Should UK income tax be higher - discuss
Discussion
sidicks said:
mph1977 said:
the 'early retirement' and early pensions point is much over played - if everyone in the public sector was leaving at 50 with 2/3rds of final salary pensions the point may be valid ... but very few people even in the operational Fire service /Sworn police schemes have sufficient service to retire at 50 .
while the lump sum has an effect on the value of the contributions vs the total value of benefits assuming people are living longer ( remembering that many NHS workers despite those retiring at this point in time were working in a introduction of / post 1974 HASAWA working environment they still have significant exposure to practices or substances currently subject to much stricter control if they are used at all ... ( York 4 ambulance trolley, ' the australian lift' , mixing bone cement in open pots ...to mention just 3 things which have caused significant health problems in healthcare staff - York trolleys were in use to the mid to late 1990s on A+E ambulances and later in reserve fleets and on PTS )
overall 'compensation' pacakage may be a seperate discussion, but for many of the Frontline Professionals in the public sector be ther Police Officers, Health Professionals , teachers or other roles which require Professional / higher education training and education their TaCoS [b]are not necessarily as generous as they seem and/or certain people with certain agendas focus on one or two partso f the overall package and forget other things
You're the one that is focusing on the accrual rate and ignoring the lump sum benefit (and ignoring the other schemes which are 1/60ths....)while the lump sum has an effect on the value of the contributions vs the total value of benefits assuming people are living longer ( remembering that many NHS workers despite those retiring at this point in time were working in a introduction of / post 1974 HASAWA working environment they still have significant exposure to practices or substances currently subject to much stricter control if they are used at all ... ( York 4 ambulance trolley, ' the australian lift' , mixing bone cement in open pots ...to mention just 3 things which have caused significant health problems in healthcare staff - York trolleys were in use to the mid to late 1990s on A+E ambulances and later in reserve fleets and on PTS )
overall 'compensation' pacakage may be a seperate discussion, but for many of the Frontline Professionals in the public sector be ther Police Officers, Health Professionals , teachers or other roles which require Professional / higher education training and education their TaCoS [b]are not necessarily as generous as they seem and/or certain people with certain agendas focus on one or two partso f the overall package and forget other things
It's patently false to claim that these vastly subsidised schemes are anything but hugely generous. And yet you keep trying to mis-represent the benefits and post misleading information about those benefits
Edited by sidicks on Saturday 6th September 13:31
the schemes are not 'hugely generous' to the extent portrayed by many when providing their fact free rants
the Old Police scheme could be argued to be hugely generous with 2/3rds of final salary after 30 years service with people able to retire from 48 ...
where the reailty , lump sums and the impact on accrual rates and percieved value for money aside, for most public sector workers is that they will may never reach a 'full' pension ( especially in the 'pink collar' professions) and if they do reach a full pension they will, at best, be retring in their mid 60s a couple of years before the state pension age ...
not sure flat rate works...
the problem comes with seriously high income people, ie, the 1M+ brigade
at the moment, to be in the top 1% tax payers your looking at some ~£140K, and that's a significant number of people.
now, yes you can argue £140k is a lot, BUT that includes contactors subject to very draconian tax rules such that they end up paying 60+% on their gross invoice figures (as in no allowances, both halves of NI, corporation tax + top rate IT.
so, effectively, they end up paying more in % terms than a city banker on PAYE or your average premier league footballer with much less job security.
is that fair?
the problem comes with seriously high income people, ie, the 1M+ brigade
at the moment, to be in the top 1% tax payers your looking at some ~£140K, and that's a significant number of people.
now, yes you can argue £140k is a lot, BUT that includes contactors subject to very draconian tax rules such that they end up paying 60+% on their gross invoice figures (as in no allowances, both halves of NI, corporation tax + top rate IT.
so, effectively, they end up paying more in % terms than a city banker on PAYE or your average premier league footballer with much less job security.
is that fair?
mph1977 said:
as typical with the Sidicks post we have the obsession with the pension forgetting that overall what is 'given' in the pension is taken away in many other things ...
