Naming names...

Some people talk about this anonymous monster "the tax man" as if avoiding giving him any of your "hard earned" is a virtue, the inference being this mythical "tax man" pockets it for himself.

The reality is that taxes fund the public sector, including the NHS and in my view too many people on relatively low incomes pay what is legally due while much wealthier people seem to think they can put a cap on what they pay by avoidance schemes.

I'm one of the apparent minority in racing who thought Lester Piggott deserved his custodial sentence and my views have not changed since.
 
Aye, it’s these damn politicians who will keep making exceptions and one man’s ( oops, sorry - person’s) legitimate exception is another man’s loophole to crawl through.
 
avoidance = legal and what anyone with half brain does
evasion = illegal

'fair share' nonsense I hear touted is an entirely subjective term
 
"Fair share" is very subjective, agreed.

Typical social media debate: "He's paid £160 million tax in his life - he's paid his fair share." "He's worth £13 BILLION, mate, £160 million lifetime tax to him if like the average earner paying a fiver!"

And so it goes on.
 
I disagree - avoidance may be legal, but it thwarts the intentions underlying the law and is therefore morally offensive. Not that morals count for much nowadays. I’m no goody two shoes and take advantage along with most, but I know that the tax breaks i get are not really meant for me
 
This is very illuminating


Especially the part which shows total share of income vs total share of tax paid.

Eg
The top 10% have 33.7% total share of income but pay 60.3% of the tax, you will find very very different views on how 'fair' that is

The very top 1% are the most mobile and can easily fk off if the economic climate becomes too 'unfavourable' but as they pay 29% of the income tax, it wouldn't take many leaving to make a huge hole in the tax take, which would mean the rest pay a lot more or much less is spent on certain things
 
Last edited:
I think if you made the profit in this country you should pay the correct tax to this country and those who leave to avoid tax should be harshly penalised - seizure of assets, losing British citizenship etc.

I'd also abolish all tax avoidance schemes and leave literally everyone with no option other than to pay the tax the law says they should.

The bottom line here is the wealthiest are very happy to profit off the poorest in society, but don't want to contribute in tax what the law says they should to help give these people a tolerable subsistence quality of life.

Many in 2024 would label this "communist," "Marxist," or "Socialist."

Actually, it's none of those things - the Wilson governments in the 60s and 70s were considered moderate in their day but Margaret Thatcher's legacy is shifting the epicentre of British politics so far to the right Wilson would be called a "commie" by many nowadays.

The wealthy would simply be a bit less wealthy and the poor would simply be a bit less poor, and more of them would get the NHS care they need to stay alive a bit longer.

It really is as simple as that, but Starmer hasn't got the balls to tell it like it is and properly enforce these things any more than Blair did.
 
That's purely your view of things and you are are entitled your opinion. Personally I think the top 10% pay too higher proportion of the tax take, which again is my view.

Personally I see the current 'epicentre' as a lot more left wing than you do, but again all subjective opinion.

You have used some vague emotive terms like "the wealthy" & "the poor" how would you define those?

Also 'Correct tax' is another, if they have they paid tax required within the legal rules then it is correct, they are not obliged to pay the max tax they could, there was a major legal case on that a long time ago which the hmrc lost

Again avoidance is not the same as evasion. Whether you like avoidance doesn't matter , it's what legal and what isn't that does.

Something I would change is that if a company makes sales in the UK then the company should pay UK tax on those sales and not divert the money to a name plate on a door type company in Ireland like such as Amazon do where the tax rates are much lower.
Each business whether it's Fred's corner shop or Amazon or Facebook each should be subject to the same rules or be blocked from doing business here.
 
Last edited:
Ian_Davies said:
I think if you made the profit in this country you should pay the correct tax to this country and those who leave to avoid tax should be harshly penalised - seizure of assets, losing British citizenship etc.

I'd also abolish all tax avoidance schemes and leave literally everyone with no option other than to pay the tax the law says they should.

The bottom line here is the wealthiest are very happy to profit off the poorest in society, but don't want to contribute in tax what the law says they should to help give these people a tolerable subsistence quality of life.

Many in 2024 would label this "communist," "Marxist," or "Socialist."

Actually, it's none of those things - the Wilson governments in the 60s and 70s were considered moderate in their day but Margaret Thatcher's legacy is shifting the epicentre of British politics so far to the right Wilson would be called a "commie" by many nowadays.

The wealthy would simply be a bit less wealthy and the poor would simply be a bit less poor, and more of them would get the NHS care they need to stay alive a bit longer.

