Only freedom will do

katep23 · 21 March 2017 at 10:46PM

edinburgher wrote: »

You're probably right re. GPs, I had always thought that some healthcare stuff (local primary care centre type things) were funded by CT, I am wrong on that front.

Some health and social services (stop smoking, substance abuse services, domiciliary care) are funded by local authorities, others are funded by the NHS via Clinical Commissioning Groups (such as GPs), whilst yet others are funded jointly.

The budgets generally work in silos so what benefits one agency in cost reductions may cause increased costs to another agency - we need cross-agency budgets to improve the situation.

Sorry to side-track the discussion!

Edit: some roads are the responsibility of local authorities, some are down to Highways England. I don't think VED income is attributed to road maintenance.

edinburgher · 21 March 2017 at 11:35PM

Curious why you think property values are nonsense Greying? Sure, the values used are out-of-date, but the practice of valuation is well established and reasonably consistent

AlexLK · 21 March 2017 at 11:57PM

edinburgher wrote: »

You're probably right re. GPs, I had always thought that some healthcare stuff (local primary care centre type things) were funded by CT, I am wrong on that front.

So far as I am aware the NHS and State Pension are funded by NI. I could well be wrong as I know very little about this.

edinburgher wrote: »

Your large house with a private lane is large, ergo it uses more of the public road to connect it with the rest of civilization, raising costs (even without streetlights).

Ed, the only contact with the rest of civilisation is a single track road width at the bottom of the lane / drive in most cases. How does that raise costs? Even tiny houses have drives that connect to the main road, I hardly see how this is different?

edinburgher wrote: »

I think your 'PAYG' tax will not work - why don't we replace it with a tax that bundles together lots of services and tries to charge people based on their ability to pay? We could call it 'Council Tax' :rotfl:

Council Tax doesn't charge on the basis of service usage. E.g. my parents pay c.£3,500 council tax per annum. They have their bins collected once per week and the bins are the same size as everyone else's. They don't use and have not used in the past: streetlights, schools, social care, the fire brigade or other LA provided services. In contrast, my in-laws pay very little council tax c.£1,000-1,250 per annum (less than half!). They similarly have their bins collected once per week but use or have used streetlights, schools (for 3 children), social care and other LA provided services. My parents pay enough tax without being taxed to live in a nice house whereas my in-laws pay less tax but use more services.

My proposal would be for people to pay to access / use services which seems the fairest way to me. However, I could well be wrong.

AlexLK · 22 March 2017 at 12:39AM

Just read this page back to myself and realise I am being somewhat dense and rather self absorbed. Whilst I don't really agree with the amount of taxes we pay in this country, I have spent a while thinking about the alternative (each providing for ourselves) and it led me to think about some of the pupils I teach. I don't think some of the pupils would have an education if it were left to their parents to pay for the service. It often seems like we pay far too many taxes. On a personal level, I often feel I'm not getting value for money. However, I wouldn't want to see a child go without an education or somebody elderly and infirm with only a state pension go without help.

I was being selfish and idealistic (that we can all pay for ourselves).

Greying_Pilgrim · 22 March 2017 at 7:40AM

edinburgher wrote: »

Curious why you think property values are nonsense Greying? Sure, the values used are out-of-date, but the practice of valuation is well established and reasonably consistent

I don't think that they are consitent ed - and go out of whack too quickly. 'Value' is a notional thing at best. Our street was valued pretty much as a single band (for the majority of houses) and yet even back in 1991, there were 2 and 3 bedroom houses mingled togther (victorian housing - modernised/upgraded and not). There is a big disparity in use of services between the households, and yet we all (notionally) pay the same, with the exception of eligible discounts.

I don't see how your property 'value' determines your use (or not) of services - I never have been able to see the connection. I can see that if an 8 bedroomed property has 8+ inhabitants, then there is the potential for there to be a bigger call on services - rubbish collection alone (potentially), but I can't say (because I really don't know) if an 8 bedroomed property is asked to pay 8X the CT that a 1 bedroomed property would be asked to pay.

As I said ed - I don't know what the answer is - so yes, maybe we have to put up with an imperfect system, that always penalises someone, somewhere along the line - perhaps that is the nature of society. My point was that 'flat-rate' per capita tax has its problems too.

