Tax on wealth suggested

Albermarle

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

This is a rather spurious way of highlighting how much we tax we pay .
In fact an average earner pays about 20% in income tax and NI : someone on £40K about 25% and someone on £100K about 35 %. Then there is VAT and council tax .
By international comparisons with other advanced countries ( although this comparison is not straightforward) our tax take is on the lower side , especially compared to France and the Nordic countries.
Consequently our public services are generally underfunded with a low level benefits and state pension system. 

Another_Saver

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I'd also like to see the main criminalised vice industries made legal, the definition expanded to include sugar, processed food and animal products, and taxed like alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. That way you can make police/justice system savings, bring probably a few hundred thousand people and maybe a few extra BN a year into the formal, taxed economy, regulate to minimise the risks, and generate revenue to tell offset epidemiological causes of NHS/social costs.

The problem is these are consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect those on lower incomes.  VAT on meat would make a lot of sense from an environmental perspective, but it adds proportionately more to one's tax burden the less they earn.

Re: decriminalisation of vice sectors, I would argue the net benefits of safety both physically and of the product, lack of stress or fear of criminal repurcussions, standard and probably cheaper pricing because of the lower risks and costs of decriminalised operations would offset the taxes. You would also need an amnesty for everyone involved in those sectors, as with the good Friday agreement, unless they had committed a very serious violent crime.

Re: sugar, processed food, I would argue the personal health and financial costs far outweigh making sweets or ready meals say 20% more expensive. You could rebalance to support the high street by exempting eating out or putting eating out on a reduced rate (or only for non-animal meals). There's also potential NHS/private dental savings.

Currently animal agriculture is heavily subsidised. My personal opinion disagrees with that but regardless, plant-based is cheaper and uses less land/labour/capital/regulation/health externalities for the nutrients produced, not to mention saving on the trade costs and risks of potential food self-sufficiency. 
I'm for UBI anyway which nullifies the "what about low income households" argument, but that's another whole other debate.

Eco_Miser

Mickey666 said:

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

Your analogy is flawed because you have forgotten the £12.5k Personal Allowance.

For anyone earning up to £25k half their income or more is tax free - so that's Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday working for themselves, the other half of Wednesday paying NICs, Thursday paying the 20% tax, and Friday paying the VAT etc.

Even at £62.5k a fifth of their income, e.g. Monday's work, is tax free.

Mickey666

kinger101 said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I think the median UK salary is around £32K.  So middle earners don't pay 40% income tax.  I don't thing higher rate should be touched without a more progressive banding system between £12.5 K and £50 K.

Your analogy doesn't seem to work.  I pay 40% tax, and I can assure you I'm not digging coppers out the back of my sofa on Friday night to cover the grocery shop and my disposable income is considerable higher than what I earn after 2 pm on Friday.

Of course it’s a crude analogy and there will be many exceptions.  My basic point is that everyone pays a great deal more tax than they typically think.  Government is ‘clever’ in that respect - keep the headline figures low but add loads of ‘stealth’ taxes that people don’t really notice.  Thus income tax isn’t really 20% at all because it’s actually income tax + NI, so there’s a 33% (ish) deduction straight away.  Similarly, VAT isn’t really 20% because it is typically paid out of taxed income.  It’s an interesting exercise to calculate how much you really pay in tax if you account for absolutely everything and then apply it to the working week to see when you are working for yourself.

And all that doesn’t take into account all the ‘double taxation’ inherent in the system.  Thus, you work, pay tax on your income, then spend what’s left (which is typically taxed as you spend) and that money goes to someone else as income, which then gets taxed again, plus when they spend what’s left it is also taxed again.  Basically, pretty much all economic activity ends up going through the government books as revenue!  But as we all know, government spending is a bottomless pit so it will always be able to spend more regardless of high tax revenues might be.

zagfles

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I'd also like to see the main criminalised vice industries made legal, the definition expanded to include sugar, processed food and animal products, and taxed like alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. That way you can make police/justice system savings, bring probably a few hundred thousand people and maybe a few extra BN a year into the formal, taxed economy, regulate to minimise the risks, and generate revenue to tell offset epidemiological causes of NHS/social costs.

The problem is these are consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect those on lower incomes.  VAT on meat would make a lot of sense from an environmental perspective, but it adds proportionately more to one's tax burden the less they earn.

As does tobacco tax - significantly more so as poorer people are more likely to smoke. Also alcohol tax. But these taxes are designed to be regressive because there's a correlation between poverty and bad health outcomes. Same with things like the min alcohol price in Scotland.

Basically regressive taxation on "bad" choices is already being used to try to modify the behaviour of the "poor", so extending it to other stuff like red meat, sugar etc isn't a big step.

zagfles

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I think the median UK salary is around £32K.  So middle earners don't pay 40% income tax.  I don't thing higher rate should be touched without a more progressive banding system between £12.5 K and £50 K.