As usual with mph1977 we get the blatant mis-representation of facts providing further evidence that he understands very little about the nature of the scheme he is in and how this and other schemes work and are priced. When corrected he simply tries to shift the goalposts...
mph1977 said:
the schemes are not 'hugely generous' to the extent portrayed by many when providing their fact free rants
Any scheme where someone else vastly subsidises your pension would be considered to be 'hugely generous' to most people (in the real world).mph1977 said:
the Old Police scheme could be argued to be hugely generous with 2/3rds of final salary after 30 years service with people able to retire from 48 ...
where the reailty , lump sums and the impact on accrual rates and percieved value for money aside, for most public sector workers is that they will may never reach a 'full' pension ( especially in the 'pink collar' professions)
They won't receive full pension because they won't have worked sufficiently long and won't have paid the appropriate conditions. What's so hard to understand?where the reailty , lump sums and the impact on accrual rates and percieved value for money aside, for most public sector workers is that they will may never reach a 'full' pension ( especially in the 'pink collar' professions)
Regardless, what they take out is vastly more than they put into the scheme. That's the point.
mph1977 said:
and if they do reach a full pension they will, at best, be retring in their mid 60s a couple of years before the state pension age ...
On a pension multiple times that affordable by those in the private sector, due to those same private sector workers having supplied a huge subsidy.I'm not sure why you continue to deny these indisputable facts?
Edited by sidicks on Saturday 6th September 14:25
NNH said:
Is the blue line on your chart including NI? I'd love to re-run my calculation using your data source.
Yes, it's total deductions. Data is from here;http://www.listentotaxman.com
sidicks said:
mph1977 said:
as typical with the Sidicks post we have the obsession with the pension forgetting that overall what is 'given' in the pension is taken away in many other things ...
As usual with mph1977 we get the blatant mis-representation of facts providing further evidence that he understands very little about the nature of the scheme he is in and how this and other schemes work and are priced. When corrected he simply tries to shift the goalposts...while 'perk ' cars are no longer as prevalent in the private sector - how many private sector staff who need a vehicle for work are expected to pay for it even if it is provided by the employer - as many NHS and LA staff do . rather than recieivng the car 'free' as a B-i-K ( as a few senior managers and a few more Ambulance service middle managers) or getting a vehicle allowance - IIRC the police dog handlers allowance includes an element of vehicle related costs as few if any Handlers get take home police vehicles like they did in the 1980s / early 1990s
sidicks said:
mph1977 said:
the schemes are not 'hugely generous' to the extent portrayed by many when providing their fact free rants
Any scheme where someone else vastly subsidises your pension would be considered to be 'hugely generous' to most people (in the real world).past governmentschose to make various of the schemes 'pay as you go' this allowed them to recycle the surplus in year ( that a funded scheme builds up to pay future liabilities) rather than it build up a designated funds which if borrowed back to the exchequer would need to have interest paid on them ...
having cake and eating it seems to be common theme in much of the moans over public sector pension funding
sidicks said:
mph1977 said:
the Old Police scheme could be argued to be hugely generous with 2/3rds of final salary after 30 years service with people able to retire from 48 ...
where the reailty , lump sums and the impact on accrual rates and percieved value for money aside, for most public sector workers is that they will may never reach a 'full' pension ( especially in the 'pink collar' professions)
They won't receive full pension because they won't have worked sufficiently long and won't have paid the appropriate conditions. What's so hard to understand?where the reailty , lump sums and the impact on accrual rates and percieved value for money aside, for most public sector workers is that they will may never reach a 'full' pension ( especially in the 'pink collar' professions)
Regardless, what they take out is vastly more than they put into the scheme. That's the point.
most people do understand this , except the fact free ranters and those who are baselessly ideologically opposed to the public sector
the entire point of an occupational; pension scheme is that you recieve more than you put in - the difference with the PAYG public sector schemes is that the exchequer swallows the risk for the ability to recycle in year any surpluses / not pay interest on borrowing / using any surpluses )
the fact free ranters like to quote that Public sector pensions are 'worth
' 30 % of the salary and the worker only pays 7- 11 % of their salary , this disregards the 'hidden' bit of any pension scheme where the employer pays an additional contribution that never crosses the payslip of the worker , plus the growth that a funded scheme has due to investment income / the money the exchequer pays for the being able to resuse PAYG money 'in year'
sidicks said:
mph1977 said:
and if they do reach a full pension they will, at best, be retring in their mid 60s a couple of years before the state pension age ...
On a pension multiple times that affordable by those in the private sector, due to those same private sector workers having supplied a huge subsidy.it;s the socipathy of the poewrfully built PHer that likes to use the rabble rousing claims of these subsidies , rather than them being a calculation that may be suboptimally made by Politicians past of not ring fencing the surpluses into a funded scheme ....
