Should UK income tax be higher - discuss
Discussion
Russ T Bolt said:
I do understand, seemingly better than you.
Apparently not.Whether they are justified is not the issue. To deny there is a huge subsidy is to be an idiot.
Russ T Bolt said:
It is very simple, for years public sector salaries( like for like) have been below private sector. The employers have chosen instead to offer recompense by way of pensions. The alternative was to pay market rates, that money would have gone already.
Hugely debatable, if you look at what has happened to public sector pay between '97 and '08.Russ T Bolt said:
A Civil Service IT Programme Manager would be on a salary of £50k or so in Central London. Get yourself on jobserve and see what the equivalent private sector salary is.
Not directly comparable and irrelevant for the discussion.Countdown said:
Third world countries are an excellent example of living conditions in low tax regimes and how individuals thrive without the burdens imposed by bureaucratic officialdom. 
ETA I'd like taxes to be lower and Govt to be more efficient. However I fear that a Large Efficient organisation is an oxymoron, regardless of sector.
Well in some ways they are. Not exactly third world but I lived in Thailand for a good while and while there is much that is wrong with it they do some things very well and very cheaply. ETA I'd like taxes to be lower and Govt to be more efficient. However I fear that a Large Efficient organisation is an oxymoron, regardless of sector.
Street lights are often garden lights on a pole set in concrete without an Environmental Impact Assessment or Sustainability Road Map in sight, and I doubt many Project Managers or Illumination Consultants are employed in putting them up.
Rubbish is collected, you pay the bin men about £2 a month, they take it to a nearby tip and burn/bury whatever the local poor don't want. No warranty or liability is offered on trawling through rubbish and there isn't much soul searching and hand wringing about it. It's just disposal of rubbish.
Farm animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold locally without being shipped hundreds of miles in lorries to an EU approved industrial slaughter house.
It's far from perfect and further still from a model of good government but we could do many things a lot cheaper in this country.
Russ T Bolt said:
A Civil Service IT Programme Manager would be on a salary of £50k or so in Central London. Get yourself on jobserve and see what the equivalent private sector salary is.
Yeah, any one of those £50k Civil Service IT Programme managers could walk out tomorrow into a £700/day contract, so just be careful what you wish for everyone! 
AJS- said:
Well in some ways they are. Not exactly third world but I lived in Thailand for a good while and while there is much that is wrong with it they do some things very well and very cheaply.
Street lights are often garden lights on a pole set in concrete without an Environmental Impact Assessment or Sustainability Road Map in sight, and I doubt many Project Managers or Illumination Consultants are employed in putting them up.
Rubbish is collected, you pay the bin men about £2 a month, they take it to a nearby tip and burn/bury whatever the local poor don't want. No warranty or liability is offered on trawling through rubbish and there isn't much soul searching and hand wringing about it. It's just disposal of rubbish.
Farm animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold locally without being shipped hundreds of miles in lorries to an EU approved industrial slaughter house.
It's far from perfect and further still from a model of good government but we could do many things a lot cheaper in this country.
I don't think they do things "cheaper" necessarily (they might, I'm not sure). The main difference appears to be that they spend less full stop. From my knowledge the State doesn't pick up the tab for elderly care, or single parents, or social security, at least not to the degree that we in the West do. Also the main cities might appear to have a decent level of infrastructure, go anywhere off the beaten track and things become fairly rudimentary, fairly quickly. Street lights are often garden lights on a pole set in concrete without an Environmental Impact Assessment or Sustainability Road Map in sight, and I doubt many Project Managers or Illumination Consultants are employed in putting them up.
Rubbish is collected, you pay the bin men about £2 a month, they take it to a nearby tip and burn/bury whatever the local poor don't want. No warranty or liability is offered on trawling through rubbish and there isn't much soul searching and hand wringing about it. It's just disposal of rubbish.
Farm animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold locally without being shipped hundreds of miles in lorries to an EU approved industrial slaughter house.
It's far from perfect and further still from a model of good government but we could do many things a lot cheaper in this country.
Another link, although admittedly not an independent completely unbiased one from a libertarian think-tank preaching for lower tax rates 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10740555/...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10740555/...
Their infrastructure is mostly terrible and I will concede that Britain's is much better in many ways. On and off the beaten track.
