inky pete Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 The 1% of taxpayers in the top rate tax band already pay almost 1/3rd of the total amount of income tax paid in the UK. That proportion of the total income tax revenue has risen from being just over 1/5th in the year 2000. So if "they're all tax dodging and tax avoiding", then all I can say is that their accountants obviously aren't very good at it!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Where did you get your figures from inky? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asperity Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Obs, I would argue that giving the money to government to spend is a very poor method of wealth distribution because they have a strong tendency to waste vast amounts of it. Leaving more money in the hands of the individual will better ensure that it reaches the wider economy of this country rather than that of Brazil or India. And there aren't actually that many footballers getting the millionaire wages the tabloids like moaning about. <_< Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Asperity, have alook at the success of silicon valley in the USA, that was all government money, it was built on the back of defence spending. You could argue that our government is inept at spending but it is not the case universally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
observer Posted March 23, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Reganomics Asp, was clearly invented by the rich to encourage the myth of "trickle down" - the reality however is the few have a limited consumption capacity. Much better to take the poorest out of tax altogether and redistribute spending power and thus consumption and demand, which basically is how you get the economic show back on the road. Ink, think you'll find that top band tax payers pay less than 10% on average with their avoidance schemes, IF they're paying a third of the pot now, a proper pursuit of their tax liabilities and tighter tax laws would reap a lot more. Then of course, there's the old chestnut about an exodus of these people and their money out of the country; obviously something to prepare for and ensure none of their cash or assets leave with them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfie Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 If the rich avoided tax at 50p in the pound, surely they will try and avoid paying tax at 45p. :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Where did you get your figures from inky? Just about every news outlet has run the same figures, they've been produced by a variety of independent research sources and all pretty much agree. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2107031/UK-Budget-2012-Top-1-earners-contribute-income-tax.html One of the facts in there which I personally find most telling is that all of the income tax paid by the lower earning half of all tax payers only just covers the Housing Benefit bill (£17 billion). EVERYTHING else which is funded from income tax is paid for by the higher earners. The upper earning half of taxpayers pay 90% of the income tax, with the 300,000 or so top rate taxpayers contributing three times as much as that lower half (£47 billion). That means that on average, the top rate taxpayers are each paying 150 times more income tax than the average member of the lower half. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Interesting inky, perhaps you should have read some of the replies to it Andrew St Albans This article is a joke. It is not 'research' - it is speculation. Firstly, 40% rate tax starts at £35k pa - but only if your personal allowance is zero. Most people start with £7,475, so 40% is only paid on income above £42,475, so that 'fact' is wrong. Secondly, look at the figures: 3.7 million pay £57 billion, do they? So that's an average of £15,405 pa each. Is that a 'big' figure? You'd only pay that (or more) if you were earning at least £63,500 pa. Finally - and the biggest assumption - is this: that all those who are in the higher rate tax bracket are ACTUALLY paying it. That is, tax avoidance and tax evasion is zero and every penny of tax that is due is paid and collected. And if you believe that, you wil believe anything - Plus the top 1% of wage earners, hold about 30% of the nations wealth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Firstly, if you'd or Andrew from St Albans had read the source material - rather than just skimmed the article - you'd know that the figures are based on tax actually collected. So his little rant about the figures being wrong because of tax evasion is factually incorrect. You'd also both know that the research stated that they were quoting taxable income figures - precisely because different people have different tax free allowances. This also excludes non-taxpayers from being counted as "earners". If they were included, then there would be far more people counted in the number who contribute that bottom £17 billion. So in fact, that £17 billion is the total income tax contribution of significantly more than 50% of all of the UK's earners. His point about the maths of 3.7 million people paying a total of £57 billion just shows how little he - or you, if you've just blindly quoted him - know about basic arithmetic. He's right when he says that these 3.7 million will be paying on average £15,405 each income tax, and that that would equate to an income of about £63K. But he's talking about averages. All he's managed to prove is that the average total income of a higher or top rate taxpayer (assuming a full personal allowance) is about £63K. Correct. Also irrelevent. He could equally have said that since the 300,000 top rate payers contribute £47 billion then the average tax bill of a top rate taxpayer is about £150,000. True, but neither figure tells us anything about the income distribution within those tax bands. All those figures prove is that the rich are paying an awfullot more tax than the rest of us!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asperity Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Asperity, have alook at the success of silicon valley in the USA, that was all government money, it was built on the back of defence spending. You could argue that our government is inept at spending but it is not the case universally. Lt Kije, have a look at the failure of the solar panel companies like Solyndra in the US, started with billions of $$ taxpayers money. The ethanol companies, again started with massive government subsidy, which have failed miserably. It is a fact that governments in general are useless at making good use of money. Granted they are very good at spending other people's money. Take a look at India where a majority of people own a telephone but very few have access to proper sanitation or clean water. The point being that telephones are provided by private companies whereas sanitation and clean water are amongst the duties of government to organise. My point is that people should be allowed to decide what to do with their own money. Increasingly government takes the attitude that all money is theirs to take when and how they want to spend when and how they want. It's sad that most people on here seem to agree with this idea!! :roll: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Mobile phones came about due to defence spending in the USA, spending on defence brings forward invocation, which then the private sector take forward and bring forward the technology for the public. