UKC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48577579

Well that brexit sorted!  eh Boris !

I'm sure it will play well with  .... er no-one with a shred of human decency.

Man of the people etc etc etc

( I seem to have omitted an 'n' from the title)

This is good, keeps money in the economy.

We send £350m a week to the EU. We could spend it on the NHS instead...

...we won't of course, but you knew that already, didn't you?

That's the idea - the electorate for a Tory party leadership contest is Tory MPs first, followed by party members.  No need to appeal to the rest of us to become Prime Minister.

According to that article, he says he'll fund it "partly by using money from a pot set aside by the Treasury for a possible no-deal Brexit, and partly by increasing employee National Insurance payments in line with the new income tax threshold".

The second part is easy to understand, he'll fund tax cuts for the wealthy by taxing the rest of us more, pretty standard Tory stuff.  But why would the money set aside to deal with the consequences of a no-deal brexit not be needed to deal with the consequences of a no-deal brexit - he isn't ruling that out is he?

He might just be telling massive porkies.

How many people actually earn between £50k and £80k?

The £50k threshold is a real problem for productivity in London in my line of business. My guys stop working from the middle of February just when there’s loads of money left to spend at the end of the tax year. Raising the bar would increase tax revenues by quite a bit. 

I wonder if after Boris gets elected as leader - I'm assuming he will because as said above this announcement is going to please a lot of Tory party members -  the policy will be dropped. Perhaps because of something such as an alleged 'difficult' economic situation, which might be blamed on intransigence from the EU after we leave.

I can't imagine the Conservatives will go to the country, as they will have to in 2022, with a policy that says we'll give tax breaks to the well off, partly funded by NI increases.

Dave 

If you want to keep money in the economy, it is far better to give it to poor people, who will spend every penny they have, most probably in their local community. 

Boris is removing perceived obstacles, one at a time and this means bribing his fellow Tory MP's who I assume earn more than £50k.

If Boris makes it to the last Two then he has a chance of taking the Iron Throne.

Why not do away with lowest rate of tax instead, those on lower incomes will spend all there income (keeping it in the economy), those on higher incomes more likely to spend, if they do spend it will be on houses further pushing up house prices.

It would also reduce the incentive for people to put money into tax efficient pension saving. 

Not that any that matters as this is obvious bullshit, the economy is only going one way and if such tax plans were introduced you'd turn our welfare systems into something akin to a third world economy.

His sister was on TV last night.  quote from her in part of show  "everyone has two houses these days"

That's what I was inferring. After all it is his policy not a party policy, so very easy to drop.

Well an MP's standard salary is, guess what, just under £79,500!

Not really.  The rich are more likely to lock extra money away into an investment or use it to bid up the price of houses where the poor would spend money on stuff they need.  You'd get more economic stimulus for the productive economy by putting money in the pocket of poor people.

But the real problem is that all the Tory candidates are making policy promises designed to bribe 120K Tory Party members and there are 70 million people will need to live with the outcome.  It is corrupt.

It is targeted at  those earning £50 to £80 k.

Hardly wealthy.I know plenty of skilled tradesmen who earn that.

Wealth is £80k a week. 

They are. The Personal allowance has been incrementally rising over the last few years. I believe the ultimate target is above £14k. It’s currently at £12.5k

Note those earning over £125k get no allowance. 

You couldn't even describe it as 'thinly veiled bribery' as it is such blatant bribery.

At least he will get the endorsement of his fellow 'man of the people' :-

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/everyman-farage-banks-with-coutts-0...

Cuts cuts cuts  (insert aditional consonants as required)

It’s not about how much people earn. It’s about how much is changing hands. The government get VAT and capita gains taxes back. It’s not getting locked away anywhere. The money is put into shares and accounts that get loaned out. 

I’m amazed that people still think there’s a finite amount of physical cash that is sitting around under mattresses that no one else can use. That’s just not how the economy works. 

Actually, It's a common nonsense that the rich hoard all their money while the poor put everything back into the economy. Anyone with any decent amount of money behind them is not going to leave a significant percentage of it sat around as cash under the mattress. They will invest it, which means it is very much in the economy. 

True, it might not be as obvious as a poor person spending all they have in Tesco and on rent but it's still doing stuff. It might be in stocks, in which case it's capital for businesses to spend on growth etc, or bonds so the government has more to spend, or it might be in property in which case whoever they brought it from has just received a significant amount of money to spend how they wish. In fact, even if it's just sat in the bank that'll be used by the finance industry for investments etc and pay them interest as their cut. 

This seeming common myth that rich people (or in fact anyone with more than a few grand spare) just has a big safe full of cash in their house, hoarding money for no reason is utter nonsense, yet gets rolled out over and over again, unchallenged. 

Is that related to the tax per se? At 50k the marginal tax rate goes up from 32% to 42%. Significant but not critical.

More significant could be that benefits get cut massively. Working tax credit reduces by 41p for every pound earned, and at the higher tax threshold I think child benefit disappears completely?

edit: more significant for the Tory membership vote is that it shifts more of the tax burden away from pensioners and investors and on to working people

I didn't say anything about the rich hoarding their money. 

