Just being provocative.

Drifterwood

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I pay around 25% tax on business profits, employee tax of 11% and then pay 45% on what I pay myself and at least 20% purchase tax on everything I spend up to 70% on fuel.

So, how come I am debt free and my government owes at least three times what they have taken from us?

Am I doing it wrong?
 
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798686

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Before Dandy says it. What I am doing wrong is not paying enough tax!

Obviously :rolleyes:
Bingo. :p

I'm guessing your employee contributions reduce the amount of profits you pay tax on, tho? Which is a small, but welcome caveat?,

I personally think CT should be no higher than 20% - but presumably, you only pay 45% on any of your 'wages' that are above 100k or so? And the rest is either tax free (upto 8k), 20% (up to 37k?) or 40%.

I think they're considering removing the tax-free 8k from high-earners which imo, is unfair. Everyone should be subject to the same tax scale, and only earnings above a certain amount (imo should be 150k) liable for the top rate, which again I think is too high - 40% would be fine.

And fair play on paying your tax dude - you obviously aren't the UK CEO of Starbucks or Ikea, then. :)
 
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I'm in favour of a tax rethink really - the old 10% should be implemented, and start lower, so more people are in the tax system, but not crushed by it.

Should also be a lot simpler - 10% up to 20k.
20% from 20 to 30k.
30% from 30 - 40k.
And 40% above 40k.

Easier, fairer, and would apply to everybody.

On a different (slightly) note - I think MPs should have to pay their own transport fares. Sure, have Government cars for official duties, but the public transport fares aren't going to be just (or understood) unless the law-makers also abide by (and get ripped off by) them. I guess many people can claim back for work-related transport costs - but anything outside that should be paid by the individual.

^ I'm basically in favour of MPs being subject to all the laws they make, and expect other people to be bound by.
 

Drifterwood

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HMRC are having to make changes to be in line with the rest of the world and I will by default really become non tax resident. I only have to pay myself what I need when I am in the UK, which isn't a lot at all, and I can try to make more money elsewhere, if I want to.

I agree though, joll Bach, who benefits from the system being so complicated? And you won't ever get straight answers from HMRC.

My point is though that most of us manage to live within our means whilst our glorious rulers can't. Maybe they need to take a few lessons from my Mum and other war generation pensioners.
 
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They probably do!

The current generation also need to learn how to manage without shoving loads on their card, and without having the latest iPhone.

Tax is ridiculously complicated - especially when you get to NI aswell. There are like 16 different NI categories when you factor in age, marital status (for those born pre 1940 lol), pension status, high-earners, second jobs, etc... plus the different values depending on whether your pension is contracted out, in-house, etc etc. :/

I'd be happier with a simpler and more transparent system > also being much more tied to where the money's spent. Road fines and parking tickets towards the transport dept and roads; NI towards the health service, etc. I think people would mind having to cough up (slightly) less if they knew where it was going, and why.
 

Jason

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@Drifterwood, I reckon the more tax you pay the more morally upstanding you are! Rejoice at paying tax! It's the 2013 version of the 1513 buying of indulgences, or the 1013 giving of conspicuous gifts to your band of followers. Go back a couple of millennia and you would have been making a burnt offering to some deity or other.
 

rbkwp

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Just being provocative.

Am I doing it wrong?





awwwww Drifter me mate
Yes, you are
You all need to Provoke the Kiwis into action
we will gladly get our assess over there to sort out Mali, USA Gun Control, and all else that are the ills of the World currently

Nothing a llength of No 8 wire cant fix!
 

Phil Ayesho

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Listing independent percentages is disingenuous, because the implication is that the numbers can be added to a meaningful total.

But A percentage of a percentage of a percentage is not real information.

For example... saying a certain activity raises your risk of throat cancer by 50% hides the overarching fact that your baseline risk for throat cancer might be 4 in 1,000. meaning your risk has actually risen to 6 in 1,000.... kind of a different impact.

In the U.S. I pay a theoretical 34% on my income to the feds... and 8% to the state...
but that does not mean that I lose 42% of my actual gross income.

Firstly, what qualifies as taxable income is reduced considerably by by business expenses... while all of those are money I spent... and most of them are money I spent making money... that does not change the fact that, for example, using a third of my home for my business factually makes one third of all my home expenses deductible from my taxable income.
I would be spending that money, anyway... but the business deductions mean that I offset my tax rate by an amount from which I derive direct benefit.

