What extra taxes would you volunteer to pay?

michaels

Hang on a minute, I agreed to pay cgt on my ppr and ni on my pension income.

westernpromise

You wanted your CGT indexed. As all house price growth is just inflation that's volunteering for nil.

Point taken re NI though.

Back to charities that aren't. Here's a fun statistic. %age of funds received spent on "admin" by Oxfam: 45%. %age of funds received spent on "admin" by Medecins Sans Frontieres: 6%.

Some huge percentage, maybe as high as 80%, of Oxfam's income is contributed by states and governments (i.e. taxpayers), so it's not just Haitians Oxfam is raping.

Here's a fun question for those who think charidees can do no wrong: why aren't their chief execs unpaid volunteers?

It should be illegal for a charity CEO to receive a salary. The charities' business model is poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in rich countries who then dole out a small fraction to rich people in poor countries.

Herzlos

westernpromise wrote: »

The impact on me is that charities get tax breaks, and as I am among the handful of people in the country who pay income tax, that means they cost me money.

You and another 29.3 people, so the share it costs you is negligible. Much less than Trident or Brexit does.

Here's a thought experiment for you. Using PayPal, send me £13 out of your own pocket. I'll give £1 of your money to the next street sleeper I see, and I'll keep the other £12 for myself for my "expenses". Seem fair? Because that's what's happening here. Let me know when you're ready with your money.

That's a false comparison. You're assuming that the charity is just putting their finger in the air and saying £12 is their expenses, whereas I'm pretty sure they can prove what their expenses are and make some effort to keep it sensible.

If I paid you £13 and it genuinely cost you £12 to deliver the food, then that'd be fair enough; both you and I know the deal. If it only cost you £1 and you pocketed the £11, then that'd be unfair. I don't believe any of the charities do that (though you could argue some overpay their executives, but even that's contentious).

Herzlos

westernpromise wrote: »

So we're into four pages here, and I've yet to read a proposal by anyone to pay personally any more tax. All the proposals are for other people to pay more!

I did on the first page, a few posts after yours where you were volunteering to pay less tax...

Herzlos

westernpromise wrote: »

Here's a fun question for those who think charidees can do no wrong: why aren't their chief execs unpaid volunteers?

Because charities want to have good chief execs? It's a lot of work to do voluntarily.

Not that I think charities can do no wrong; there's plenty of ways to improve them. I just don't think they should be demonised for having running costs.

Malthusian

westernpromise wrote: »

If I can get 4,000 people to do this, I can give £4,000 of food to the hungry and with the other £48,000 I can buy myself this:
https://www.mercedes-benz.net/p/uk/en/used-cars/e-300-amg-line-cabriolet/c05af5ffbd5cd09daf32d42aa0e59dff?csref=WEB1602080002_ppc_180216&s_kwcid=AL!160!3!237195466712!e!!g!!mercedes&ef_id=WSLwTgAAAy7WBg3i:20180214112534:s

That webpage says "Unfortunately, this vehicle is no longer available. Please go back to the start page to view our current stock."

Well done Herzlos for putting their money where their mouth is and sending Westernpromise the £13, along with 3,999 other people.

Herzlos wrote:

If I paid you £13 and it genuinely cost you £12 to deliver the food, then that'd be fair enough; both you and I know the deal. If it only cost you £1 and you pocketed the £11, then that'd be unfair.

Why? It's completely irrelevant. The homeless person, who is all that matters here, gets £1 either way.

Does the homeless person care whether Westernpromise spends £12 on a car or £12 on genuine admin expenses? No. He gets the same £1 either way and it will buy him the same amount of food. He might have preferred to get the whole £13 but that's not going to happen.

Do the donors care whether Westernpromise spends £12 on a car or £12 on admin? They shouldn't, because the homeless person doesn't care, and if they only care about helping homeless people, and they're happy for only £1 of every £13 they donate to go to homeless people, then it's irrelevant what the other £12 is spent on.

Herzlos wrote: »

Because charities want to have good chief execs? It's a lot of work to do voluntarily.

Thousands of people in the UK are perfectly happy to do a lot of work voluntarily if they believe it's worthwhile, due to being retired or independently wealthy. That's not an issue. Otherwise there would be hardly any local charities, amateur sports clubs and local political organisations in the UK.

There is no shortage of perfectly competent people willing to put in a lot of work to run a worthwhile voluntarily organisation. The likes of Oxfam, on the other hand...

Herzlos

Malthusian wrote: »

Why? It's completely irrelevant. The homeless person, who is all that matters here, gets £1 either way.

It's completely relevant; operations have costs, and paying a fair rate for those costs is fair.

Does the homeless person care whether Westernpromise spends £12 on a car or £12 on genuine admin expenses?

No, they don't. But the people paying the £13 do.
Most people (I assume) are happy with some reasonable overhead for a service being carried out, but aren't happy just giving people money for reasons.

westernpromise

Herzlos wrote: »

Because charities want to have good chief execs? It's a lot of work to do voluntarily.

Not that I think charities can do no wrong; there's plenty of ways to improve them. I just don't think they should be demonised for having running costs.

So Oxfam had a really good chief executive, did they?

What they need is retired FTSE CEOs prepared to work for nothing who know what good governance and expense control look like. That they don't is because they have mugs like you excusing their deficiencies. Look at the furore from the left over the President's Club (not one hostess complained) and contrast with the absence of furore from the left over Oxfam. "Lessons must be learned" is about as tough on themselves as they get. Because charidees are the left's favourite industry.

westernpromise

Herzlos wrote: »

It's completely relevant; operations have costs, and paying a fair rate for those costs is fair.


No, they don't. But the people paying the £13 do.
Most people (I assume) are happy with some reasonable overhead for a service being carried out, but aren't happy just giving people money for reasons.

You reckon the mugs handing over £12 to Trussell so they can spend the whole lot on Trussell staff, the actual food being donated by someone else, even know that goes on? I bet you they don't. In the same way I would be amazed if individual donors to "housing charity" Shelter know that it has never housed one solitary person, I am pretty sure Oxfam's donors didn't know that Oxfam staff used underage prostitutes, and I'd be amazed if people donating to pay for mosquito nets to be given out for free in Africa realise they have put local mosquito net makers out of business. But then they're clients of the food aid cowboys so that's all right then.

Charities resemble the church in about 1500. They are utterly rapacious, but not content with just the money and the opportunities for sexual corruption, they also seek the opportunity to exhibit profound moral arrogance as well. They have a clergy complete with filthy rich cardinals at the top and penniless volunteer priests at the bottom, they have cathedrals, they have embassies, every natural disaster real and imagined is a pretext for them to demand alms, and they operate with almost total financial opacity.

Enabling it all are hapless suckers chucking money into the collecting dish because they believe the propaganda because they agree the church should sell indulgences.

They need their Martin Luther moment.

Money_Muppet

I'd happily pay tax at my marginal rate on income from my shares that fall outside my ISA allowance.

I'd also happily pay inheritance tax at my marginal rate (it is an income after all).

I'd also pay more tax on petrol/diesel.