Again, apologies for hijacking your wonderfully flowing thread and I'm bowing out of the discussion, as I appear to be adding nothing to it

Happy Wednesday, ed and readers of this thread

Greying X

hiddenshadow · 22 March 2017 at 9:30AM

I don't necessarily mind the concept of a PAYG system (though I think it would cost people far more than they think), but the implementation seems impossible:

- how do you track "use" for things like streetlights? do you only pay for the ones near your home? what about near your work? do we all get trackers installed so we can "ping" against specific streetlights we actually "use" (e.g. travel past)? :rotfl:
- how do you charge for preventative things? It's fine to say "police person X came out to your house for 2.5 hours after an incident, £1,340 please", but what about "that robbery that didn't happen due to law enforcement locally"?
- how do you handle services that everyone wants available but no one wants to pay to use (similar to the law enforcement example - see also fire department, probably other community things like whoever mows the common areas, etc. basically anything not connected to a specific property)
- to Alex's point above, how do you handle people who can't afford PAYG for those things? do you just prioritise certain things, do you allow people in certain circumstances to use them for free (thus rising the cost for everyone else as you have to pay to administer/monitor those freebies), are there things you deem them "unworthy" to have because they can't afford them?

and then you get back into the realm of fair vs unfair taxation all over again. Just like universal basic income is too simplistic when you think about it (COL factors, mainly), PAYG taxation falls over pretty quickly, especially when faced with real-world numbers.

I do think council tax is also too simplistic, especially as everything's based on 20+ year old valuations which seems a bit ridiculous. I wonder if you could do something similar to Ed's idea, though - take a given area and figure out a basic number you want to charge and apply that to the average house value in that area. If you're in a house less than that value, you pay the proportionate amount less, if you're in a house more than that value, you pay the proportionate amount more. Of course, the council would have to take into account how many houses would fall above/below the average, but at least then if property in an area starts skyrocketing in value, it wouldn't really matter for taxation purposes because all properties are going up (and, if anything, would likely be more fair as the properties whose value is going up the most would pay more in CT). That would require more regular adjusting of property values (no idea if/when CT bands are due to be re-calculated?).

Anyway....taxes are hard!

edinburgher · 22 March 2017 at 9:54AM

@HS - I love that you credit me with 'an idea' - you are giving me far too much credit - I am largely talking nonsense and enjoying the frank back and forth that this thread generates

@Greying - I think valuations are fine when they're current, with the exception of property hotspots with crazy price increases (London and then each incremental stop along the railway lines leading out of London that people can reconcile commuting to). An idea might be to revalue everything, change the multipliers (they can't double tax for everyone overnight) and then cap it (like the triple lock in reverse)?

@Alex - I have been gently jesting in your direction re. it's ok for wealthier people to pay a bit more tax because your PAYG ideas have been the golden dream of small government fans and libertarians for... forever? You're right, everyone cannot be completely independent from each other and only pay for what they personally use, as it means that some people will be left behind. Some of those left behind might be !!!!less, but the majority will simply not have had the opportunities (birth/education/family wealth/health) that the more privileged were born into.

In my mind society only works if 1) everyone does their bit and 2) we accept that we are not independent nations, but part of something larger. It doesn't mean that we all have to have street parties, hug our neighbours once a week and abandon privacy, just an acceptance that we cannot live our lives in a bubble.

Right, back to the MSE topics?

Suffolk_lass · 22 March 2017 at 10:27AM

edinburgher wrote: »

In my mind society only works if 1) everyone does their bit and 2) we accept that we are not independent nations, but part of something larger. It doesn't mean that we all have to have street parties, hug our neighbours once a week and abandon privacy, just an acceptance that we cannot live our lives in a bubble.

Right, back to the MSE topics?

Hear, hear.

However, I must apologise for any patronising offence - definitely not what I intended. I was trying to emphasise things that Council Tax pays for that we may all want to use at some point, and we are often mistaken in our assumptions about people and their circumstances. Sorry.

edinburgher · 22 March 2017 at 10:47AM

Not to worry SL, I accept that your intention was to discuss, not to chide! I am not particularly patient when discussions go off on tangents and/or logic goes by the wayside from the original points, damn robot brain

Karmacat · 22 March 2017 at 11:10AM

AlexLK wrote: »

Just read this page back to myself and realise I am being somewhat dense and rather self absorbed. Whilst I don't really agree with the amount of taxes we pay in this country, I have spent a while thinking about the alternative (each providing for ourselves) and it led me to think about some of the pupils I teach. I don't think some of the pupils would have an education if it were left to their parents to pay for the service. It often seems like we pay far too many taxes. On a personal level, I often feel I'm not getting value for money. However, I wouldn't want to see a child go without an education or somebody elderly and infirm with only a state pension go without help.

I was being selfish and idealistic (that we can all pay for ourselves).

That's a courageous post, Alex, thanks for putting it up there.

edinburgher wrote: »

I am not particularly patient when discussions go off on tangents and/or logic goes by the wayside from the original points, damn robot brain

I never take part in online discussions like these, Ed, it freaks me out too much, partly because of the breadth, I think - "robot brain" takes some of that away sometimes, it becomes simple "if ... then", which is easier for me to cope with. (Plus, what *do* I think, anyway? No idea).

Gulp.

Only freedom will do

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free