Additionally... the 8% I pay to the state is deductible from my federal income tax... further reducing the real percentage I pay.

Add in home interest deductions, and other costs, and that 36% tax rate is actually only applied to a portion of my real income.

Percentages of percentages are not real information.

This is why ALL GOP schemes to "lower" middle class taxes and "reduce loopholes and deductions" actually end up taking MORE real cash out of the pockets of the middle class... it is a tax hike, masquerading as a tax cut. )


However... add up all the taxation that is levied...and civilization costs something.
 

dandelion

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I pay around 25% tax on business profits, employee tax of 11% and then pay 45% on what I pay myself and at least 20% purchase tax on everything I spend up to 70% on fuel.

So, how come I am debt free and my government owes at least three times what they have taken from us?

Am I doing it wrong?
No,

I'm not going to quibble about the numbers because that wasnt your point, but having some experience of self employment myself, i understand that the multiplicity of allowances are there to be made best use of. So I won't speculate on how much you must be earning so that even after all this your real tax rate is 45%. A number of millionaires have complained that they only get billed 10% or so overall.

The news today had some items on how the treasury was consulting with people who pay high taxes to ask them how they would like their allowances arranged when the government revises the law.

The idea of taxation is that all the money goes to the government, slice by slice as it changes hands. Where it goes wrong is hopefully not you, but when someone spends it on goods or services from abroad and the money escapes entirely from the british economy.

The golden rule was repeatedly expounded by Gordon Brown. Over the economic cycle, government income and expenditure must balance. Where he went wrong was to believe the statistics presented to him on how the economy was doing. Where the statisticians went wrong....they believed the bankers.
 

Jason

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... Gordon Brown... went wrong was to believe the statistics presented to him on how the economy was doing. Where the statisticians went wrong....they believed the bankers.

This is priceless! It is a responsibility of the Chancellor to ensure that the economic data he is using is correct. In a sense Brown fed himself false figures and believed them.

Yes we all know the bankers got up to wrong things, but the Chancellor is one of the best place individuals to see what is right and wrong. Indeed he's the one who should have reigned in he bankers.
 

crushinonted

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I'm guessing you don't have a ton of dependents, some on disability, aging parents to take care of, medical bills for all those dependents, you don't pay for your general defense, or give money to plenty of other "countries". It's a false equivalency to try to equate your finances to that of one of the top 10 nations in the world.
 
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^ No he wouldn't - he'd raise him up as an example of what you SHOULD be doing. :)
 

dandelion

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This is priceless!
Well worth the taxes, then.

It is a responsibility of the Chancellor to ensure that the economic data he is using is correct. In a sense Brown fed himself false figures and believed them.
I doubt it says anything of the sort in the job desciption. Are you saying that Brown should have ignored the advice coming from all the financial professionals and a whole fleet of academics? Certainly ignored the advice of the departing conservative administration? The whole background set of assumptions of the world financial industry were wrong, still are. We are now in a situation where the background information wall has become much more pessimistic about the economy, yet Osborn has assiduously ignored this and persisted in optimistic assumptions about income. You would think he might have learnt from Brown's experience? Be doing something about banks?
 
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798686

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Well worth the taxes, then.

I doubt it says anything of the sort in the job desciption. Are you saying that Brown should have ignored the advice coming from all the financial professionals and a whole fleet of academics? Certainly ignored the advice of the departing conservative administration? The whole background set of assumptions of the world financial industry were wrong, still are. We are now in a situation where the background information wall has become much more pessimistic about the economy, yet Osborn has assiduously ignored this and persisted in optimistic assumptions about income. You would think he might have learnt from Brown's experience? Be doing something about banks?
He broke his own golden rule, tbh - and also forgot that those who have the gold, make the rules. :redface:

After 2001, until when he stuck to Conservative spending plans, he went berserk with the public purse, so there was no way that spending would equal income and investment over the economic cycle (unless he mistakenly thought he'd changed the length of the cycle by 'eliminating boom and bust').
 
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185248

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I pay around 25% tax on business profits, employee tax of 11% and then pay 45% on what I pay myself and at least 20% purchase tax on everything I spend up to 70% on fuel.

So, how come I am debt free and my government owes at least three times what they have taken from us?