And yet there are poor parts of every town and city where this investment could be on the Moon for its apparent contribution. I wonder how much of this investment can be seen to flow to help the poorest members of our society?

Working really well so far isn't it?

People earning £50k are hardly rich. Especially when you factor in all the other things that get stopped at that wage. Child tax credits being one, also your “child” doesn’t get as much university maintenance loan. You also can’t offset your spouses tax allowance if they don’t meet the minimum. So as a family you get penalised quite a bit because the government (and others seemingly) think you’re rich.

They’re trying to govern as if it’s 1980. Sound so out of touch and irrelevant. 

Just handing money out to poor people doesn’t solve the problem. 

In fact it is making the problem worse. 

Subsiding low pay with tax taken from the middle classes means there’s no wage growth and people are caught in a poverty trap where working more hours or getting a better paid job doesn’t actually pay them anymore as their benefits reduce at the same time. 

There’s also not a lot of wealth transparency. Two households living in joined semi-detached houses could have massively different financial positions. This leads to a lot of envy. 

Are people who earn more than 50k actually rich? I'm not saying they should increase the limit but earning 50k does not mean you are rich. Or even close. A shit house costs 200k round here. And in London that gets you absolutely nothing. I imagine there are folk in London on more than this living in student level shared accommodation.

Most benefit, tax credit, is paid to people in work obviously.

This money comes from Government revenue, tax.

We should be raising the minimum wage so that the government doesn't have to subsidise working families.

However, I put it to you that if you choose not to work "because the government will just take it in tax" then you obviously don't need it in the first place and it might just be better giving that work to someone who wants it.

Who? Johnson? Surely not! After all he's an Old Etonian old chap.

 Yes to the first part of your post. Totally correct. 

The second part is not cut and dried. 

I have specialist skilled people with access permits etc. I cannot just give a Saturday’s worth of work to someone off the street. 

If working that Saturday pushes them over the tax boundary. They won’t work it. If I have several people in the same position the job doesn’t get done. Everyone loses out. 

Also I work with single mothers. Their costs increase the longer the hours that they work. Normally their pay would increase but because their benefits get taken away the more they earn, they can’t afford to work longer hours. It’s an awful trap.  

Yes they are, relatively speaking. I've had a look at some bell curves of UK wages, and the vast majority of people earn at or just over minimum wage. So I think it's fair to say 50k wage makes you wealthy. Whether being wealthy allows you to be able to afford to live the life of riley is another matter! 

Well it depends upon your point of view. If you're doing 12 hour shifts in a waste recycling plant for the minimum wage, £50 K a year is riches beyond your imagination.

It’s not that’s straightforward though. In my house I earn a reasonable wage but my wife and daughter are on minimum wage. 

Tax high earners more and you’re actually affecting people on a minimum wage. 

Taking money from ‘rich’ people to give to the poor is wrong. It’s immoral. Paying people a decent wage is what should be happening. This improves people’s lives and reduced the pay gap. It also raises prices but so does taxing rich people. 

Hardly. Most people earning £50k will be doing over 60 hours a week. 

Not in my experience. They will be doing 35 hours a week including 4 hour lunches several times a week and early finishes for the pub. 

Wow, just wow. Come back to me when you’ve worked 24 hours non stop for no extra money.

Ok, so 'rich' is a relative term, perhaps I should have entitled the thread  - 'Tax increases for the poor to subsidise the better off (relatively!)'

Whatever your view, you cannot think that this should be the priority of the incoming Prime Minister ? Given that we are headed to hell in a handcart, whilst the conservative party grandee's rearrange the deck chairs on the good ship Britania, seemingly oblivious to the massive iceberg.

No thanks. I like my work hours. 

Those days have long gone. 

In her youth when she was drawn into the rat race my partner worked for AON typically from home when not travelling. A short day would be 7am to 9pm, on the road she might be working from 5am when she sat on a train, then logging off at 10pm after prepping stuff for the next morning. 70-80hr weeks were the norm for those wanting to get on, lunch was never away from the laptop or office, she would normally put lots of cereal bars and fruit in her laptop bag as she knew she was unlikely to have time to escape. Uk office work culture is pretty dreadful at times.

Ps. I think the proposed cuts are bo11ocks. The last thing the UK economy needs is less tax revenue with its current state of services. 

To be fair, that's the state of the housing market in the SE though rather than the income not being good. You can buy a 3 bed house in some places up North for £100k. £50k is doing well indeed for most non-London dwellers.

Ironically these problems are exacerbated by the even wealthier by buying up affordable housing with their spare cash to profit from the rent of people who now cannot afford to buy.   

You're being exploited, as if you didn't know already!

You've got to bite the bullet and leave. Hard, I know, been there. Stop them taking the piss with this fear of losing your job. It's appalling.

Ah the old trickle down effect dressed up again! Usually scuppered by the use of 'off-shore investments' the money goes abroad and any earnings are not taxed. Trump gave the well off a tax break in the US which ended up buggering up his plans to reduce the Balance of Payments deficit perhaps there is a lesson there. About 3m people will benefit from Boris's plan even with dependents its only a fraction of the population which might give you a clue why it wont be popular with the majority. But hey ho its cut and run time for the tories -' line your pockets while we can'- they may have until 2022 to rob the country blind if we let them.