We do seem to have a habit of over complicating things in this country though. I just Googled it and found this
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/parkingtransportandstr...
£1500 for a light on a stick. How?! And an extra £1000 for an "ornamental" one.
£60 a meter for a cable in the ground.
And it goes on and on. £150 for a sign, £1 a meter for white paint. A village name sign (on two posts!) and an additional £150. £150 to write "Please drive carefully." It's insane. And there are forests of these things at every unnecessary £18,000 mini roundabout.
The parking one is probably most telling where the "formulating the proposals, the consultation and the progression of the associated traffic orders" costs £5000 per site. Really?
I know some standards have to be kept and some processes have to be followed but I can't help thinking that any of these could be done for at least half the price by anyone with a brain. Or anyone spending their own money. When you're mass producing them to the extent we are they should cost pennies.
We do seem to have a habit of over complicating things in this country though. I just Googled it and found this
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/parkingtransportandstr...
£1500 for a light on a stick. How?! And an extra £1000 for an "ornamental" one.
£60 a meter for a cable in the ground.
And it goes on and on. £150 for a sign, £1 a meter for white paint. A village name sign (on two posts!) and an additional £150. £150 to write "Please drive carefully." It's insane. And there are forests of these things at every unnecessary £18,000 mini roundabout.
The parking one is probably most telling where the "formulating the proposals, the consultation and the progression of the associated traffic orders" costs £5000 per site. Really?
I know some standards have to be kept and some processes have to be followed but I can't help thinking that any of these could be done for at least half the price by anyone with a brain. Or anyone spending their own money. When you're mass producing them to the extent we are they should cost pennies.
AJS- said:
I know some standards have to be kept and some processes have to be followed but I can't help thinking that any of these could be done for at least half the price by anyone with a brain. Or anyone spending their own money. When you're mass producing them to the extent we are they should cost pennies.
Exactly, if they were a business they'd have gone bust a long time ago. Give them less tax money and they'd have to be a lot more careful how they spend it.AJS- said:
Their infrastructure is mostly terrible and I will concede that Britain's is much better in many ways. On and off the beaten track.
We do seem to have a habit of over complicating things in this country though. I just Googled it and found this
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/parkingtransportandstr...
£1500 for a light on a stick. How?! And an extra £1000 for an "ornamental" one.
£60 a meter for a cable in the ground.
And it goes on and on. £150 for a sign, £1 a meter for white paint. A village name sign (on two posts!) and an additional £150. £150 to write "Please drive carefully." It's insane. And there are forests of these things at every unnecessary £18,000 mini roundabout.
The parking one is probably most telling where the "formulating the proposals, the consultation and the progression of the associated traffic orders" costs £5000 per site. Really?
I know some standards have to be kept and some processes have to be followed but I can't help thinking that any of these could be done for at least half the price by anyone with a brain. Or anyone spending their own money. When you're mass producing them to the extent we are they should cost pennies.
as usual for the powerfully built but hard of thinking PHer who knows the price of everything but never sdtops to consider what it actually means We do seem to have a habit of over complicating things in this country though. I just Googled it and found this
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/parkingtransportandstr...
£1500 for a light on a stick. How?! And an extra £1000 for an "ornamental" one.
£60 a meter for a cable in the ground.
And it goes on and on. £150 for a sign, £1 a meter for white paint. A village name sign (on two posts!) and an additional £150. £150 to write "Please drive carefully." It's insane. And there are forests of these things at every unnecessary £18,000 mini roundabout.
The parking one is probably most telling where the "formulating the proposals, the consultation and the progression of the associated traffic orders" costs £5000 per site. Really?
I know some standards have to be kept and some processes have to be followed but I can't help thinking that any of these could be done for at least half the price by anyone with a brain. Or anyone spending their own money. When you're mass producing them to the extent we are they should cost pennies.