It really is as simple as that, but Starmer hasn't got the balls to tell it like it is and properly enforce these things any more than Blair did.
Click to expand...
Worth remembering that the Wilson government manifesto included the phrase "wealth redistribution", which definitely sounds socialist at the least.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.
 
Ian_Davies said:
Some people talk about this anonymous monster "the tax man" as if avoiding giving him any of your "hard earned" is a virtue, the inference being this mythical "tax man" pockets it for himself.

The reality is that taxes fund the public sector, including the NHS and in my view too many people on relatively low incomes pay what is legally due while much wealthier people seem to think they can put a cap on what they pay by avoidance schemes.

I'm one of the apparent minority in racing who thought Lester Piggott deserved his custodial sentence and my views have not changed since.
Click to expand...
And many will not want to pay any tax, while complaining in their next sentence that their public services are crumbling apart. As if there's no correlation.

Public services may be crap now, but if people pay less or no tax they'll get even worse. That's for sure.

It's this line about people wanting American rates of taxation, but Scandanavian levels of public health care. It's a good observation.
 
Marb said:
And many will not want to pay any tax, while complaining in their next sentence that their public services are crumbling apart. As if there's no correlation.

Public services may be crap now, but if people pay less or no tax they'll get even worse. That's for sure.

It's this line about people wanting American rates if taxation, but Scandanavian levels of public health care. It's a good observation.
Click to expand...

Indeed, many want A grade services but somehow think someone else should be paying for it
 
pawras said:
That's purely your view of things and you are are entitled your opinion. Personally I think the top 10% pay too higher proportion of the tax take, which again is my view.

Personally I see the current 'epicentre' as a lot more left wing than you do, but again all subjective opinion.

You have used some vague emotive terms like "the wealthy" & "the poor" how would you define those?

Also 'Correct tax' is another, if they have they paid tax required within the legal rules then it is correct, they are not obliged to pay the max tax they could, there was a major legal case on that a long time ago which the hmrc lost

Again avoidance is not the same as evasion. Whether you like avoidance doesn't matter , it's what legal and what isn't that does.

Something I would change is that if a company makes sales in the UK then the company should pay UK tax on those sales and not divert the money to a name plate on a door type company in Ireland like such as Amazon do where the tax rates are much lower.
Each business whether it's Fred's corner shop or Amazon or Facebook each should be subject to the same rules or be blocked from doing business here.
Click to expand...
All fair comment and I've liked it not because I agree with your view but because I respect the civilised manner in which you have articulated your counter position to mine - it's forum debate at its best.
 
I mentioned not all that long ago a mate of mine at uni whose family owned a string of newsagent shops and they lived in a big house in a very posh suburb of Glasgow. They EACH drove a Mercedes, including my mate when he came to uni.

He's a lovely bloke and his folks are lovely people but the family accountant filled in the uni grant form for them and every one of them got the maximum grant.

Most of the guys who went to the same school as my mate (an elite fee-paying one) were the same as him. Driving into uni in Mercs, Jags, Audis, etc and the guys were on maximum grants.

Mrs O's dad was a welder, the sole earner in the family and filled in the form as honestly as he could. She never got a penny in grants.

Where's the 'social justice' in that?

And that's what happens right throughout our society. The wealthy know how to work the system to their advantage and the poor are the ones that subsidise them.
 
Desert Orchid said:
I mentioned not all that long ago a mate of mine at uni whose family owned a string of newsagent shops and they lived in a big house in a very posh suburb of Glasgow. They EACH drove a Mercedes, including my mate when he came to uni.

He's a lovely bloke and his folks are lovely people but the family accountant filled in the uni grant form for them and every one of them got the maximum grant.

Most of the guys who went to the same school as my mate (an elite fee-paying one) were the same as him. Driving into uni in Mercs, Jags, Audis, etc and the guys were on maximum grants.

Mrs O's dad was a welder, the sole earner in the family and filled in the form as honestly as he could. She never got a penny in grants.

Where's the 'social justice' in that?

And that's what happens right throughout our society. The wealthy know how to work the system to their advantage and the poor are the ones that subsidise them.
Click to expand...
Same thing happened when my daughter went to uni because her two best friends there ( again, lovely girls from nice families) had the help of the family accountant.
 
We live in an interesting era -

1979-1997 mainly Margaret Thatcher then, to a lesser extent, John Major, shifted the political epicentre more and more to the right.