It’s not like that at all. Most days I do 8-4:30 and work just an 8 minute commute by mountain bike away. I’m an engineering manager in a heavy industry. Sometimes machines don’t play ball and some of us have the self driven commitment to get them going again. I can take some time back if I want to leave early.

I just wanted to make the point that not everyone over £50k was a hooray Henry and going to the pub for lunch everyday! Some of us work bloody hard and begrudge giving 40% of it away.

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

Why would you begrudge paying tax? What do you think it’s for? You are not ‘giving it away’.

It's not a common myth as no one says that but there is empirically backed evidence that the multiplier effect is greater among lower incomes than higher.

You also seem to be confused about what shares are, if you buy £100 of shares this does not bequeath £100 to the company for spending on anything.

If you want increase spending power of govt the way to do it is not to cut taxes in the hope that they'll loan it back as it still needs paying back (along with the interest). Besides we've had 9 years of austerity, this govt is not about wanting to increase spending (although obviously govt borrowing is now historically high)

Yeah because everyone who sells a house just uses it to fund a big spending spree

You've mistaken the economy for the public purse there. The economy is far greater that what the government scrapes off the top for its service charge. 

Some of the things tax pays for has its uses from an economic point of view of course. Companies would suffer if they had to build and maintain thier own roads to transport goods or teach thier staff how to read and write etc. But as with everything there is a balance point and where exactly that lies will always be a matter of debate.

Using existing shit policies to defend introducing newer, even shitter policies, is not good economics. If wages are too low at the bottom end then, sure, do something about it but giving everyone who earns over £80k an extra £6k for nothing is grossly unfair, doubly so when it is to be "funded" by NI increases as that too will hit the lower waged disproportionately as those are the jobs that will be made unviable by increasing employers contributions. 

Actually I've seen it brought up many a time.

Re. Shares, yes in most cases you're buying from other traders but I was looking at when a firm goes public,  or raising money. But regardless it's all economic activity.

That's all the economy is really, it's just doing stuff and moving money around. Its basic nature can be obscured sometimes due it's size and interconnectivity but on a basic scale it's this: You've got a hunter and a blacksmith. The hunter needs spears to hunt, the blacksmith needs meat to eat. Nither has the skills to have both on thier own. So the hunter trades his excess meat for the blacksmith's services. Now they both have the tools they need and food to eat, they are "rich" in thier world.

Why do people always come out with this on these threads? "Rich" is obviously relative but for the population as a whole it's obvious that those earning over £50k are better off than those earning below that so of those two groups the ones most in need a big hand out are those on lower incomes. Concentrating on the edge cases (the mythical large single income family earning exactly £50k) and ignoring the rest (the single woman on £100k or the large single income family on £28k) proves nothing, it just makes you seem a bit thick. 

I'd have gone for a retraction myself when a glaring error was pointed out but I see you've gone for just repeating the erroneous assertion. Fitting I guess for a thread Johnson and his blustering.

I've no idea what this has got to do with anything, or why you think I should be the one who needs a basic explanation of macroeconomics when you're the one who's errors I corrected but even this explanation falls down. For about the last 500 years the means of production and the raw materials are owned by entities so by concentrating on labour and not capital you are missing out most of the economy. 

I love the idea that Bozza still thinks Brexit will leave spare money rather than eat it.

£50k is obviously a fair bit above the national average so I doubt many are truly struggling. But it's all down to income Vs expenditure. I'd much rather be me earning something like £30k but owning my own home, no personal debt and low cost of living up here in the North than someone in the south on £50k living in a crap little flat in London which they are forking out £1200 a month for, spending loads on commuting just to get to work each day.

It doesn't just apply to people earning between 50 and 80k but everyone who earns more than 50k. I don't know how many people that is but the estimated loss to the treasury is £9.6 billion PA, I expect that pays for quite a few nurses and doctors.

I expect your experience is pretty unusual,  apart from anything most salaried folk don't have that much discretion over earnings. Self employed do but their tax arrangements are different anyway. If you are having trouble persuading them to work you could point out the tax benefits of putting it in a pension. Your experience also seems to be at odds with everyone else's view here that £50k is subsistence wages, especially in London I imagine. 

You've just made that up haven't you? Even if you believe the Laffer curve has validity (the jury is very much out) the inflection point is way higher than at £50k, especially (once again) in London. 

I'll refer you to my point above about edge cases.

They really haven’t. 

It’s interesting you mention Aon, as i was specifically referring to the insurance broking world. 

Sure many people work crazy hours. Many will have to but a lot do it because they think that’s what the job needs or their boss wants to see. In my experience, that really isn’t the case. I would never voluntarily do a 50hour week more than very occasionally if something absolutely needed doing. If you can’t get your job done in a normal week you’re either doing it wrong or your boss is taking the piss. Either way you should change.