No it shouldn't. It's a heavy tax on the main way in which people can improve their lot in life.
Some say it's a fair and transparent tax. It is transparent in the sense that you know how much you're paying and how much you will pay on each additional pound earned. It isn't really "fair" though. Someone who is single and earning £30,000 in the north has a far greater ability to pay than someone with a wife and two kids living in London and earning £35,000 yet the latter will pay more income tax at a higher rate. Then again someone earning a couple of million a year can hide and shelter it in various ways. Contractors and the self employed are another anomaly. Good luck to them, but it doesn't fit the definition of "fair" whereby those earning more pay more.
To my mind fair taxes are lower taxes. The problem with Britain's tax system is not the distribution of it but the level. A flat rate seems like a good idea, with a high threshold, but I'd rather see it at 20% than the numbers people are talking about here. 10% better still. And to do that we have to seriously reduce spending.
Some say it's a fair and transparent tax. It is transparent in the sense that you know how much you're paying and how much you will pay on each additional pound earned. It isn't really "fair" though. Someone who is single and earning £30,000 in the north has a far greater ability to pay than someone with a wife and two kids living in London and earning £35,000 yet the latter will pay more income tax at a higher rate. Then again someone earning a couple of million a year can hide and shelter it in various ways. Contractors and the self employed are another anomaly. Good luck to them, but it doesn't fit the definition of "fair" whereby those earning more pay more.
To my mind fair taxes are lower taxes. The problem with Britain's tax system is not the distribution of it but the level. A flat rate seems like a good idea, with a high threshold, but I'd rather see it at 20% than the numbers people are talking about here. 10% better still. And to do that we have to seriously reduce spending.
mph1977 said:
i'm not sure where this subsidy is coming from i've never seen it on any of my private sector payslips and on my public sector payslips i'm paying the same income tax and NI as any other worker ...
Is it the same tax and NI though? Same names, yes, same rates, yes. But where does the money come from to pay it? The individual? The employer? Previous tax take and borrowing, or privately generated profit?mph1977 said:
no, you are hte one shiftign the goalposts here, whenever changing jobs to get more money comes up in the business or Jobs and employment boards on PH people always caution against jumping for mone headline money but at the cost of TaCoS
Once again you made false claims about public sector pensions which I corrected.All the above is irrelevant.
mph1977 said:
while 'perk ' cars are no longer as prevalent in the private sector - how many private sector staff who need a vehicle for work are expected to pay for it even if it is provided by the employer - as many NHS and LA staff do . rather than recieivng the car 'free' as a B-i-K ( as a few senior managers and a few more Ambulance service middle managers) or getting a vehicle allowance - IIRC the police dog handlers allowance includes an element of vehicle related costs as few if any Handlers get take home police vehicles like they did in the 1980s / early 1990s
All irrelevant in the context of your false claims about public sector pensions.mph1977 said:
despite all the fact free ranters maintaining all public sector staff are o pensions schemes like the Old Police Officer / Operational Firefighter ones where you could retire ar 50 / 30 years of service on 2/'3rds of your final salary ...
past governmentschose to make various of the schemes 'pay as you go' this allowed them to recycle the surplus in year ( that a funded scheme builds up to pay future liabilities) rather than it build up a designated funds which if borrowed back to the exchequer would need to have interest paid on them ...
having cake and eating it seems to be common theme in much of the moans over public sector pension funding
The failure of previous governments to save pension contributions does not change the fact that the contributions paid are minimal in comparison to the true benefit cost.past governmentschose to make various of the schemes 'pay as you go' this allowed them to recycle the surplus in year ( that a funded scheme builds up to pay future liabilities) rather than it build up a designated funds which if borrowed back to the exchequer would need to have interest paid on them ...
having cake and eating it seems to be common theme in much of the moans over public sector pension funding
To suggest otherwise means you continue to display your ignorance about pension funding.
mph1977 said:
however in the context of the fact free rants it's inaccurate - these people aren;t going to be retiring in their 50s enjoy a pension of half or more of the final salary the reality is they will be retiring at or after state pension age with pension that may not have reached half their final salary.
