fezzer

Agreed there are plenty of places you pick up taxes, but it's not close to a 66% effective rate. Total tax revenue as percentage of GDP = 34.4% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...e_to_GDP_ratio
Here's a link from the right-wing press: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/9654465/Britains-taxes-among-highest-in-world-accountants-say.html "UHY found that people earning over £125,000 keep 60.8 per cent of their income after personal taxes and social security contributions......... The lowest earners – people on £16,000 a year – keep 84 per cent of their income" So that's a 40.2% rate for high earners and 16% for lower earners. Still lots of tax to be fair, but not that high.

fezzer

I think this is the biggest problem with the whole Brexit affair. 17.4 million different varieties of Brexit with so many incompatible with each other. This was exploited by the leave campaigns (I don't blame them - it inflated their support) however it was always going to end up with disagreements when the details of brexit eventually solidified leaving the current mess. Should the terms of brexit have been clearly laid out at the referendum, i suspect the losing remain voters would have joined forces with the brexit supportes to make the best of the brexit situation.

hnd

hnd

Millhouse

You fink? I reckon 17.4 million people all voted exactly for what was written on the ballot paper. Here is the question once again:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

It's clear. The MPs who didn't want to leave but where given the task to do so then went about interpreting this in all ways possible to effectively make leave mean remain. There were no options on the ballot, yet MPs have interpreted the word leave to mean an menu of possible outcomes and options all diluting what leave actually meant. This has created futher division and certainly isn't in the spirit of the initial question or vote. A second ref would no doubt have a question that tries to split the leave vote over two options thus meaning remain gets through.

Millhouse

posting at the same time

DXBtoDOH

Quite a few remainers like to claim this. But when you consider polling shows very little, if any, Brexit regrets among Leave voters and a high support for leaving without a deal, I suspect most people were not confused what Brexit meant at the time of the referendum. Leave the EU. How hard is it to figure that out?

As it is, I don't care what happens any more. If Brexit doesn't happen, I'll probably never bother voting again. What's the point? Just accept the EU as your master and that you live in a benevolent dictatorship not that different from the Gulf kingdoms and that your directly elected politicians are meaningless, and just get on with life. At the end of the day I also know it's not bad, the EU offers a high quality of life for the most part and I'm not a working class bloke who has to worry about Bulgarian plumbers undercutting him. And it is also firmly the end of a Britain that once existed. But, you know, nothing one can do about it.

* I do have an American birth certificate due to my father spending that year teaching at a US university. Never bothered to do anything about it in part because wasn't interested, never whatsoever considered myself American by any stretch of the imagination, and also in part because American taxes are terrible for expats. But maybe, just maybe, I'll chase it down and get the citizenship and move to Southern California. That's the back up if NZ doesn't work out.

Johnnyboy11

Those rates are for Income Tax and NI only, they don't include the multitude of indirect taxes such as VAT, Fuel, Property, Capital etc., which could easily double them. See Figure 2 here. The Telegraph is too left-wing for my taste, the readers comments excepted

Annetje

You may find it was the PM, not the Mp's who interpreted the word leave.

Millhouse

It was everyone.

Edo

The £350m/wk part.

Millhouse

That was never in the ballot.

Great show of balls from the speaker yesterday.

TheShed

I think that when the history of NOTBrexit is finally written, The Speaker of the house will be lauded for NOT changing the course of our once great nation and forcing us to join the second phase of the Lisbon accord.

Millhouse

They have 10 days to repeal the law and get Art.50 extended or revoked. None of that is easy. Speaker's pro-remain move might well prove to be pro-Brexit.

Either way, it was a ballsy move and I respect people who do stuff like that.

TheShed

I do hope you're right !!