal income costs, and get back to me.

There are plenty of sources on the internet where people have crunched the numbers. They are not difficult to find.:)

There are about 5 million students and housepersons who neither pay much in the way of tax nor receive benefits. Paying them a 'universal income' of, say 6,000 a year, will cost an extra 30 billion.
That's about 6% on the basic rate.

Plus the idea of Universal Income is surely that someone could live on it in the absence of any other benefits, I think at least for certain parts of the UK (London and the South East) you would be looking at pretty high levels of UI to support that, and you would then need to pay that to everyone (hence the Universal bit!)

As you say, its a lot of money.

westernpromise

Moby wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/11/imf-higher-taxes-rich-inequality-jeremy-corbyn-labour-donald-trump

There have, of course, been no tax cuts for the top 1% of UK taxpayers, who earn 12% of the money but pay 27% of the tax (hence at 37 times the rate the other 99% do).

BobQ

GreatApe wrote: »

Everyone to pay a flat 45% income on all their earnings

Government to introduce a new in work benefit of
45% of your earnings up to £11,500
25% of your earnings between £11,500 and £45,000
5% of your earnings between £45,000 and £150,000

That way they can claim everyone pays the same flat 45% tax but the government helps those who are poorer because the government is good like that. The 5% credit between £45k-£150k would probably be scrapped not long after.

In view of the number of people on minimum wage, I think itwould lead to civil disobedience and perhaps a revolution.

GreatApe

BobQ wrote: »

In view of the number of people on minimum wage, I think itwould lead to civil disobedience and perhaps a revolution.

I think you missed what was happening.
The actual net tax paid would be exactly the same only the wording is different to make it seem like everyone is paying a flat 45% and poorer workers are getting a top up on their low wages.

While I posted it in jest it might help unite higher and lower paid workers.
Someone earning £1m a year might be aggrieved now as they pay close to £450,000 tax while someone earning £21,500 only pays £2k tax. If the wording was changed so that both paid 45% flat tax but the lower paid person got government benefits to top up their low wages maybe higher paid people would be less unhappy about it all. The advantage is the socialists could point to income tax and say see we all pay the same 45% flat tax so stop your complaining

If I were a socialist that would be one of my priorities it would cut the legs off of a lot of the arguments about higher paid people paying all the taxes.

Edit: actually it would probably backfire. The poor would cry why the hell is someone on £20k getting more credits than someone on £10k and those on £20k would cry why the hell are those on £40k getting more credits. etc.......oh well it was a good idea for the 5 minutes it lasted.

setmefree2

Government borrowing comes in lower than expected again, providing more wriggle room in next month's budget.....

Government borrowing at lowest September level for 10 years

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41691656

BobQ

michaels wrote: »

There was the bit in the quoted report about the average top rate of tax in the g20 being 35% compared to at least 47% in the uk (or more when you consider the removal of the personal allowance and employers ni).

For the mega rich who already work for the prestige rather than the money I guess this makes no odds but for the moderately wealthy anecdotally there seems to be an incentive to only work 4 days per week etc as the extra income is not worth the extra effort - great for those who choose a better work/life balance, not so good for tax revenues and thus redistribution.

What you pay in tax cannot be viewed in isolation. What matters is what you get for the money. Some countries require people to pay medical insurance or charge for refuse collection etc. You have to compare apples with apples.I'm told that in France its 8% of income for example. Has any allowance been made for such factors in the G20 data?

SalarySlave

The Governing party are having an absolute nightmare the last few weeks(This could be extended easily even further back). But with this in mind, pressure has to be building on Philip Hammond to pull a bundle of rabbits out of the hat in 2 weeks time.

GreatApe

The economy for smaller and medium sized businesses is booming imo its just this brexit has put some pressure on the breaks for larger business.

Normally I am not a borrow and spend advocate but in this case I would be happy for fillip to up spending by £10 billion this year. I dont want big businesses and brexit dragging down the smaller and medium sized businesses which will just feed a recession or general slowdown

Perhaps do it by reducing the 20p income tax rate to 18p for the rest of this political cycle
If labor get in then they can increase it back to 20p if they want to !!!! off 30 million workers

SkyeKnight

Malthusian wrote: »

...there will be no massive spend. There will be an enormous saving on the administration and staffing costs of running the horrendously complicated and dehumanising system we have at the moment

I've heard this argument before and basically people wildly overestimate the cost of administering benefits. It's well under 1% of their costs! That's not going to increase people's universal income much.

SkyeKnight

westernpromise wrote: »

There have, of course, been no tax cuts for the top 1% of UK taxpayers, who earn 12% of the money but pay 27% of the tax (hence at 37 times the rate the other 99% do).

They pay 27% of INCOME tax - not of all tax. Only looking at the most progressive tax is going to make it look like they pay a lot. They don't pay that proportion of National Insurance, Council Tax VAT, alcohol & tobacco taxes, stamp duty, etc, etc.

In fact the majority of taxes are paid by the people between the 50th and 90th percentile - the middle classes - as perhaps you would expect.