(none of this applies to owners of businesses who I appreciate have to work infinitely harder than employees)

I don’t begrudge paying tax. I begrudge paying a higher percentage than others because people think you can suddenly afford it when you go over a certain amount. The child tax credits, you have to give them back when you go over £50k. That £50k value hasn’t increased with inflation either.

we pay a percentage of our wage in tax, the way percentages work is that the more you earn the more you pay. It is unfair to increase that percentage also.

She worked with establishing or fixing web based platforms for services outsourced to aon, it wasn't her desire to impress that drove the hours, but management's unrealistic go live dates, or their promises to clients that set the schedule. 

Old and wiser now, she works standard hours and has every other Friday off! 

Ignoring the edge cases makes you seem a bit thick I’m afraid.

I'm pretty sure you have to be earning a lot less than £50k to get child tax credit, they get taken away long before that point.

As has been pointed out previously, when you take into account NI, the rate you pay changes from 32% to 42% at £50k, so not exactly a massive increase. Consider it an incentive to pay a decent amount into a pension - that's my view. I certainly don't begrudge handing over 40% of the top bit of my income when I'm clearly better off than most people.

You don't ignore them but you don't favour them over the average. Besides, a large family with a single income of £50k will gain nothing from this policy but anyone earning £80k to several million a year will be £6000 better off!

It’s not huge numbers though. 

About 6% of people earn between £50k and £80k. 1% over £80k. 

https://bit.ly/2wJRUlU

There might be the odd case of it. But widespread no. Most companies have now banned lunchtime alchohol for example.Certainly in the case of the professions - solicitors etc and the finance sector, those days are well gone.

I also know people who do work those hours and have that style, but there are very few of them.They are usually multiple business owners and that is the way they deliberately manage things.

The issue with people when you look at these type of comments is that if you know somebody who has that as a lifestyle you assume everyone operates like that.Its a law of low numbers when you look at these things in isolation.

Neither has anybodies £25k or £15K.

Direct taxation hits you harder as you earn more yes but indirect taxation hits you harder as you earn less. I might be weird but I'd happily pay more tax as the giving side of the social contract.

Your original point was correct, that if you tax less then the money not paid in tax is "still in the economy", i.e. it hasn't been destroyed.

The relevant question is whether the money is doing something useful. 

What's the point of the economy? Is it to increase GDP as an end in itself, so the people serve the economy? Or is the point of a healthy economy that it allows people to live better lives, i.e. the true bottom line is not GDP, but is human wellbeing?

You may be right to say that the most efficient way to increase GDP is to have minimal taxes, shit public services, and vast inequality and poverty. Great, higher GDP at the cost of human wellbeing: I'm afraid I can't see the point.

So back to the relevant question: what are the best tax policies to improve people's lives? Those which demolish productivity are bad, but so are those which successfully generate wealth but then distribute it inefficiently so it's concentrated in places where it's not contributing to wellbeing, while many people suffer poverty.

Perfectly good and obvious argument for the very existence of markets, but nothing to do with this discussion.

I'm not sure which point of mine you are responding to but....

Quite, it's a policy that benefits the richest (in terms of income from wages and some other sources) 1%  most and then the next 6% to varying degrees. This comes after 9 years of austerity which has been paid for by the poorer in society, how is this acceptable? 

Again, I appreciate that is your experience by that is not mine. Can I ask, what industry and location you are in? You seem to have an idea of what happens in finance or in London which is totally at odds to what I experience every day. Yes, people getting pissed at lunch generally doesn’t happen any more but a pint at lunch still happens more than frequently.

People work hard, but they also know the value of their time and don’t work silly hours unless they absolutely have too. Our contracted hours are 35 a week. We leave 2 hours early on a Friday (normally). Factor in an hour here or there to run an errand/ sort kids out/ stay at lunch then you’re close to 30 hours a week. I would say in my team of 80, 2/3 are on over £50k and 1/3 over £80k. These aren’t workaholic boss types. They are normal account handlers/ execs with a fair bit of experience.

I work in the service industry. Most of the guys are on c£30k basic plus a car. If you add in weekend working, sales bonuses and occasional nights this can quickly build to over £50k.

The problem is if it’s not your basic wage that’s over £50k it leads to lots of knock on issues. 

That is fine. 

But the amount of tax paid by the wealthy is also huge. 

The numbers are quite staggering. 

For example the top 100 wealthiest pay £18 billion in tax. 

The top 100,000 pay the equivalent to the entire defence budget. 

The top 1 % pay 28% of all income tax. 

90% of all income tax is paid for by 50% of taxpayers with the highest earnings.

sources. A mixture of the IFS and BBC reality check. 

So you can equally argue that that the top earners are paying their whack. And the more you earn the more you pay .

That is true but misleading. Income tax represents around 1/4 of all tax.

Taking all taxes into account, the ONS identifies that the top 10% pay 27% of all taxes. At the top end national insurance, council tax, VAT, fuel tax etc. are all regressive. Since by definition these are the people earning the most, 27% doesn't seem so extreme.  Sources - full facts and ONS.

