Sunday 25 September 2011

UK Income tax; Who pays? How much?


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13 comments:

Jim said...

So let me get this straight - taxpayers earning £50K+ pay more tax than all the others earning less than £50K, despite there being 10 times the number under £50K as above it.

And we have the Left constantly demanding that 'the rich' should pay 'their fair share'?

Seems to me if they were paying a fair share the country would be even more broke than it is now....................

Anonymous said...

Jim is someone on 50k rich?

Jim said...

@Anon: by definition they are better off than 90% of other taxpayers, and probably 95% of the entire population (as most likely the other 30m non taxpayers won't be getting 50K either). Whether £50K is rich in absolute terms I don't know, but relatively, yes it is rich.

And anyway if you do the same calculation for £100k+, its 700 thousand taxpayers paying £56bn in tax vs 30m taxpayers paying £105bn. So over one third of the revenue comes from just over 2% of the taxpayers.

That seems remarkably 'progressive' to me.

Electro-Kevin said...

Jim - No. It isn't rich.

I'm on that. Staycation this year (again) I mean a real one. Doing things from our house - a bog standard 3 bed semi... next door to benefit dependants one side with a drug addled daughter and a second marriage the other side with yappy dog and badly behaved kids requiring police to be called on the hurry-up once or twice a year.

Both gardens look like a tip.

No. 50k isn't rich.

I'm not complaining btw. Just don't call me rich. Why am I bothered that you might call me rich ? Because my kids (sharing their bedroom and Xbox - unlike chav-bollocks up the road) will be excluded from good universities on the grounds that they have had a privileged upbringing.

They haven't.

They got into selective school through their own intelligence and hard graft after being read to and taught by mum who we were lucky enough to be able to keep at home rather than send the boys out to baby farms (creches) when they were young.

Oh. Wait a minute. I suppose you have to be rich to be able to afford to have mum at home.

She's a systems analyst by profession btw. A graduate who was responsible for international projects on a very good salary. We could have been 'rich' if we wanted to but (where we live) that takes a lot more than 50k.

Electro-Kevin said...

Did I mention next door's marvelous water feature ? The one that sounds like a beach donkey having a piss in a plastic bucket ?

Or the delux wind chimes ??? (The bells ! The Bells !!!) And then there's the 'exotic' Morrocan lantern they've put on the adjoining pillar at the front of our house (without permission) which makes it look like it's ours.

I'm really looking forward to the huge glow-in-the-dark plastic Santa they sit beneath and tie by the neck to the lantern with a bit of string making him look like he's being executed under Sharia law.

If you try saying things to these people where do you start ? There's so much. Including eldest blocking the shared drive with his car. You sound like a moaner all the time and they're just too thick and uneducated to see that the way they behave is wrong and inconsiderate. You stick with the things that are really important like the car.

50k rich ? The woman opposite is on 70k and the poor cow has to look at these ugly bastards even more than I do.

Electro-Kevin said...

Did I mention that one t' other side is listed as a 'fortune teller' ? She looks like the Blair Witch as do her rat-faced benefit scrounging teenage daughters, and their illegitimate kids too. I think it must be the father at it because the distinctive facial features just don't seen to breed out.

Last year she must have had a grant from the council or something. Bought about fifty plants and stood them outside on the front terracing without bothering to take them out of the pots and plant them. They got blown over and left there. Occaisionally she'd stand at the door with a fag on and a hose attached to the kitchen pipe and wet them from a distance of 25 feet with a great streak of water.

The plants all died within weeks. The pots are still there. On their sides with the dead stalks sticking out.

I'd be better at telling her effing fortune than she'd be at telling mine, I tell you that.

50k rich ???

You're in for a disappointment if you think that.

Electro-Kevin said...

***Rant over***

Jim said...

I'm not arguing with you EK, I'm just pointing out that the Left are constantly demanding 'the rich' pay their 'fair share', and as these figures show, by any definition you care to choose, the rich are paying a lot more than their fair share. Yet still the Left demand more.

Anonymous said...

Most people earning around £50k are, I would say, in the public sector, I know for a fact that over 900 Hampshire County Council employees are on £50k

Anonymous said...

This chart is for income tax only. But income tax accounts for less than 1/3 of tax collected. Taxes such as VAT, fuel duty, tobacco and alcohol are a huge part of our tax base and here the poor pay a much higher % of theirincomes as tax than the rich as consumption is a larger part of their incomes.
Basically our tax system is an unfair mess and high marginal income taxes are not good, but our system is not especially unfair onnthe rich

Alice Cook said...

Anon 20:16

You are absolutely correct. Moreover, indirect taxes fall heaviest upon the poor. I had a post in the pipeline that would cover this issue.

The question, however, is what does it imply about UK tax policy.

My own view is that policy is rather incoherent.

Alice

Anonymous said...

Yep, I agree. It is an incoherent mess.

A better system would be one where tax is, in general, lower, and particularly where taxes on effort and productive work (ie income tax, "national insurance") and consumption taxes are reduced.

But where taxes are increased significantly on income/wealth that does not derive from productive work/investment(specifically, land ownership), and where taxes are raised on things "bad" for society (eg pollution, financial practices that put taxpayers at risk etc).

Anonymous said...

Anonymous.

You want Georgism. See Mark Wadsworths blog for details (although he does like to make it much more complicated than it should be).

AC1