Be Excellent To Each Other

Well, yes, I agree. We've got a de facto two-party system in the UK, essentially, and it's dangerous to democracy and far too based around simplistic dichotomies just like in the US.

A multi-party system with PR voting, like the Netherlands, less 'tribal', would be my ideal model, IMO.

Without getting involved in this age-old debate, can someone just explain to me exactly how reducing the 50p tax rate to 45p will make more money? Because that's what they're saying, right? I mean, mathematically, it doesn't add up, right? 45p is still less than 50p, right? Right?

Are they suggesting that the 45p rate is less likely than the 50p rate to make top earners use tax avoidance measures and will as a result bring more money in? Is that seriously what they're saying? Seriously?

I'm not sure if that is an insult or a complement

Lefty indeed

Wasn't it something like the 50p rate just encouraged the wealthy into putting more effort into tax evasion, rather than paying the tax?

Therefore the wealthy must be gently encouraged not to break the law by taxing them less.

This is a different approach to how the Tories approach disabled benefit fraudsters, whereby aggressively reassessing everyone and having a few disabled people commit suicide to find the (estimated 2.5%) fraudsters is a price worth paying.

Wow. So that really is their reasoning? I honestly feel like jumping in front of a train today.

Like, could you be any more incredulous?

Good point, but I don't know why you're surprised. Tories = tax cuts for the wealthy, right?

They're saying that our top rate of tax is higher than competing economies and provides a disincentive for high earners to live here. However if everyone is competing on that basis then surely the logical conclusion is that everywhere will end up with tax rates for the wealthy continually dropping. I'm not sure how this can be avoided though really.

It's the same argument for all tax-reduction. Reducing taxation encourages growth. You're more likely to make the effort to attain a high-paying role if you're taxed at 45% on it rather than 50%. If you work for a global firm, you're more likely to want to base yourself in the UK rather than abroad because the tax rate is more attractive. Etc etc. Does it work in practice? No idea.

I'm 99% sure that was a Labour policy that was carried through.

Dream on

Heh. It's just so brazen, and having not "lived through" a proper Tory budget yet (I was too young to care or understand the last time around, and this is the first "proper Tory" budget since the coalition came in), I'm struggling to adjust.

I said heavyweight minds.

In addition to the 5p drop there are other measures in closing tax loopholes and generic tax avoidance legislation in the budget (APOD plz check) that the total tax take could go up.

Either way, they're saying it will lose only 100m. Given that they're going to make BILLIONS more from increased banking duties, increased stamp duties and increased tax on company cars, it's really not a massive issue.

But no doubt it will be the headlines, despite this being largely an un-Tory like budget.

I was more annoyed at the argument that the 50p rate 'hurts entrepreneurialism'. I mean seriously, what? People won't try to earn more because they know they'll get taxed more? People won't... erm, start businesses because high earners get taxed more? Gibberish.

7% on homes over £2 million is interesting. Better than the 5% over £1 mil but I wonder just how many houses are worth that much in the country, and how many of them are likely to be sold any time soon and thus be liable for it. I wager it's not many. Buying homes via your business to avoid stamp duty has the potential to be an earner if they're making the effort to 'stamp' it out.

I believe so, but quite frankly (and I've said this before) I don't believe the Blair-Brown years were really representative of a true Labour government enacting Labour policies.

Still better than what we've got now mind, and considering how much I despise Blair and to a lesser extent Brown, that's saying something.

ZING!

"If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal."

DavPaz is mostly skull though.

Basically, fuck all for me in the budget really, but I expected that as always

The theory goes something like this - if tax rates for the wealthy earners (those in high paid jobs, business owners etc.) become too punitive, there is an incentive for them to clear off somewhere else - and likely take their wealth generation and possibly jobs with them - where they are less punitively taxed. (Labour used to tax high earners 90% or thereabouts, back in the 70s - and look where that ended up, an IMF bailout and a bankrupt nation).

To my mind, the politics of envy is a classic example of ignoring what empirically works, or not, in favour of a "bash the rich" sentiment, or whatever. Me? I'm not in the 50% earnings bracket, although I am hit by dividends tax hikes, but all I basically care about is whether or not the average, hardworking person is better, or worse off. I wouldn't give a fig if the top tax rate was only 20%, let alone 40%, if that meant more ordinary people were better off.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/2 ... allowances



So you see when rich people break the law, you change the law to fit them.

When poor disabled people are suspected of breaking the law, you begin a campaign to demonise them as benefits cheats and aggressively reassess all of them.

Handily, some disabled people are so traumatised by this process that they kill themselves.

I believe accountants would refer to this as a 'win-win'.

As AE has handily pointed out above, though, those high-earners aren't running off to other countries. They're simply using tax avoidance measures instead. Do you honestly believe some crusty old [generic high-earning job do-er] on >£150,000 a year is going to run off to Europe and work/live there instead to save tax? Learn a new language?

Having said that, I do agree with what you're saying. I'm not green-eyed and pissed off about their tax being cut. I'm angry about the bullshit reasoning for the cut. I'm also angry about a number of other things, but you can trot out the "bash the rich" and "jealousy" lines if you wish to.

Certain very clever people make sure that isn't what they do.

It's a bollocks theory, though, isn't it?

