Meow

WHOSH! That was clearly a sarcastic comment.

I said nothing about taxing lower earners (and for the record I am against that) , but you are making the rather shaky link that lower earners live on burgers and chips and wear hoodies. Interesting, if rather snotty, view, don't you think?

typical

There's already a 50p tax on every burger*.




* if the burger costs three pounds

Meow

Good grief, does no one understand sarcasm or flippant quips today? The little smiley was a rather big clue.

WakeUp

It didn't go WHOOSH at all, I found your post condescending and inappropriate, so I decided to pull you on it. The implication that the rioters were low earners and should be taxed on burgers and hoodies was implied in your post.

WakeUp

Maybe people expect better from an IFA who peddles their wares on this site.

Meow

I think you got out of bed on the wrong side of bed this morning.

WakeUp

Maybe

typical

As it was on my reply, Meow, as it was on my reply

Meow

Of course what I should have referred to Greggs pasties...

I think I saw a Greggs being damaged last night to. Whatever is the world coming to?



Bloody Hell! Markets look awful so far today.

typical

Gosh, at a 50p surcharge, even I'd give Greggs a miss... and the inventor of the one-way catflap would see his patent income drop considerably

Aye, it's getting messy out there...

Ethos83

And they still pay far more taxes than most Britons do. The percentage of the tax burden paid by the top 1, 5, or 10% of income earners is stupendously high. The top 1% alone pays around 25% of the total tax bill in the UK. In the US it's even higher. What's the ideal number for you? The 1970s with its 83% tax rate was the absolute picture of prosperity, was it not?

[/QUOTE]More than they are taxed right now. (50% is, historically, not that high and is not the total effective tax rate; the top rate was 83% in 1974...)[/QUOTE]

Yep, sounds like you're making another excuse of your own.
[/QUOTE]On the first - yes, but I've never seen an accurate Laffer curve, and so this comes across more as an excuse. [/QUOTE]

Well...yes, I think we agree on this too.
[/QUOTE]By all means reduce a tax rise if it's shown to reduce overall take, but as long as the marginal gain for working more is positive, I would bet the vast majority of people would choose to earn more..[/QUOTE]

What? Most consumptions are taxable. The VAT for starters. Luxury boats for the rich is taxable as is a Mondeo for the man in Essex.
[/QUOTE]You're assuming too that their consumption would be taxable..[/QUOTE]

We can try. A credit and debt fueled 'stimulus' spending clearly hasn't worked and only resulted in stratospheric levels of debt that's clearly hindering the economic recovery. Note that the European countries with much more stable economies than the UK are the ones with a much smaller debt burden. The countries with higher levels of debt are....ta de dah...the PIIGS.

[/QUOTE]

It's going to be hard to make this a non-credit-fuelled, consumption-based recovery.[/QUOTE]

typical

Cite, please?

According to HMRC, in 07-08 (latest figures I saw) basic rate taxpayers paid 67.7 Bn in income tax and higher rate taxpagers paid 93.2 Bn in income tax. Income tax is the largest source of income for the government.

Of course the rich pay more in absolute terms, in a progressive tax system - nevertheless, the poor tend to pay relatively more (due to a much higher portion of their income going to consumption).

Then again, the rich tend to have more use from government spending, directly or indirectly, even if in direct payment terms they see less.


Of course, it's just as difficult to avoid paying tax in the UK on a yacht as on a Mondeo... or rather, no, it's not. Try making your Mondeo part of a trading business...

Au contraire, I think the borrow-and-spend of the stimulus saved us from a much worse fate. Of course, the thanks we get from the very institutions we saved is to be screwed over by them in the bond markets for the debt we ran up to save their institutions...

Ethos83

Two years old, so the numbers are probably even higher now:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8417205.stm


That, I think, we are going to have to agree to disagree on. A borrow and spend approach can work up to a limit, especially if you're starting off on a much smaller debt basis, but if you accumulate too much debt as was the case in the UK, you end up restraining economic growth.

mentalist

I've just bought 200 Greggs shares as they plummeted dramatically early morning. How is that for connecting two major news topics, the riots and the stock market plunge!

Norm_uk

Inequality of wealth is as old as humanity. Simply pointing the finger at the rich doesn't do much except lead down the path of Communism.

It might be better to look at how useless and wasteful the government is first - there are billions to be saved in that area alone. The poor in Britain are richer, healthier and live longer than the wealthy in a number of countries.

N.