1500 gbp for the light
except it's not just a bulb on a stick is it ?
check for services before digging, dig hole (several feet deep), dig a trench for the cables if needed and lay the cables , plant the pole ,
sparkie to connect the wiring up , fill the holes back , re-instate the paving / grass ...
this sounds like the indignation aobut " PFI charges hospital trust x thousand GBP to put a cupboard up " forgetting that the works become part of the PFI and if the cupboard in question is a drug cupboard there are security specificatiosn ot be compied with , at least 2 eletrical jobs (connection for the lights in the cupboard and a connection for the telltale ( connected into the alarm / call system ) plus bulbs etc for the remaineder of the PFI term - in theory the cupboard may also have ot be removed at the end of the term depending on how the PFI was written ... )
mph1977 said:
one of the powerfully built PH idiots, Mr Roving of the family Hawk no less,
You can't debate the subject very well so you resort to the old standby of insults. GFY.mph1977 said:
who ignores the employer contribution or considers it irrelevant to the sums ...
I'm most certainly not ignoring it- it's central to my point. The employer contribution is huge and is paid by the taxpayer. Before you deny this, where the hell else could the money possibly come from?mph1977 said:
6-10 % of salary as employee contribution
15 -20% of salary as employer contribution ( i.e. accounted for in year from the funding the employer recieves )
a figure our actuarial friends will supply for the return if the scheme were run funded ( shall we say 3 to 6 % -
suddenly we've reached a figure approaching that given as the 'cost' of the pension ...
meaning any top-up runs in the realms of a few percent rather than the majority as suggested ...
So now who's ignoring the employer contribution?15 -20% of salary as employer contribution ( i.e. accounted for in year from the funding the employer recieves )
a figure our actuarial friends will supply for the return if the scheme were run funded ( shall we say 3 to 6 % -
suddenly we've reached a figure approaching that given as the 'cost' of the pension ...
meaning any top-up runs in the realms of a few percent rather than the majority as suggested ...
Read the simple version I wrote & which you quoted. If you cannot understand that the difference between payments in & benefits out is borne by the taxpayer then you would justify the stereotype of thick PS worker.
Many ordinary people can't afford a decent pension because they're busy helping to fund yours. They object to the concept of paying even more tax to maintain this system for your benefit. It's that simple.
Russ T Bolt said:
I do understand, seemingly better than you.
It is very simple, for years public sector salaries( like for like) have been below private sector. The employers have chosen instead to offer recompense by way of pensions. The alternative was to pay market rates, that money would have gone already.
A Civil Service IT Programme Manager would be on a salary of £50k or so in Central London. Get yourself on jobserve and see what the equivalent private sector salary is.
Out of interest were you and your Mrs doing the same/directly comparable jobs? What were you both earning? (From the amounts you note, presumably you were into 6 figures, so she must have also been comparably senior).It is very simple, for years public sector salaries( like for like) have been below private sector. The employers have chosen instead to offer recompense by way of pensions. The alternative was to pay market rates, that money would have gone already.
A Civil Service IT Programme Manager would be on a salary of £50k or so in Central London. Get yourself on jobserve and see what the equivalent private sector salary is.
As for civil service IT programmes...I'm not sure there's one of any note where the lead for it would have been worth 5k per year, let alone 50k. IT programmes in the civil service are an utter shambles by and large. Yup, private sector ones are often similar. But then their sources of funding are somewhat less relevant to the tax payer...
Welshbeef said:
Should UK income tax be higher - discuss
I think the problem there, particularly in an age of digital technology and the internet, is if you tax people too much they'll just stop buying and shop elsewhere. I've not lived or worked in UK in years, as I run an internet based business. If the tax system in the UK hadn't been so punitive I'd probably have stayed resident there. But its not, so I didn't.
Russ T Bolt said:
IIn the IT world benefits tend to be very good (as they are in many others like investment banking).
.
I worked for 3 investment banks and don't know anyone under 50 with a final salary pension, just basic 4% employer match type dc schemes..
mph1977 said:
In that case the public sector 'pay their own wages' becasue they pay tax and NI just the same as other people .
Jesus fvcking Christ. PH reaches new levels of thick.fblm said:
I worked for 3 investment banks and don't know anyone under 50 with a final salary pension, just basic 4% employer match type dc schemes.
The last people I'm aware of in the banking sector who had a final salary pension have just had it cut (still accruing years but the salary marker is now frozen. DC schemes are now available if they wish). And even their scheme was closed to new entrants around 10yrs ago I believe.
Private firms realised a long time ago that DB schemes are unaffordable. I'd be interested to know of any, in any private sector still offering DB schemes to new entrants (and wouldn't be buying shares in them!).