1997-2010 Tony Blair then Gordon Brown didn't reverse this, they merely arrested the rightward shift

2010-2024 The shift even further to the right resumed

The result?

I find political labels conferred on individuals in 2024 astonishing and laughable.

Rishi Sunak, clearly a Thatcherite, labelled a Social Democrat - he was not as far right as Liz Truss was, but he was no moderate One Nation Tory either.

Keir Starmer, who IS a Social Democrat, labelled a "Marxist," "Communist," "Socialist."

A Socialist he isn't and he and his Social Democrat Cabinet are already seeing the limits of Social Democracy.

Take NI for employers - he wanted businesses to absorb it, reduce profits, pay shareholders less, maybe even stop paying management quite so much.

But business, after 14 years of Tory government, now feel entitled to operate the way they did under all those years of the Conservatives, so pay freezes, lay offs and higher prices for consumers are their devices to protect profits and executive bonuses.

You only stop that with real threats to take huge swathes of the private sector into public ownership and even do it in some areas to set an example.

But that's Socialism, not Social Democracy, and the reality is Britain doesn't want a genuine Socialist government (cite Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn's defeats) and only an "I Can't Believe It's Not Tory" Labour can get in and stay in - Blair knew this, Starmer knows this.

Plus the electorate are mostly eternal children in terms of maturity - they can't face the truth, never could, they want lower taxes yet better public services, as others have rightly stated.

And it's also a fact that while the wealthy could be taxed a lot more effectively than they are, constant media focus on them makes it easy to forget there are actually relatively few of them, ditto big corporations.

The best way to raise meaningful tax revenue has always been to raise the basic rate because millions upon millions pay it.

But Starmer can't say that because few want to hear it.

If politicians lie, it's often because most of the public can't cope with the truth.
 
Last edited:
Again we have the vague emotive terms of ‘the wealthy’ and ‘the poor’

How would you define them, those in the upper and lower quartiles of the earnings? These are much bandied about terms and I’d like some clarity. But if we start with %s like that then you end up with relative poor to the top end rather than actual poor.

So what are we saying here re accountants and self-employed, that the tax rules should be such that everyone should be paying employee style paye and nic whether they are running their own business or not, or that no one should be able to get professional advice/help that the lowest common denominator can or is willing to pay for?

I’ve paid my accountant thousands over the years but they have saved me many more thousands to ensure MY money stays in my pocket and isn’t handed to the government to subsidise someone else.
Another time I had a planning application to do and as the council charges you every time they bounce it back at you over something they’re not happy with etc, I paid a planning application consultant to do it for me and it went through first time. Not everyone can or would pay for that, well that’s tough sh&t for them.
 
pawras said:
So what are we saying here re accountants and self-employed, that the tax rules should be such that everyone should be paying employee style paye and nic whether they are running their own business or not, or that no one should be able to get professional advice/help that the lowest common denominator can or is willing to pay for?
Click to expand...
Tbh I think that, while you understandably disagree with it, you nailed what some think.

Everyone should pay tax on the same terms and the tax breaks accountants use for clients shouldn't even exist.

But I doubt Starmer will ever seriously address this any more than Blair and Brown did in 13 years in office - there might be baby steps in that direction, though.

To think a Labour government could get in and business can take it for granted they can operate the exact same way they did under the Tories in an unchanged legislative environment would be naive.

The clash with the farmers over inheritance tax is just the start - interesting times ahead.
 
Last edited:
Ian_Davies said:
We live in an interesting era -

1979-1997 mainly Margaret Thatcher then, to a lesser extent, John Major, shifted the political epicentre more and more to the right.

1997-2010 Tony Blair then Gordon Brown didn't reverse this, they merely arrested the rightward shift

2010-2024 The shift even further to the right resumed

The result?

I find political labels conferred on individuals in 2024 astonishing and laughable.

Rishi Sunak, clearly a Thatcherite, labelled a Social Democrat - he was not as far right as Liz Truss was, but he was no moderate One Nation Tory either.

Keir Starmer, who IS a Social Democrat, labelled a "Marxist," "Communist," "Socialist."

A Socialist he isn't and he and his Social Democrat Cabinet are already seeing the limits of Social Democracy.

Take NI for employers - he wanted businesses to absorb it, reduce profits, pay shareholders less, maybe even stop paying management quite so much.

But business, after 14 years of Tory government, now feel entitled to operate the way they did under all those years of the Conservatives, so pay freezes, lay offs and higher prices for consumers are their devices to protect profits and executive bonuses.

