Labour's £113,000 tax rise for people on £80k

Malthusian

kinger101 wrote: »

I can guarantee you 95% of them wouldn't vote Labour if they proposed income taxes comparable to those in NW Europe.

They already are. Based on online tax calculators, my marginal tax rate in France would be 38% compared to 46% over here. In Germany it would be almost identical.

Claims that income tax rates are higher on the continent usually rely on disingenuously ignoring National Insurance.

Malthusian

wolvoman wrote: »

Why can't we ALL pay more tax for better services (assuming that's what we want).

Because it's mathematically impossible unless we eliminate all public spending other than foreign aid.

I don't understand this clamour for people richer than me to pay for ME to get better services. Why shouldn't I pay more too?

Because making net recipients pay tax on taxpayer's money and then giving some of that tax back to them again is inefficient and achieves nothing.

phillw

Thrugelmir wrote: »

You seem to know little about employment law in that case.

Please provide proof that either of the statements I made is untrue.

Your claim that zero hour contracts were created as a result of minimum wage ignores the evidence that people were on zero hour contracts before the minimum wage was introduced.

Pennywise

Malthusian wrote: »

Claims that income tax rates are higher on the continent usually rely on disingenuously ignoring National Insurance.

That's because NIC is only paid by working age employees. There are enormous numbers of people who don't pay NIC, being BTL landlords, self employed with their own companies, pensioners, people living on foreign income/trust funds, people living on benefits, people living on investment income, people with part time jobs each earning below the NIC threshold.

For those people, their UK tax IS lower than generally across Europe.

wolvoman

Malthusian wrote: »

Because it's mathematically impossible unless we eliminate all public spending other than foreign aid.

Because making net recipients pay tax on taxpayer's money and then giving some of that tax back to them again is inefficient and achieves nothing.

How can you define what a net recipient is?
It varies from person to person depending on thousands of variables.

In any case there's absolutely no efficiency loss (from a tax perspective) if you move a tax rate from 20% to 21% or 40% to 41%.

My point was more based on the Labour assumption that somehow you can sustain massive increases on public spending across 100% of the population but only being paid for by 5%.

Remember we're not talking about the destitute and the poor here. We're talking about people earning £40k, £50k, £60k, £80k not paying anything extra. Really? That cannot be sustainable (or fair).

Thrugelmir

phillw wrote: »

Please provide proof that either of the statements I made is untrue.

Your claim that zero hour contracts were created as a result of minimum wage ignores the evidence that people were on zero hour contracts before the minimum wage was introduced.

Off the top of my head constructive dismissal potentially. When dealing with staff issues one needs to tread carefully. Plenty of no fee solicitors around willing to fight causes.

There has been zero hour contracts for decades. Growth in there use came after introduction of minimum wage. The risk of unintended consequences. As well thought through a policy is. Pull a lever and it starts achain reaction.

kinger101

Malthusian wrote: »

They already are. Based on online tax calculators, my marginal tax rate in France would be 38% compared to 46% over here. In Germany it would be almost identical.

Claims that income tax rates are higher on the continent usually rely on disingenuously ignoring National Insurance.

I wrote about income taxes (not Income Tax). So this includes all taxes on earned income.

There's a round-up of the different taxes here.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/27/tax-britons-pay-europe-australia-us

These are definitely higher in German and France. The flip side is state pension provision and unemployment benefits are much higher.

I'm not sure why you're using marginal rates anyway. Other than perhaps to be disingenuous.

Herzlos

wolvoman wrote: »

My point was more based on the Labour assumption that somehow you can sustain massive increases on public spending across 100% of the population but only being paid for by 5%.

Not all spending is funded from taxing the existing population. Some spending will drive economic growth and will essentially pay for itself. Some will safe enough money to essentially pay for itself.

kinger101

Herzlos wrote: »

Not all spending is funded from taxing the existing population. Some spending will drive economic growth and will essentially pay for itself. Some will safe enough money to essentially pay for itself.

But the notion that taxing only the top 5% more will achieve Labour's goals is absolute garbage. Below is taxation as a percentage of GDP.

Let's face it. People in this country wouldn't vote for 5-10% more tax on their pay for better public services. So we're condemned to cycles of Labour creating a massive structural deficit, then the Tories being blamed for the inevitable cuts to services.

Norway 54.8
Finland 54.2
Denmark 50.8
Sweden 49.8
Belgium 47.9
France 47.9
Germany 44.5
Italy 43.5
Austria 42.7
Bosnia and Herzegovina 41.2
Iceland 40.4
Netherlands 39.8
Slovenia 39.3
Cyprus 39.2
Hungary 39.1
Greece 39.0
Spain 37.3
Portugal 37.0
Israel 36.8
Croatia 36.7
Luxembourg 36.5
Czech Republic 36.3
Japan 35.9
European Union 35.7
Malta 35.2
OECD 34.8
United Kingdom 34.4
Serbia 34.1
Moldova 33.8
Poland 33.8
Korea, South 33.6
Estonia 32.3
Canada 31.7
Ireland 30.8
Latvia 30.4
Albania 30.26
Slovakia 29.5
Ukraine 28.1
Montenegro 28.0
Trinidad and Tobago 28.0
Switzerland 27.8
Romania 27.7
United States 27.1

Prism

kinger101 wrote: »

Let's face it. People in this country wouldn't vote for 5-10% more tax on their pay for better public services. So we're condemned to cycles of Labour creating a massive structural deficit, then the Tories being blamed for the inevitable cuts to services.

Its a shame really. I would happily pay 10% more tax if I got better services but not enough people agree it seems. I doubt any party would get in if they were up front about the required increased tax burden.