Am I doing it wrong?

Because the products you spend your money on are probably produced overseas, and the only income the country has is through taxation. Yes the country may produce vogue or specialty items. But it does nothing for true gainful employment or a countries income or soul.
 
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554279

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I pay around 25% tax on business profits, employee tax of 11% and then pay 45% on what I pay myself and at least 20% purchase tax on everything I spend up to 70% on fuel.

So, how come I am debt free and my government owes at least three times what they have taken from us?

Am I doing it wrong?

I don't know what the countries are doing right or wrong, but let me know if you have any openings.
 
5

554279

Guest
Listing independent percentages is disingenuous, because the implication is that the numbers can be added to a meaningful total.

But A percentage of a percentage of a percentage is not real information.

For example... saying a certain activity raises your risk of throat cancer by 50% hides the overarching fact that your baseline risk for throat cancer might be 4 in 1,000. meaning your risk has actually risen to 6 in 1,000.... kind of a different impact.

In the U.S. I pay a theoretical 34% on my income to the feds... and 8% to the state...
but that does not mean that I lose 42% of my actual gross income.

Firstly, what qualifies as taxable income is reduced considerably by by business expenses... while all of those are money I spent... and most of them are money I spent making money... that does not change the fact that, for example, using a third of my home for my business factually makes one third of all my home expenses deductible from my taxable income.
I would be spending that money, anyway... but the business deductions mean that I offset my tax rate by an amount from which I derive direct benefit.

Additionally... the 8% I pay to the state is deductible from my federal income tax... further reducing the real percentage I pay.

Add in home interest deductions, and other costs, and that 36% tax rate is actually only applied to a portion of my real income.

Percentages of percentages are not real information.

This is why ALL GOP schemes to "lower" middle class taxes and "reduce loopholes and deductions" actually end up taking MORE real cash out of the pockets of the middle class... it is a tax hike, masquerading as a tax cut. )


However... add up all the taxation that is levied...and civilization costs something.

I like your posts, but somehow you always bust my bubble of short lived happiness.
 
1

185248

Guest
Listing independent percentages is disingenuous, because the implication is that the numbers can be added to a meaningful total.

But A percentage of a percentage of a percentage is not real information.

For example... saying a certain activity raises your risk of throat cancer by 50% hides the overarching fact that your baseline risk for throat cancer might be 4 in 1,000. meaning your risk has actually risen to 6 in 1,000.... kind of a different impact.

In the U.S. I pay a theoretical 34% on my income to the feds... and 8% to the state...
but that does not mean that I lose 42% of my actual gross income.

Firstly, what qualifies as taxable income is reduced considerably by by business expenses... while all of those are money I spent... and most of them are money I spent making money... that does not change the fact that, for example, using a third of my home for my business factually makes one third of all my home expenses deductible from my taxable income.
I would be spending that money, anyway... but the business deductions mean that I offset my tax rate by an amount from which I derive direct benefit.

Additionally... the 8% I pay to the state is deductible from my federal income tax... further reducing the real percentage I pay.

Add in home interest deductions, and other costs, and that 36% tax rate is actually only applied to a portion of my real income.

Percentages of percentages are not real information.

This is why ALL GOP schemes to "lower" middle class taxes and "reduce loopholes and deductions" actually end up taking MORE real cash out of the pockets of the middle class... it is a tax hike, masquerading as a tax cut. )


However... add up all the taxation that is levied...and civilization costs something.

It's like the mining jobs here. Yes, you earn income from a company that sells most if not all of it's product overseas. You as a consumer, buy products in your own country that are manufactured overseas. The only way for a government to make money is through meagre royalties and taxes, for the raw product mined, and, gst, or vat taxes the consumer pays on the imported products sold using those raw materials exported. While it is still cheaper for a country to export it's raw material elswhere to be manufactured into goods and shipped back to the raw materials country of origin. The imbalance of trade will always exist.

Trace the beginning of discount warehouses and shopping back, you will come to a point where it all began with offshore manufacturing and western society having less to spend on homemade goods and when the difficulties started with where the money is coming from and going too.

If those countries of manufacture come across difficult economic times, their products will become cheaper. Which will make it even more difficult for local manufacturers and producers to compete. This is why some of those overseas manufacturers are buying up productive land and companies.
 
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