Because they've not worked for long enough....You still seem to be missing the point - if there was a job for 40 years then it's pretty much the same pension cost whether one person works for those 40 years and gets a full pension or two people work for 20 years and each get a 50% pension...
mph1977 said:
most people do understand this , except the fact free ranters and those who are baselessly ideologically opposed to the public sector
the entire point of an occupational; pension scheme is that you recieve more than you put in - the difference with the PAYG public sector schemes is that the exchequer swallows the risk for the ability to recycle in year any surpluses / not pay interest on borrowing / using any surpluses )
the fact free ranters like to quote that Public sector pensions are 'worth
' 30 % of the salary and the worker only pays 7- 11 % of their salary , this disregards the 'hidden' bit of any pension scheme where the employer pays an additional contribution that never crosses the payslip of the worker , plus the growth that a funded scheme has due to investment income / the money the exchequer pays for the being able to resuse PAYG money 'in year'
You really are stupid, aren't you?!the entire point of an occupational; pension scheme is that you recieve more than you put in - the difference with the PAYG public sector schemes is that the exchequer swallows the risk for the ability to recycle in year any surpluses / not pay interest on borrowing / using any surpluses )
the fact free ranters like to quote that Public sector pensions are 'worth
' 30 % of the salary and the worker only pays 7- 11 % of their salary , this disregards the 'hidden' bit of any pension scheme where the employer pays an additional contribution that never crosses the payslip of the worker , plus the growth that a funded scheme has due to investment income / the money the exchequer pays for the being able to resuse PAYG money 'in year'
Do you think that most private pensions have 25% employer contributions...??!!
mph1977 said:
i'm not sure where this subsidy is coming from i've never seen it on any of my private sector payslips and on my public sector payslips i'm paying the same income tax and NI as any other worker ...
In that case, I guess you must believe that money grows on trees or you lack the ability project the value of 7-11% contributions over a working lifetime to see what pension could genuinely be purchased in the real world...mph1977 said:
it;s the socipathy of the poewrfully built PHer that likes to use the rabble rousing claims of these subsidies , rather than them being a calculation that may be suboptimally made by Politicians past of not ring fencing the surpluses into a funded scheme ....
The funding method doesn't affect the true cost.In the last discussion on this topic you were made to look a fool due to your lack of understanding and this is heading the same way....
AJS- said:
No it shouldn't. It's a heavy tax on the main way in which people can improve their lot in life.
Some say it's a fair and transparent tax. It is transparent in the sense that you know how much you're paying and how much you will pay on each additional pound earned. It isn't really "fair" though. Someone who is single and earning £30,000 in the north has a far greater ability to pay than someone with a wife and two kids living in London and earning £35,000 yet the latter will pay more income tax at a higher rate. Then again someone earning a couple of million a year can hide and shelter it in various ways. Contractors and the self employed are another anomaly. Good luck to them, but it doesn't fit the definition of "fair" whereby those earning more pay more.
To my mind fair taxes are lower taxes. The problem with Britain's tax system is not the distribution of it but the level. A flat rate seems like a good idea, with a high threshold, but I'd rather see it at 20% than the numbers people are talking about here. 10% better still. And to do that we have to seriously reduce spending.
agreed...Some say it's a fair and transparent tax. It is transparent in the sense that you know how much you're paying and how much you will pay on each additional pound earned. It isn't really "fair" though. Someone who is single and earning £30,000 in the north has a far greater ability to pay than someone with a wife and two kids living in London and earning £35,000 yet the latter will pay more income tax at a higher rate. Then again someone earning a couple of million a year can hide and shelter it in various ways. Contractors and the self employed are another anomaly. Good luck to them, but it doesn't fit the definition of "fair" whereby those earning more pay more.
To my mind fair taxes are lower taxes. The problem with Britain's tax system is not the distribution of it but the level. A flat rate seems like a good idea, with a high threshold, but I'd rather see it at 20% than the numbers people are talking about here. 10% better still. And to do that we have to seriously reduce spending.
to add to this, why are we paying *any* benefits to people who are earning enough to pay TAX in the first place? (as in what's the point of them paying TAX if your going to give it back?)
I remember seeing a figure a few years back for what it costs to run HMRC (including the MASSIVE contract with Cap etc), and it was quite frankly, stupid money.
in the middle of this, why in this day are we still paying child benefits? why should the TAXpayer be subsidising people to have children?
same goes for a lot of the benefits paid, if people are in real work, they should be earning enough not to need benefits to make ends meat.
if we could trash most of the TAX systems and replace them with a simple easy to understand/administer system, the cost savings would be very significant.
its a dream I know, and will never happen because there are too many people making a nice living managing all this stuff, and the lefty socialists that want to fund everything from TAX TAX and more TAX.