Murph7355 said:
The last people I'm aware of in the banking sector who had a final salary pension have just had it cut (still accruing years but the salary marker is now frozen. DC schemes are now available if they wish).
And even their scheme was closed to new entrants around 10yrs ago I believe.
Private firms realised a long time ago that DB schemes are unaffordable. I'd be interested to know of any, in any private sector still offering DB schemes to new entrants (and wouldn't be buying shares in them!).
I was in IB 7-10 years ago and certainly no DB scheme open to new members at that time. I think the employer contribution rate was around 7%.And even their scheme was closed to new entrants around 10yrs ago I believe.
Private firms realised a long time ago that DB schemes are unaffordable. I'd be interested to know of any, in any private sector still offering DB schemes to new entrants (and wouldn't be buying shares in them!).
Qwert1e said:
UK taxes are already massive.
Income Tax
National Insurance
VAT
Council Tax
Fuel duty
Even non-taxpayers are paying about 25% through this lot.
The problem isn't raising taxes; the problem is wasteful spending.
How do you explain what is wasted spending? Adding cycle & bus lanes might seem like a total waste to you but money very well spent by someone who doesn't want to waste 90 minutes commuting 20 miles on their own in their car every day...Income Tax
National Insurance
VAT
Council Tax
Fuel duty
Even non-taxpayers are paying about 25% through this lot.
The problem isn't raising taxes; the problem is wasteful spending.
Then there is the magic bullet goodwill efficiency theory which crops up on here all the time. Namely that we should be able to have greater accountability but not have to pay for it. Moaning about the cost of regulatory bodies & qangos then at the same time expecting the system to magically regulate itself. Cloud cuckoo land thinking.
The taxation system should be progressive & there should be more banding and a reduced increase at each increment. It should never be the case that a promotion & 3% pay rise results in a -2% reduction in your take home pay. That is clearly bonkers.
zygalski said:
The taxation system should be progressive & there should be more banding and a reduced increase at each increment. It should never be the case that a promotion & 3% pay rise results in a -2% reduction in your take home pay. That is clearly bonkers.
Err....Please explain how this would happen.mph1977 said:
Bradders it's not being 'emotive' - it's a reflection of the default view on PH , the default PHer of course being a 'powerfully buil', be -goatteed , red bull swilling company director ... i think you may be in need of the parrot as you are missing a PH in-joke .
There is a perception among some people that they 'pay the wages' of the public sector because they pay tax ...
In that case the public sector 'pay their own wages' becasue they pay tax and NI just the same as other people .
becasue something is owned by or a service commissioned by the state it doesn't mean that the amount of tax you pay determines the amount of type of service you recieve.
for all sidicks wails of misinformation from people who know / work in the public sector the anti public sector factor are spreading misinformation - such as implying that all Public sector employees can retire early on a generous pension , when the reality is that for most public sector workers they may never reach the dizzy heights of their pension being fully paid up before their statutory pension age ( e.g. 40 years full tiem service for the NHS - which given that many NHS professional and support roles are female dominated with the associated career breaks that come with motherhood - meaning that the full pension may be achieved only by working beyond the state pension age ...
Woosh parrot most definitely not required. Your use was perceived as neither joking, nor adding to your argument.There is a perception among some people that they 'pay the wages' of the public sector because they pay tax ...
In that case the public sector 'pay their own wages' becasue they pay tax and NI just the same as other people .
becasue something is owned by or a service commissioned by the state it doesn't mean that the amount of tax you pay determines the amount of type of service you recieve.
for all sidicks wails of misinformation from people who know / work in the public sector the anti public sector factor are spreading misinformation - such as implying that all Public sector employees can retire early on a generous pension , when the reality is that for most public sector workers they may never reach the dizzy heights of their pension being fully paid up before their statutory pension age ( e.g. 40 years full tiem service for the NHS - which given that many NHS professional and support roles are female dominated with the associated career breaks that come with motherhood - meaning that the full pension may be achieved only by working beyond the state pension age ...
So, back to the question that you didn't answer.....
Do you agree that tax take and borrowing fund the public sector services and salaries? If not, can you explain why? I'm open to be swayed if you can remain on tack. I am very interested to hear a well thought out view to the contrary. More than happy to go into the breakdown of the tax take and the perception of tax payers afterwards.
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