No-one ever refused a promotion because it'd mean jumping up a tax band. And if you're a top rate tax payer (i.e. an employee, even if board level), if you get fed up with paying so much tax here and feck off to work for a bank in the Bahamas the company you worked for here still exists and employs loads of other people and generates wealth etc. Just because the CEO of, I dunno, Argos leaves doesn't mean wealth generation goes down. Someone else gets his job and everything carries on as before. If you're a business owner (i.e an actual wealth creator), you're most likely running your income as dividends anyway, so this is irrelevant.

If the argument is that the 50p tax isn't working and nobody is paying it, why is it seen as a tax break for the rich to drop it down to 45p? If it has a chance of more of them paying it at 45p than they did at 50p, then that is a good thing isn't it?

Indeed. The difference between "avoidance" and "evasion". But, you know, semantics. They're still cunts.

But what about all of the jobs that will be lost when Mr Argos CEO leaves?! All of those people he apparently employs!

Such bullshit.

I have always been of a mind that on paper, I agree more with Conservative (or centre-right, at least) ideals than with centre-left. I believe in strengthening the economy through growth of private enterprise. I believe in working to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies that inevitably crop up in public sector industry.

I do, however, think that it is an approach that is dangerously vulnerable to the encroachment of self-interest. I believe strongly that regulation is vital to ensure that decisions are made based on political logic and what's best for the country, and not what's best for the MPs or their mates.

On that basis, looking through the list of members' interests and seeing how many directly stand to make money off the opportunities that the NHS bill creates is terrifying. How on earth can it be appropriate for someone who is on the board of a private healthcare provider to vote on a bill that makes it possible for private healthcare providers to bid on NHS work?

If the CEO of Argos leaves to go somewhere else, who replaces him? The people that weren't good enough to get a higher paying job elsewhere?

Great, for UK business that

The point is, it's bullshit. People are paying the 50p tax rate* OR they're avoiding it with crafty accounting. Dropping it down to 45p doesn't change anything other than saving the people who do actually pay it some money. The people who avoided the 50p rate will continue to avoid the 45p rate.

*As I mentioned above, I think the whole "but people will move to cheaper countries and take business with them" line is a complete bluff. People don't want to leave here. They want to stay and pay less.

I suspect that you are more "anti-wealthy" than "anti-tory"

Whoa, hang on there, I was only explaining in essence how the theory goes, not that I am totally wedded to it.
Mr Chris is right; there is a definite distinction to be made between highly paid jobs per se and actual, genuine wealth creation. But there again, I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I.

But this is what they do Craster, this is what they always do.

Who got rich off the sell-offs of our infrastructure under Thatcher and Major?

It's the same circle of people pulling the same shit that they did back then and dressing it up as 'consumer choice' and 'empowering the people'.

No one can be surprised by what they're doing to the NHS, their brazen attitude speaks volumes about what they think about that inconvenience of 'everyone else'.

And also Riles.

An up and coming management genius from M&S who's been waiting for a board vacancy to apply for, or something. Same as any time someone leaves. Don't be silly.

I have very little patience for arguments about trickle-down economics. The maths don't work. A guy earning £300k a year doesn't spend 20x more cars or washing machines or food or other engines of basic commerce than 20 guys earning £15k do. They don't contribute to the economy as much, proportionally, as the lesser earners; so giving them tax breaks isn't money being pumped into the economy. I had some good citations for this that I think I posted previously.

I also fail to see how cutting someone's personal income tax by a modest amount is somehow going to encourage them to create more jobs. If a business could grow if it added another employee, a few hundred quid via a tax break isn't going to affect the decision. Even a min-wage McDonald's line cook costs the employer about £20k/yr. The numbers are orders of magnitude different.

That's fine - I don't think Chris (and I wasn't) was suggesting that you agreed with the theory. We were attacking it rather than you.

Surely the increase in tax free allowance raises your mOnthly pay?

Then what you should do is clamp down on tax avoidance schemes that allow people to get away with it.

Corporation tax is down, which I suppose is good. The craftiest thing my accountant has done is specify that he charged me about £100 less in one year, and £100 more in another, to make sure I didn't go into a threshold of something or other. I think it saved me about £7.

There was a TAL about job creation via tax breaks. Or soemthing.

I'm more interested in the plans to raise the tax allowance to just below £10k. That simple act will provide far more money to the poorest than any complicated system of tax credits etc. For that, the coalition should be praised (providing, of course, that they keep raising the allowance in line with inflation).

Ah the M&S genius, ten a penny they are, god forbid you want someone with experience and gravitas in the role...

Ah! Yes, there is. That's a great episode.

You should tell the government that. It sounds like a good idea that no-one's ever had before and is almost certainly as simple as you've made it sound.

I'm willing to bet my multiplier above the national average salary is less than the multiplier above the average that I spend on food and gadgets

What's needed is for people to just follow my lead and be far more profligate than they currently are.

I will wait until I actually get my pay cheque! There was a budget before where i thought I was going to be better off, but actually seemed to have less money coming in than before....

It was probably under a Labour government <waves at AE>

Why must you always be an insufferably condescending dick? I never said it was either simplistic or easy, but if you're the chancellor, preparing a budget, who is fully cogent of the loopholes that exist, why not set about closing them instead of merely disincentivising the avoidance? It's like decriminalising drugs because it's too tricky to police them.

Because he's the forum's foremost Internet Hipster. Being right about things and pointing out that fact is fuel for his engine.

*cough*