Your analogy doesn't seem to work.  I pay 40% tax, and I can assure you I'm not digging coppers out the back of my sofa on Friday night to cover the grocery shop and my disposable income is considerable higher than what I earn after 2 pm on Friday.

Of course it’s a crude analogy and there will be many exceptions.  My basic point is that everyone pays a great deal more tax than they typically think.  Government is ‘clever’ in that respect - keep the headline figures low but add loads of ‘stealth’ taxes that people don’t really notice.  Thus income tax isn’t really 20% at all because it’s actually income tax + NI, so there’s a 33% (ish) deduction straight away.  Similarly, VAT isn’t really 20% because it is typically paid out of taxed income.  It’s an interesting exercise to calculate how much you really pay in tax if you account for absolutely everything and then apply it to the working week to see when you are working for yourself.

And all that doesn’t take into account all the ‘double taxation’ inherent in the system.  Thus, you work, pay tax on your income, then spend what’s left (which is typically taxed as you spend) and that money goes to someone else as income, which then gets taxed again, plus when they spend what’s left it is also taxed again.  Basically, pretty much all economic activity ends up going through the government books as revenue!  But as we all know, government spending is a bottomless pit so it will always be able to spend more regardless of high tax revenues might be.

You're double counting tax but not income. If you want to count the tax paid by people you buy stuff off, then you also need to count their income. So looking at tax paid by other people due to your spending is flawed in terms of the total % tax you pay.

zagfles

This is interesting summary of UK taxation and GDP ratio: https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.pdf

kinger101

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I'd also like to see the main criminalised vice industries made legal, the definition expanded to include sugar, processed food and animal products, and taxed like alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. That way you can make police/justice system savings, bring probably a few hundred thousand people and maybe a few extra BN a year into the formal, taxed economy, regulate to minimise the risks, and generate revenue to tell offset epidemiological causes of NHS/social costs.

The problem is these are consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect those on lower incomes.  VAT on meat would make a lot of sense from an environmental perspective, but it adds proportionately more to one's tax burden the less they earn.

As does tobacco tax - significantly more so as poorer people are more likely to smoke. Also alcohol tax. But these taxes are designed to be regressive because there's a correlation between poverty and bad health outcomes. Same with things like the min alcohol price in Scotland.

Basically regressive taxation on "bad" choices is already being used to try to modify the behaviour of the "poor", so extending it to other stuff like red meat, sugar etc isn't a big step.

I don't disagree, but I thinks it's dangerous to assume the extrapolating this to processed foods in general will necessarily lower consumption.  Poor families are still likely to rely heavily on processed foods.  The convenience element is an important factor for working families, particularly those working on multiple minimal wage jobs.  

Mickey666

zagfles said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I think the median UK salary is around £32K.  So middle earners don't pay 40% income tax.  I don't thing higher rate should be touched without a more progressive banding system between £12.5 K and £50 K.

Your analogy doesn't seem to work.  I pay 40% tax, and I can assure you I'm not digging coppers out the back of my sofa on Friday night to cover the grocery shop and my disposable income is considerable higher than what I earn after 2 pm on Friday.

Of course it’s a crude analogy and there will be many exceptions.  My basic point is that everyone pays a great deal more tax than they typically think.  Government is ‘clever’ in that respect - keep the headline figures low but add loads of ‘stealth’ taxes that people don’t really notice.  Thus income tax isn’t really 20% at all because it’s actually income tax + NI, so there’s a 33% (ish) deduction straight away.  Similarly, VAT isn’t really 20% because it is typically paid out of taxed income.  It’s an interesting exercise to calculate how much you really pay in tax if you account for absolutely everything and then apply it to the working week to see when you are working for yourself.

And all that doesn’t take into account all the ‘double taxation’ inherent in the system.  Thus, you work, pay tax on your income, then spend what’s left (which is typically taxed as you spend) and that money goes to someone else as income, which then gets taxed again, plus when they spend what’s left it is also taxed again.  Basically, pretty much all economic activity ends up going through the government books as revenue!  But as we all know, government spending is a bottomless pit so it will always be able to spend more regardless of high tax revenues might be.

You're double counting tax but not income. If you want to count the tax paid by people you buy stuff off, then you also need to count their income. So looking at tax paid by other people due to your spending is flawed in terms of the total % tax you pay.