I have worked in finance in previous life and also have a daughter who works next to the bank of England ( software programmer for financial institute). My wife also works in insurance, like Summo's ( and agree with Summo's descrition)

You only have to look at the way lawyers, solicitors etc etc now work. I would not touch being a solicitor these days.

But these numbers are too narrow..like your experience... you for example may work for a very good employer. You just have to look at the number of hours people work in the Uk as an average to say you are an outlier.

True, I very much could be an outlier and know full well that we have it easy compared to a lot of people. I just don’t think that my experience is that dissimilar to most of the (insurance) industry. That’s a whole lots of people and would make up a fair proportion of those in the top earnings bracket. 

I did not say it was extreme.I am just pointing out the staggering amounts paid.And the likes of the IFS etc say that tax is progressive, the more you earn the more you pay.

Yes, they do pay a huge amount. But the top 1% earn around 14% of all income, but probably pay less than 10% of all taxes.

I'm not proposing squeezing the high earners to pay for everything, but that 28% figure is unhelpful and deliberately misleading.

They probably pay a lot more in VAT. 

These are all good points but I don’t want a tax cut. I want good services and responsible government and I’m frankly dismayed that none of the leading candidates has acknowledged reality. At least Hunt is incentivising inward investment rather than offering a bribe to the Tory activists but it would be better if he had been less keen on matching the others.

who do?

Yes, it must be very irksome to have to pay VAT on your tenth Ferari or next Lear Jet.

But just to put your mind at rest, they all employ very imaginative accountants to ensure that they never have to pay this outragous tax. So you can sleep peacefully.

If only the folks at the local food bank had the good sense to employ a decent accountant, eh ?

Quite.

Just an extra £1K per year would transform the lives of those who have to choose between paying the electricity bill and buying enough food to get them through the week.

£1K a year to someone on >£50K? Not that much, rapidly tending to practically nothing as income rises.

The imaginative accountants are not doing a very good job if the top 100 pay £18 billion in tax.

Nor do I.Just tackling this view that the wealthy pay "nothing".

Who exactly is expressing the view that the wealthy pay "nothing"?

I don’t have an imaginative accountant. Don’t need one. I’m sure there’s loads of people here paying into a pension. Tax dodgers the lot of them. They should be paying more tax to support all those millions of people queueing at food banks everyday. 

How do you know? What is the effective rate of tax being paid by this top 100? 

The IMF, after studying extensive data from OECD countries, concluded that "trickle-down" economics is essentially bollocks and actually puts a break on economic growth. They said that if governments wanted to increase the pace of growth they should concentrate on helping the poorest 20% of citizens.

Added to that 70% of our economy is consumption, this is by far the biggest driver of GDP. Given that you are giving lectures on economics, I am sure you are aware of the Marginal Propensity to Consume, because a wealthier person is more likely to have their consumption needs met, their MPC is likely to be lower. As a consequence their additional wealths does not work as hard for the economy.

In isolation no it’s not. But when they’re already paying at least £8k it becomes quite a chunk. And let’s say it’s 93% of the working population earning less than £50k. A grand each is going to be £13k from each person earning over £50k. Which they’re already paying anyway.

Maybe everyone earning over £50k should be taxed at 70% so that no one ever earns over £13k a year. A kind of race to the bottom if you like  

I have no idea I do not know individual figures.

If the dodgy accountants were any good they would be paying ,well , just by the comments on here about tax " evasion"  it should be£ nil.So the logic is that they are not very good accountants or maybe just maybe they are paying the right tax based on the rules.

What do you want them to do  ..up sticks and move to another country. Then where does that £18 billion come from?

I assume he means rich people because they buy more. 

It's what the country needs, the trickle down effect will make us all a good deal richer.

What a compete and utter cock.

You have my sympathy, I'll try to organise a whip round at the local charity shop to help you out, people always want to contribute to a worthy cause.

I not sure I follow you, you seem to be making a lot of erroneous assumptions.

The point I was making was that a relatively small improvement in the income received by the poorest in society would make a huge difference to their lives. That same amount given to people at the wealthier end of society makes little difference to their lives.

Instead of planning to spend £9 billion or so a year on giving money to people who don't really need it I would much prefer that money were spent on improving our public services and making the lives of those who are unfortunate enough to have no job bearable.

Yeah, it depends whether you mean percentage or absolute. The wealthiest households pay a far higher amount but pay less than 5% of gross income as vat, the poorest pay over 12%

None of which is any use if you're put out of work as a result of this Tory madness. Everyone should take note of the harsh truths of the accumulating disaster. Boris must be very satisfied with the way Brexit is 'f*cking business' so far:

https://smallbusinessprices.co.uk/brexit-index/ 

See also: https://www.facebook.com/BrexitWrecksIt

So you don't know if they're paying equivalent levels of tax to less wealthy people? For all you know, they might be paying a lower effective rate than 45%. 

How on earth do you summon up such complete tosh? All I asked was the effective rate of tax being paid by this top 100. I made no other comment, positive or negative. 

Do you have an imaginative accountant? 

Sadly, I can only aspire to your level of poverty.

I think the Citizens advice give tax advice for free. Try them. 