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 So why is our government commiting itself to spending tens of billions of UK taxpayers money buying defence equipment from overseas and supporting the private sector in other countries? Oh, and rolling stock for the railways, and wind turbines, and refuelling ships for the navy, supplies for the NHS, books and equipment for schools, and just about everything else they buy. Government procurement should look at the TOTAL cost of a contract award - including the tax revenues expected from jobs created or secured in the UK as a result of the award, AND the dole bill which will have to be paid if the contract and the jobs go overseas. THAT'S how other countries maximise the effectiveness of their tax revenue spending! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Inky, The UK sells its assets, the tilting virgin train was built in Birmingham till 4 years ago, Alstom a French company bought the company out, they had a full order book, they moved the factory to France. The people who ran the factory thought they had a duty to their share holders to sell. Why do UK bosses take a short view, better for them the workers, their suppliers if they had not sold. UK bosses are renouned for taking a short view we fail to invest for the long term, successive governments have made it easier for foreign companies to come in and asset strip UK companies, all helped by our own directors who are beholden to get the best for their share holders, and not their own country or workers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asperity Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 Mobile phones came about due to defence spending in the USA, spending on defence brings forward invocation, which then the private sector take forward and bring forward the technology for the public. You seem to prove my point very well Lt Kije, that government is very good at spending money while private enterprise is very good at making it. Doesn't help the poor Indians who can make phone calls to each other to complain about lack of government action on basic hygiene :wink: invocation or innovation? Just asking Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 You seem to have missed my point Asp, it was government money(investment) that invented the technology, without that government investment their would have no silicon valley and no mobile phones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asperity Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 It wasn't government money Lt Kije. You are the one missing the point. The government (any government) doesn't have any money. The money it uses is the taxpayer's, and if the government didn't take the money from the people and spend it in the generally wasteful and bureaucratic way that it does, then the people would have it to spend on developing things like, oh I don't know, mobile phone technology perhaps? I don't understand why you are so supporting of the theft of the fruit of your labour by the wide boys in Westminster :roll: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 So how come the private secter did not, invent mobile phones, and most of the things that come out of silicon valley, I know they would not risk or spend their own money. The Boeing 747 the most successful air liner, was developed by boeing with government money (not private money) as a cargo plane for the US airforce. The private secter would never have spent that money in developing it. Government money drives forward innovation for the private secter to exploit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazj Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 The Boeing 747 the most successful air liner, was developed by boeing with government money (not private money) as a cargo plane for the US airforce. The 747 was born because the President of Pan Am (Juan Trippe) asked Boeing to make a huge airliner.... he was reported to have said "if you design and build it {Boeing}....I'll buy it. They did and he spent over half a billion dollars in the mid 60's and bought 25 of them. The money used was private money, not government money and it was borrowed from banks at a huge gamble to the companies future Don't you watch the Discovery Channel Kije??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazj Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 ... and the cargo aircraft the US government funded was the C5 Galaxy; they rejected Boeings plans in favour of Lockheeds! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 True Baz, but it was still public money that paid for the development Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazj Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 True Baz, but it was still public money that paid for the development no it wasn't...... Boeing even borrowed millions to build a whole new plant to build the 747 in as nothing they had could house such a massive aircraft The public money went on developing the C5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 23, 2012 Report Share Posted March 23, 2012 The development stage was paid for by public money. The factory was built after the plane had been developed, and Boeing had decided to change the plane into a passenger plane. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asperity Posted March 24, 2012 Report Share Posted March 24, 2012 While you're doing all this cheerleading for government expenditure you're dodging the issue as usual. It is a fact that government is very good at throwing vast amounts of taxpayers' money at failed projects (any IT project ever attempted by government is a good example). And before you state the obvious, that it's private IT companies that are creating these failures, well of course they will willingly accept the money. They know a good thing when they see it. And they know that when one project fails the government will be back with more wads of cash to spend on another one. :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Kije Posted March 24, 2012 Report Share Posted March 24, 2012 The government went though a tender process on the IT projects Asp, how much blame do you aportion to the private secter, after all they tendered for the work then failed to deliver.? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asperity Posted March 24, 2012 Report Share Posted March 24, 2012 Try reading the post before yours Lt Kije. Surely it's the role of government to spend taxpayers' money wisely and to that end to monitor the companies they employ to do work for them, and obviously they fail miserably at it. You can't blame private companies for taking all the money that government is willing to throw at them unchecked. Aren't you even a little bit angry at the way the government is taking a large proportion of your hard earned money and wasting it? Or perhaps you've been working abroad to avoid paying income tax? <_< <_< And slightly off topic:: :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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