I wasn’t trying to suggest that MY tax% is affected by the fact that the plumber (or whoever) I pay my taxed money to is further taxed, more to point out that government get tax revenues from pretty much every transaction.  Thus money I earn has already been previously taxed by my employer’s tax, as was the money paid to my employer in the first place.  That’s the ‘upward chain’ and there’s also the downward chain from my spending.   It’s a long chain of transactions and government gets a tax take at every stage.

kinger101

Another_Saver said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

Mickey666 said:

kinger101 said:

zagfles said:

kinger101 said:

Another_Saver said:

barnstar2077 said:

A percentage tax on anything over a million etc would just make wealthy people less likely to want to live in the UK, then you get no money from them.  If I ruled the world, I would find a way to stealth tax luxury items instead.  Champagne, expensive clothing, cars that cost more than 40k etc.  I would think of a novel way for each type of product so no one could point to one individual tax or tariff.  Yes, wealthy people would still know it was slightly more expensive to live in the UK, but from a psychological point of view I think it would be more effective. 

Your first point is an unsubstantiated nonsense myth.

It's not particularly constructive to dismiss something as an unsubstantiated nonsense myth without offering anything in the way of evidence to counter it.  Barnstar didn't make any specific claims about x % of people leaving the country leaving to £y loss in revenue - just that more people want want to leave and if they did, you'd get no money from them.  Your point on UK assets is true, but we know tax exiles and tax havens exist, and even people on this forum have discussed moving to IOM.  

Indeed - it's blatently obvious that there do exist people who move country due to taxes, there are enough celebrity examples. So the idea that no-one does it is definitely a myth. The question is the extent.

But the other point is that it only takes a small minority of the rich to move to make tax increases on them fiscally negative, through the loss of all the taxes they currently pay, income tax, VAT, excise duties plus of course the indirect taxes from their spending such as restaurants, shop profits etc.

More widely, it could potentially discourage inward investment.  

I personally think the UK's biggest problem is that middle earners don't pay enough income taxes. Granted, state pensions are usually better in other countries, but ........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Seems we already have a perfectly good mechanism for getting a bit more from millions of people without the need to invent a new tax.  

Hmm.  Think about tax in terms of the working week.
Thus, you work all of Monday (20% of the working week) to pay basic income tax.  ‘Middle earners’ then work all of Tuesday to pay their 40% tax rate.  Wednesday pays for NICs up to around 2pm.  So that’s around half the week gone already just working for the taxman. Next, we need another full day to pay the 20% VAT on pretty much everything we spend, so that takes us up to around Thursday midday-ish and the rest of Thursday (and maybe into Friday) is spent on other taxes such as council tax, car tax, petrol/diesel tax, gas/elec tax, insurance tax, alcohol tax, etc.
So, welcome to Friday, when you are finally working for yourself and out of that you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay gas/elec bills etc before you’re finally left with disposable income that you can spend on enjoying yourself - so that’s probably just a few hours on Friday afternoon that you’re actually working for your own enjoyment.
THAT’S the sort of expensive society we’ve built for ourselves, yet many people still argue that taxes should be higher because government needs more money. 

I'd also like to see the main criminalised vice industries made legal, the definition expanded to include sugar, processed food and animal products, and taxed like alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. That way you can make police/justice system savings, bring probably a few hundred thousand people and maybe a few extra BN a year into the formal, taxed economy, regulate to minimise the risks, and generate revenue to tell offset epidemiological causes of NHS/social costs.

The problem is these are consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect those on lower incomes.  VAT on meat would make a lot of sense from an environmental perspective, but it adds proportionately more to one's tax burden the less they earn.

Re: decriminalisation of vice sectors, I would argue the net benefits of safety both physically and of the product, lack of stress or fear of criminal repurcussions, standard and probably cheaper pricing because of the lower risks and costs of decriminalised operations would offset the taxes. You would also need an amnesty for everyone involved in those sectors, as with the good Friday agreement, unless they had committed a very serious violent crime.

Re: sugar, processed food, I would argue the personal health and financial costs far outweigh making sweets or ready meals say 20% more expensive. You could rebalance to support the high street by exempting eating out or putting eating out on a reduced rate (or only for non-animal meals). There's also potential NHS/private dental savings.

Currently animal agriculture is heavily subsidised. My personal opinion disagrees with that but regardless, plant-based is cheaper and uses less land/labour/capital/regulation/health externalities for the nutrients produced, not to mention saving on the trade costs and risks of potential food self-sufficiency. 
I'm for UBI anyway which nullifies the "what about low income households" argument, but that's another whole other debate.

I think it would be hard to move to a system in the UK which subsidizes only plant-based agriculture.  For one, most of the plants grown are to feed animals rather than for human consumption.  Many grains can be used for human consumption or animal consumption.  If you remove subsidies for UK barley growers, then animals will be fed imported grain.  Or UK consumers will eat more imported meat (probably grown to a lower welfare standard).  There's also an issue that some land isn't suitable for crop production, particularly in upland farms.

If you're trying to tax consumption of meat, VAT is much easier as it covers the whole production chain and imports in one fell swoop.