Pitch perfect then for the paid up membership. What a revolting spectacle this has become, the one man being honest about finding a way out of the cesspit they've blundered into eliminated already, the rest falling over themselves to make A B'Stard's ghost PM.

Worst of all I can't even enjoy the slow motion destruction of the Conservative party, they've ruined even that sweet delight by ensuring the fascist-populist parasite which rotted them from within will emerge stinking and well fed from the ruins, a viable threat to all of us.

jk

I thank you for your kind advice, but I will have no need of the CAB as I am quite happy to pay my fair share to help support those less fortunate.  My apologies if this offends you.

Pandering to those who believe it will all be glorious, we'll flick the V's at Brussels then it's all, battleships, coal, Vera Lyne, spitfires over Dover etc etc

He knows full well he'll never be allowed to crash us out if he is even inclined to make a believable stab at it which is debatable. Also I doubt we see the tax cuts until '22, if ever, no point wasting a carrot like that when it can be held back and used again.

jk

Assume you don’t have a pension then? 

Is your fair share what you have decided is fair, or what the government has decided is fair? How did you come to the conclusion it is fair? Do you pay extra tax to make it more fair as you seem to be saying the current system isn’t very fair? 

In case you hadn’t noticed, the government wants you to have a pension. A huge proportion of benefits, health and social spending goes on the elderly and currently all comes out of current tax receipts (especially since govt assets have been sold off). Private pensions are good for the nation’s long term financial position. 

They are all in la-la-land, with the exception of Rory maybe, but then, that’s where British politics has been for the past 3 years: la-la-land.

Indeed, and I’m sure that GravitySucks has calculated very carefully the optimum amount he puts into his pension so that the millions of people queueing for food banks are still being looked after. 

Hard to say how good a job they're doing without knowing how much they get to keep. If Stevieb is correct that figure would be £49 billion. That means that the average punter in the top 100 salary group is taking home a tad under half a billion quid a year or a million quid a week.

Not bad.

The problem with the MPC measure is it's a bit short termest.The theory being, once your basic needs are met any extra money you have only some is spent on improving one's lifestyle and the rest is just stashed away. 

The problem is it doesn't count for two main things. Firstly, for a lot of middle-income and even higher income people the MPC rate stays quite high, they earn more, they spend more. Bigger house, nicer car on finance, more expensive holidays etc. There are plenty of people out there on what seem like decent incomes but barely have two penny's to rub together if they encounter a hiccup. 

And secondly, for those who do put money away, it seems to just write that off as lost money, forever removed from the economy. You have to ask, why do people save up money? Everyone's situation is different but once you've got a bit of a cash buffer, having much more without a purpose is a bit of a waste of time. Some are saving for a big one-off purchase such as a flash car or bigger house, once in a lifetime holiday etc. Some might be ploughing into an investment fund to deliver additional income or a retirement fund. It might be to pass on to the children for them to spend on uni or a house etc. 

The point is though that this saved money, is spent in the economy eventually. It might be held back for a while but then it gets used all in one big chunk for something or other.  And as I said before, even while it's accumulating, it's still usually put to work in some way, shape or form. 

While it's accumulating, it's generally being put to work on accumulating more wealth. 

At the end of the day, wealth is a derivative of work and resources. If you are accumulating wealth you are either driving up consumption of resources and work or increasing your share of the pool of resources and work being done at the expense of others.

Our planet can't support the rate at which we're consuming resources, and there's only so much efficiency you can squeeze out of work. So in order to allow people to continue to increase personal wealth, we must create policies which distribute wealth upwards at the expense of others.

Whatever you think about the ethics of that, it also create massive tensions in the social fabric, which will become increasingly problematic for law and order if we continue to increase inequality in the UK.

And amongst the 97% you will find not a soul Johnson gives a single flying f**k about right now.

jk

To clarify, 27% is the proportion of total tax take provided by the top 10%.

The overall tax rate (all taxes) as a proportion of their income for the top 10% (of households) is 34%. This is just about identical to the population as a whole. I have no idea what the rate is for the top 100 people in the country, but must be at least 47% of declared income. (Edit - that would be for income, I guess it will mostly be investment)

93%

Stupid brain

I think for the absolute ultra rich, say £100m plus in personal wealth I don't think it matters who is in government or pm. They have the freedom to travel and invest at will. A tax change that changes their annual income by say £50k isn't going to exactly hurt or benefit long term. 

Boris was aiming at the so called squeezed middle, but should have been wise enough to also throw in a carrot for all those below that level too. A bit like Goves snorting white lines, it's a PR stunt gone wrong. 

Not to mention re/further-toxifying north of the border...

*Eventually* is the key word. If you want to stimulate the economy, you want to do it now. It’s not short-term if you are going to give the money away anyway, but in a way that has less immediate benefit to the economy. Remember it’s not a one off deal.

People earning 1.5 to 2.5 times the average are not the middle...

But a one income family on twice the average, will likely have less disposable income than a double average income family. Either way, Boris isn't helping those in critical need. 