Scuffers said:
agreed...
to add to this, why are we paying *any* benefits to people who are earning enough to pay TAX in the first place? (as in what's the point of them paying TAX if your going to give it back?)
I remember seeing a figure a few years back for what it costs to run HMRC (including the MASSIVE contract with Cap etc), and it was quite frankly, stupid money.
in the middle of this, why in this day are we still paying child benefits? why should the TAXpayer be subsidising people to have children?
same goes for a lot of the benefits paid, if people are in real work, they should be earning enough not to need benefits to make ends meat.
if we could trash most of the TAX systems and replace them with a simple easy to understand/administer system, the cost savings would be very significant.
its a dream I know, and will never happen because there are too many people making a nice living managing all this stuff, and the lefty socialists that want to fund everything from TAX TAX and more TAX.
The current minimum wage would be 'broadly equivalent' to the living wage if no tax was paid on it...to add to this, why are we paying *any* benefits to people who are earning enough to pay TAX in the first place? (as in what's the point of them paying TAX if your going to give it back?)
I remember seeing a figure a few years back for what it costs to run HMRC (including the MASSIVE contract with Cap etc), and it was quite frankly, stupid money.
in the middle of this, why in this day are we still paying child benefits? why should the TAXpayer be subsidising people to have children?
same goes for a lot of the benefits paid, if people are in real work, they should be earning enough not to need benefits to make ends meat.
if we could trash most of the TAX systems and replace them with a simple easy to understand/administer system, the cost savings would be very significant.
its a dream I know, and will never happen because there are too many people making a nice living managing all this stuff, and the lefty socialists that want to fund everything from TAX TAX and more TAX.
Edited by sidicks on Saturday 6th September 16:08
sidicks said:
The funding method doesn't affect the true cost.
In the last discussion on this topic you were made to look a fool due to your lack of understanding and this is heading the same way....
people repeatedly quote a figure of high 20ies % to 30 % of salary as the cost of accrual of public sector pensions and then claim that these pensions are either none cotributory or the only money coming in is from the payslip deducation i.e. the cmployee contribution of between 6 and 12 % In the last discussion on this topic you were made to look a fool due to your lack of understanding and this is heading the same way....
this excludes the employer contribution which is paid by the Employer to the scheme adminstrators - the arguements here seem to revolve around the presumption that the public secotr doesn;t work the same as any other operation with income earnt and costs paid for... these employer contributions are in the range of 14 - 20 % - so the gap is suddenly a lot smaller than the ranters would have you believe , if the schemes were funded as opposed to pay as you go they would be investing over a spread of risk and time frames and getting a return on that investment
but it all seems to be an obsession of certain people with the pension vs the way in which through a lack of effective collective representation / short sightedness among representatives or just idiocy that private sector staff have allowed their TaCoS to be diminished.
mph1977 said:
people repeatedly quote a figure of high 20ies % to 30 % of salary as the cost of accrual of public sector pensions and then claim that these pensions are either none cotributory or the only money coming in is from the payslip deducation i.e. the cmployee contribution of between 6 and 12 %
Who is claiming that there should be no employer (taxpayer) contribution??mph1977 said:
this excludes the employer contribution which is paid by the Employer to the scheme adminstrators - the arguements here seem to revolve around the presumption that the public secotr doesn;t work the same as any other operation with income earnt and costs paid for... these employer contributions are in the range of 14 - 20 % - so the gap is suddenly a lot smaller than the ranters would have you believe
Who is the employer....mph1977 said:
, if the schemes were funded as opposed to pay as you go they would be investing over a spread of risk and time frames and getting a return on that investment
But that's irrelevant in the context - the 30%+ cost ALREADY ALLOWS FOR THAT RETURN plus a generous risk premium.You repeatedly show that you simply don't understand the first thing about pensions. Stick to your day job!!
mph1977 said:
but it all seems to be an obsession of certain people with the pension vs the way in which through a lack of effective collective representation / short sightedness among representatives or just idiocy that private sector staff have allowed their TaCoS to be diminished.
'Obsession' of those who are experts in this area, who understand that money doesn't grow on trees, who care about the country's finances (and in particular the affordability of pensions for the wider population, not just public sector workers who think they are special) and who are fed up of the false claims of the Unions and people like you who simply don't understand the true costs of what they are getting.Edited by sidicks on Saturday 6th September 16:34
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