You only stop that with real threats to take huge swathes of the private sector into public ownership and even do it in some areas to set an example.

But that's Socialism, not Social Democracy, and the reality is Britain doesn't want a genuine Socialist government (cite Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn's defeats) and only an "I Can't Believe It's Not Tory" Labour can get in and stay in - Blair knew this, Starmer knows this.

Plus the electorate are mostly eternal children in terms of maturity - they can't face the truth, never could, they want lower taxes yet better public services, as others have rightly stated.

And it's also a fact that while the wealthy could be taxed a lot more effectively than they are, constant media focus on them makes it easy to forget there are actually relatively few of them, ditto big corporations.

The best way to raise meaningful tax revenue has always been to raise the basic rate because millions upon millions pay it.

But Starmer couldn't say that because few want to hear it.

If politicians lie, it's often because most of the public can't cope with the truth.
Click to expand...
They are purely your views on the epicentre re right and left etc.

But I agree , if anyone thought businesses were just going to suck up the tax increases and not pass that on to consumers and employees to at least some degree, they were living in la la land.

And yes there are relatively few of the 'wealthy' which I personally view as the top 1% seen as everyone else just wants to use vague emotive terms. But as I stated previously as they pay 29% of the income tax you'll soon end up with a big hole in your tax take if they leave which many already are.

I do agree that the majority don't want to face the truth nor will the politicians tell them it for fear of their own jobs, that the only way to raise significant tax revenue at the bottom line, instead of gaining in one hand and losing more in another, is to increase the base rate.
 
Ian_Davies said:
Tbh I think that, while you understandably disagree with it, you nailed what many think.

Everyone should pay tax on the same terms and the tax breaks accountants use for clients shouldn't even exist.

But I doubt Starmer will ever seriously address this any more than Blair and Brown did in 13 years in office - there might be baby steps in that direction, though.

To think a Labour government could get in and business can take it for granted they can operate the exact same way they did under the Tories in an unchanged legislative environment would be naive.

The clash with the farmers over inheritance tax is just the start - interesting times ahead.
Click to expand...
Obviously I vehemently disagree with the idea that those running a business/self employed should be on the same terms re tax as your normal paye/nic employee, and I'd bet pretty much anyone that does run a business/self employed will be of the same view as me. As they represent such a huge proportion of the actual wealth creation in the country then I think care should be taken re that direction and tax
 
I'm sure they do, but business owners are in a minority, most people are employees of business and many think there is so reason why business owners (ultimately out for profit, not to serve society) should have special tax status.

Labour's victory in the election does suggest many are ready for a government that gets at least a bit tougher with business - we shall see what develops.
 
Ian_Davies said:
I'm sure they do, but business owners are in a minority, most people are employees of business and many think there is so reason why business owners (ultimately out for profit, not to serve society) should have special tax status.

Labour's victory in the election does suggest many are ready for a government that gets at least a bit tougher with business - we shall see what develops.
Click to expand...
If those people actually had a taste of running a business and being self employed and the very different mindset it requires I'm sure many might have a different view.

Given the vote share starmer got I'd say that point is a bit debatable, but I agree we will see what happens and there is likely to be interesting times/turmoil ahead
 
When people say the rich should pay more, it begs the question posed by pawras “who are the rich”. In my experience the answer generally is “people who have more than I do”.

I think it’s easy to fall back on “it’s legal” when some clever accountant has exploited some loophole in the law that enables people to avoid the tax that the legislation intended they should pay. It might be legal, but it ain’t right.

And on the legal side, I am constantly bombarded by tradesmen who want “cash in hand” and turn tail if I ask for an invoice and payment by card or bank transfer. Even the barber in our village has a “cash only” sign in the window. Tell me that the self-employed pay as fair (as the legislation intended) a whack as the wage slaves and I’ll book you a slot in the Comedy Warehouse.
 
barjon said:
Even the barber in our village has a “cash only” sign in the window.
Click to expand...

That's probably because of the steep bank charges for card payments. The shop we take our ironing to (it's a long story why but there is a reason) asks for cash payment for ironing-only because of the bank charges. He explained it to me some time back. For, say, a tenner's worth of ironing the bank charge for a card payment works out in excess of 10% and he doesn't want to pass that on to the customer. I'd imagine a small business like a barber's would be something similar. (My OAP haircut in my local place is £8, recently raised from £7.)

In Spain I noticed even small businesses are happy to take card payment so I presume the charges over there aren't as excessive.
 
Back
Top