As we've seen further up the thread, we're talking about the top 7% of earners in the UK. How many are going to be single parent families?

I think there's a skewed perspective about what being in the middle means - if you're in a professional position you tend to think of the middle of your social circle, which creates an unrealistic bubble to compare yourself against.

I had a mate from my London days recently telling me, with a straight face, that he was not well off after a couple of decades of working in financial services, and in fact was "two pay cheques from the street". I'm quite sure if he sold his house and moved back to his native Cardiff, bought a semi and cut his cloth accordingly (kids in state school, sensible family car, etc.), he wouldn't have to work for many years, and possibly ever again.

Yes. There’s a lot of generalisations being banded about. My basic is just above ‘average’ with OTE and bonuses I occasionally tip £50k. For that I will have to work a 60+ hour week some nights and double weekends and sell a lot of spares. My wife and daughter are on minimum wage and part time. My son is at school. I have 4 mouths to feed. There are technically couples working full time on minimum wage with more disposable income than me. 

Its a funny world. 

So how does it feel to be classed as rich and earning above average...... you are probably close to the top 10%.  

At my age I would hope to be. Don’t forget all earners are all ages from 17 right up to 65. When I was 21 I was earning less than £5k a year. I haven’t earned a decent salary from day one. 

Plus I live in the south east. The wage figures aren’t normalised. 1 in 15 people that you meet should be earning over £50k if that statistic was spread across the country. 

As someone said above I could probably sell my house move to Wales and be ok for 5 years before having to go back to work. But if the whole country did that what would happen? It’s a bit of nonsense. Likewise people in Wales could come and work in London and get paid more  

Its easy to generalise and point fingers. It doesn’t achieve anything. 

And an average wage of £30k puts you in the top 35% of earners. 

Maybe the South east bubble would burst?

I wasn't suggesting anyone should, I was just pointing out that if you decide to live in an expensive part of the country (as opposed to finding yourself priced out of your home town by rising prices), send your kids to private school, upgrade an expensive German car every year or two, and keep moving home to get "better" postcodes, you're choosing to squeeze yourself, not being squeezed.

And if you have a large amount of equity in your home, that could comfortably cover a new home in a cheaper part of the country and the cost of living for many years, you have a safety net that the average person doesn't have. So whilst is understandable that you might feel squeezed, you have options that the genuinely squeezed don't have.

I’m not sure it works like that. You lose your job and can’t pay the mortgage you have to try and sell your house and move and buy a new house, move your family. All with no cash until your house is sold. Assuming you can sell it and assuming it’s doesn’t get repossessed because you can’t pay the mortgage. 

Certainly if you’ve bought new car year on year and you’ve sent your kids to private school then that’s be probably your own doing. I’m fairly sure you can’t do that on £80k PA though. Certainly not in the SE.  

But yeh I guess two paychecks on that kind of money would be some serious cash. 

I'm not suggesting moving that moving is easy - I'm saying that if you have several hundred thousand pounds equity in a building, you are wealthier than most people in this country.

'Squeezed middle'! Pull the other one.

Johnson's staggeringly cynical and corrupt bribe is laser focused on those not working (funded through NI hike) with a sizeable investment income (benefits those receiving 50k+) and who are in cuckoo land about the cost of brexit (cut no deal prep' funding because it'll all be roses). Wealthy, retired, English nationalists. He didn't miss! This is aimed squarely and solely at the the large brexity fraction of Conservative party membership, if anyone else happens to benefit then I guess that's something he can live with.

jk

How many people are there in England who don’t work and earn 50k+?

Enough with investment income (roughly 1M+ capital) including pensions since he's specifically and only interested in the <200k self-selecting members he needs to vote for him next month. You don't matter, never will. I don't either.

jk

I doubt he has several hundred thousand pounds in equity,....despite the so called urban myths surrounding such figures being applicable to everybody who lives and works in the South East.

So at least £1m in income earning assets and a tory party member? That's probably not many folk. So it's a carrot to get into office, not a tory party policy or manifesto pledge.  

Just like most party promises it will change and become some measure phased in over 5 or 10 years. By which time he'll be voted out in 2022 and the next incumbent will scrap it. BJ retires to write his memoirs. 

I suspect there will be enough for it to be significant. Someone will have done the research.

Correct. Also known as a lie

OK, I'll bow to your superior knowledge of my friend's financial circumstances. Not sure what happened since the last time I spoke to him, can you fill me in?

If you've worked in the financial services sector for a couple of decades, and don't have at least a couple of hundred grand in equity then you've probably either spunked it up the wall (like I did) or been in quite unusual circumstances. There are certainly plenty of my friends from that time who quit, sold up, moved north, or south into Europe, and set themselves up rather nicely for a decidedly unsqueezed existence off the back of the value of their London homes.

Maybe I just know a lot of unicorns?

You have changed the figures to a couple of hundred grand from several hundred grand.

And how many actually do this? People make out its thousands, but never seen any number to show that it is statistically significant.

And yes I am sure people do this, but really how many is it.Hundreds of thousands or a couple of thousand or a few hundred.

