Reply With QuoteThe Welsh parliament will have their own powers regarding Income Tax after next years election aswell. Will be interesting to see if they try to take a different approach to Westminster.
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If this changes life as we know it how are the Gov going to recoup taxes? Just working from home more would mean
Less tax from petrol
Less tax from people not needing cars/public transport
Fallout of occupancy of commercial buildings
Less tax from less childcare
People not staying in hotels as much, not buying coffees
Buying less office clothes
All the subsequent jobs are reliant on it
That's just one small change.
They're not going to raise housing taxes so it's going to be NI, VAT or something regressive that's going to be hit
The Welsh parliament will have their own powers regarding Income Tax after next years election aswell. Will be interesting to see if they try to take a different approach to Westminster.
That will depend on who wins I think.Originally Posted by The Bloop
People will have more money in their pocket, and more time to spend it so I expect there will be an uptick in online retailing. Unfortunately, Amazon have cornered that market, and pay very little tax as the Tories have refused to clamp down on them in the last 10 years of them being in power. That also means there is less scope to become a thriving operator in that field.
I think people will feel wealthier, and will want to get out more. When you're in the Office all day, you look forward to getting home. When you're home all day, you'll start looking to go out.
Where will the taxes come from, well you would hope that they would close those tax loopholes that see very wealthy individuals avoid paying the taxes they should be paying (usually donors of the ruling party), and force companies like Amazon/Starbucks to start paying the taxes they should be. However, considering that it has become ingrained in British Governance to not do this sort of thing, then expect to see other changes.
One thing I would like to see brought back, considering how that particular business thrives on people's misery, is a tax on gambling. That particular industry is benefiting immensely from online activities that mean I can log on at 3am and place a bet.
I also think it is time to legalise cannabis, and make that taxable.
It's also time to consider removing the burden on the NHS of performing certain activities that are not life threatening.
It is clear that, with interest rates at record lows, the main way of getting out of this mess is to hit savers, and reward borrowers. People saving money is a big no-no, and they really want you out and about spending all the money you have, and even money you don't have. This has been a long term policy, and household debts are at ridiculous levels - as are the mental strains that such pressures bring.
I can definitely see a reduction in the threshold at which the highest rate kicks in, and also maybe a staggered approach to the 20% rate with 3 smaller bands of say 18, 20 and 22?
May be too expensive to actually administer. Additional rate (£150,000 at 45%) going to 50% won't bring in much, but sends a message. Hitting middle-income earners by lowering the £50k threshold seems incredibly unfair too.
Most of your answers will not work.In 1990 Victor Chandler threatened to go "offshore" if they didn't drop the betting tax which they duly did as the gov still gets a tremendous income from gambling companies which would evaporate if they all went offshore.The way Starbucks and the like work also makes it extremely difficult to squeeze them.They source all their product to sell from some company that resides in a tax heaven at inflated prices so that their individual outlets make only a meager profit and are thus taxed accordingly.This is a business model all governments find impossible to circumvent as its a perfectly legal practice so a mutual agreement needs to be reached.Your NHS statement is just too simple,you need to expand to say what,where and how much do you think it would save.
There are some creative ways of counteracting some of those tax avoidance means, if a government was genuinely minded to do so.
A former Tory chancellor was suggesting last year we could look at taxing turnover instead of profits (there are big upsides and downsides to this).
You could look at reducing income and corporate tax and instead increasing VAT or sales taxes, as these are harder to avoid.
The EU were the only major country/ group which seemed to have any appetite in taking on the big multinationals (unless you count the USA targeting Chinese ones), and unfortunately after seriously hampering their efforts for years we've now left altogether.
What do you mean by this?
My initial words were wrong, sorry. Was typing in a bit of a hurry. I am thinking more of treatments that are carried out for cosmetic reasons, for example. I also think it is a nonsense that I get free prescriptions considering I can afford to pay for medicines I get. As cruel as it sounds, we are not in a state of utopia so things such as gender re-assignments should not be covered.
My original line would suggest things such as operations to correct Carpal Tunnel Syndrome should be excluded - that's not what I meant.
Perhaps I should have said "non-essential".
The burden on the NHS is growing as we grow older, but is also growing as we seek things such as IVF (for example - although I think the NHS should provide this where relevant).
Gender reassignment is a hot topic, and one I have absolutely no interest in getting into an online debate about
Your point about means based prescription payment is interesting, although I'd worry that the system would end up being inefficient and harsh and that a lot of people would end up falling through the cracks
we already tax turnover, it is called VAT. Indirect taxes are harder to avoid, as there is less legal structures available to effectively reduce your liability.
by reducing taxes on fuel etc as in the OP, this means that individuals have more money in their pocket. This in turn means that they spend more or save more. If they aren't saving they are spending, which means that taxes will ultimately still flow to HMT, albeit at a much slower rate.
I remember reading at the time it was introduced that in Wales because we have a more elderly, poorer population with more health issues than England, it was less costly to just offer blanket free prescriptions, as a significant proportion of the prescriptions were already not being paid for.Gender reassignment is a hot topic, and one I have absolutely no interest in getting into an online debate about
Your point about means based prescription payment is interesting, although I'd worry that the system would end up being inefficient and harsh and that a lot of people would end up falling through the cracks
Tax is high on Fuel for another very good reason though - we are a net importer of oil, every time you fill up your car some money leaves the economy to go to the oil producing countries .