And as an aside Boris's  proposed tax  changes will have no affect anyway as the tax he is proposing is on income, not dividend or other investment income.So it is in theory targetted at those working who recieve a salary or wage.

Dividends are taxed to income tax as is the interest from bonds. More importantly, pension annuities are taxed to income. The changes are highly relevant to a constituency of well-to-do seniors.

As others have said it is targeted at the membership and will probably be dropped anyway in due course. 

That's politics. It's only a lie when it's not delivered. 

Be it tax brackets, £350m, cancelling all student loans, keeping all options of a 2bd referendum open etc..  folk hear what they want. 

How many members of the Conservative Party fit this description, a far larger proportion than the population as a whole.

Does the significant probability it's just another self serving lie make it better or worse?

jk

Targeting his voters. 

Its no better or worse than anything else in life where you identify how you are going to win. 

I am not for it but I can see why he is doing it. 

There again so can everyone else .

It’s hardly rocket science if you have ambition for  the role.

It’s no better or worse than JC targeting student votes by promising to cut fees. 

Winning honestly and winning dishonestly are only the same thing if all you value is winning. Personally I'm not sure that's what we want or need in a PM right now.

It's one thing offering something to a key portion of your electorate that you intend to work to deliver, that you can convincingly argue is in the wider national interest. It's quite another if you have no such intention or ability. Corbyn has proven an uninspiring, weak leader but I don't think he's a cynical barefaced liar. I'm unconvinced of the equivalence.

jk

I see it in the same breath. Politicians promising things which can’t be delivered at nil cost somewhere along the line.

it is just as much wishful thinking and pandering to an unrealistic electorate .

There's nothing unrealistic about cutting tuition fees, this government's own review concluded it should be done just a couple of weeks back. Perhaps you're objecting to how Labour proposes funding the cut?

jk

several

more than two but not many.

At least a couple:

Two or more

Not really a difference, and I'm not sure what the semantic argument might add to the debate?

Does it matter? Whether you store it in a bank vault or in bricks and mortar, wealth is wealth. One may be less liquid than the other, but that doesn't make it less valuable.

Shall we both agree we are not going to get anywhere on this.

I have no objections. But in the end Jc s proposal became an aim  because there are a lot of other financial priorities like nationalisation of water etc etc. 

So it’s all a bit questionable anyway. 

I follow the VC / liberal party  line of thought on tax . Bit more realistic. 

It is happening now. There are millions of people in the country and everyday people somewhere will be finally putting that nest egg of theirs to use. The result is a constant stream of money flowing into the economy. Think of it like a lake with a river flowing in one end and out the other, the waterwheel at the end still gets turned just the same. 

So you don’t know the actual number either?

It makes a huge difference. A property can sit empty and be used just for their two week pilgrimage to Cornwall each summer. Money in a bank will be leveraged several times over, loaned out and spent. 

No one does, the point is that the membership is not representative of the nation, by how far is debatable,but in my opinion it's miles away.

You can work out the approximate number if you can be bothered, like I was.

You can’t just google it from one source though.

Given the general apathy toward politics and voting in the UK I think that most people who can be bothered to become members of political parties aren’t representative of the nation.

Go on then, give us your figure and show your working out.?

Do it yourself you lazy git!  

Find out what % of retired households earn more than £50,000 per year.

Then find out how many retired households there are.

That’ll give you an approximate number of retired people who earn £50k+ per year which is apparently Boris’ target audience.

Don't be so stupid, he wants Conservative party member votes. So start with how many member the Conservative party has. 

Oh, and, fail.

At least I’m asking the right question.

You haven’t been following the discussion between jkarran and me have you?

Do try to keep up.

Then problem is so is the Labour Party. 

No one is representing the nation! 

So the question is "how many members of the Conservative Party". Come on, try and keep up.

You mean "Tax Cuts for Then Rich"??

No, the question is the one that I asked at 09.45 this morning.

The wrong question!

We are talking change vs. Status Quo here, or at least I am.

This rather makes me think that you don’t understand the term “stimulus”. This is how tax cuts are sold to the public, for it not to be a bribe (or fiction in this case) the tax cut needs to be an effective stimulus.

So what number did you come up with?

You can, ONS provide it in spreadsheet form.

jk

350,000

That seems to be of the right order of magnitude if some reasonable assumptions are made about the gender split of investment income in the age bracket of interest. There are no figures for high earning single occupancy retired households which isn't that surprising in this age group since they're predominantly both older and female, women earned less, capital gets spent toward end of life. It's roughly 4-5% of 30% of 2-retiree households so 1.5% of households, typical households are bigger than two people so call it very roughly 1% of the population, 600k, some of them will have reasonably evenly split incomes, individually lower than 50k, many won't as the man earned. This fits anecdotally with the handful of people I know in this bracket from the few hundred I know in total. Still, that's plenty and given from what little we know about the membership for certain they're likely to be significantly over-represented in the Conservative party.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfin...

I only looked for household data, they may provide it for individuals too if you want to eliminate some of the estimates.

jk

I was surprised by the number, certainly higher than I had first thought.

It certainly fits into your  idea of Boris appealing to this section of society.