Any money that stays washing around the economy will eventually end up in the exchequer, but once it has left you arent going to be able to tax it.
Almost all oil producing countries have very cheap fuel and most oil importing countries tax fuel very heavily.
If we want quality public and council services we need to increase income tax. I'd abolish NI and incorporate it into income tax, saving on administering NI. We have some of the lowest rates in Europe, but with crap public services to match.
When a doc prescribes something over the counter, I end up binning the prescription and paying for it instead - I think lots of people do that.Gender reassignment is a hot topic, and one I have absolutely no interest in getting into an online debate about
Your point about means based prescription payment is interesting, although I'd worry that the system would end up being inefficient and harsh and that a lot of people would end up falling through the cracks
It used to work fine before, and I think it is applied in England (they don't get universal free prescriptions). Every Government points at the fact "They put record amounts of money into the NHS" - but not many pay attention to the growing burden. Years ago you'd die from cancer fairly frequently - thankfully people mainly survive now, but that means increased care for survivors (check-ups, scans etc). Years ago, an infertile couple would live to the age of 80 with the NHS only having to look after them. Now, they may get 2 kids through IVF, and by the time they are 80 the NHS are looking after them and 7-10 descendants. I'm not saying that people shouldn't get fertility treatment - probably the best parents are those who appreciate the miracle of birth thanks to IVF - but it creates a burden to the NHS long after the IVF treatment has ended.
There are elements of NHS care that, frankly, should be paid for if people want (rather than need) those treatments. This should help subsidise the treatments that people need to function in life. There are grey areas (like IVF which, can be argued, helps create wealth over the long term). Gastric bands for people unable to control what they eat for example.
The NI Fund is designed (or rather WAS) to pay for things like pensions, state benefits, disability allowances, redundancy payments (when companies are liquidated) and the NHS. Those lines need to stay, in my opinion.
That is interesting, and would make some sense.
On the concept of income taxes paying for better council services, that's what the Council Tax is supposed to be for. This tax is incredibly high in some council areas, not because their services are great, but because employed people are having to subsidise unemployed people. However, the biggest reason why council taxes are higher in places like Blaenau Gwent in comparison to Cardiff is because some councils are terribly run and were verging on bankruptcy even before this crisis hit.
Remember those councils who lost money because they had been keeping it in Icelandic banks?
I can guarantee that badly run councils will be penalising their inhabitants by cutting public services (Labour councils will blame the Tory Government, just as Tory Councils used to blame Labour) and raising council taxes to the very maximum they can get away with.
Here is some worrying numbers whcih suggest tax wont fix this :
1p rise in basis rate income tax gives you 5 billion.
15 billion spend on PPE Is the total budget of the home office ie policing , security customs , immigration controls etc
about 360 billion spend in total spent on everything .
One major economists /business man said forget tax its a drop in the ocean and will stop folk spending anyway , just borrow a trillion ,interest rates are at zero , tax will not fix this it will just cause more debt as folk will cut back , country needs expenditure to recover .
Thankfully Boris and the chancellor don't favour another austerity program ,thank god we a have a socialist spending government in power
Let's not forget Westminster cutting council funding by over half. Most don't realise that. They think they're playing more for worse and less services. It's a clever sleight of hand
Due you mean during austerity ?/
Indeed. Some local authorities lost as much as 70% of their central government money. There's no sign of that being replaced. Some English councils have been providing as basic a bare-bones service as a result, where only essentials as required by law have been provided. It comes to something when even Conservative councils have condemned the actions on council funding by its own party.
I agree with you on the legitimacy of radical changes to tax systems. Scrapping income taxes and replacing it with wealth tax and indirect tax actually makes a bit of sense - it is far harder to avoid, and might better promote wealth redistribution. The US have undertaken an enormous change to their tax system recently (although not quite so dramatic as change in approach from direct to indirect taxation). It can be done.
Alternative minimum taxes based on turnover not profit are interesting. I actually did some work with a government about 10 years ago which looked at ways to beat tax avoidance, and an AMT was one of my recommendations. They are reatively easy to implement and administer, and hard to avoid. But it is the nature of the income on which there is perceived avoidance that is the problem. The typical US multinational example, which makes sales in the UK but books revenue abroad, would not obviously be countered by an AMT.
I'm not sure why you think that the UK lags behind the rest of the EU in challenging the current system of taxation. We were the first to adopt anti-hybrid rules for example, which seek to counteract a lot of the principles used by multinationals in reducing their overall tax charge. We have a diverted profits tax too, which adds a punitive element as it taxes profits which are artificially diverted from the UK at a higher rate than they would have been taxed at had they been declared here. As well as specific rules to attack payments from the UK to tax havens in respect of IP. The digital services tax kicked in a few months ago, which will impose a fairly crude additional tax on a lot of the multinationals that are often accused of avoiding tax. And we also have something on the way that will seek to redistribute part of a group's overall income across countries dependent on location of sales rather than recognition of income i.e. stepping away from the long-established principles of transfer pricing, which really does represent quite a fundamental change.
In many ways, it is other EU states that hinder the UK's attempts and not the other way around. Just look at the behaviour of Luxembourg or Ireland. Our tax authority is actually pretty aggressive, pretty competent, and pretty keen on leading the pack when it comes to introducing anti-avoidance measures.
What were the disadvantages of a AMT? I assume it would hit productivity as it would penalise those with high turnover and low margins? From your comments it’s never going to combat those of the amazon ilk.
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