I hope that there are a growing number of people of my generation [ early/mid 60's ] who realise that we are being totally unfair to a generation of younger people and support changes to the current system. I have a certain amount invested and the way it is taxed is madness, being much less than my rate of income tax. Much more should be made of this avenue for raising money.
How can you lie there and think of England When you don't even know who's in the team
Unfortunately they don't from my experience @punkdoc. My own father, who ran a small building company in the eighties can't understand that the wage/ cost of living equation is totally out of balance! I have to remind him that Harry Enfield created the loadsa money character about people just like him. He believes anyone that works hard 9-5 should have everything he does and if they don't its something they have done wrong not that he lived in a more prosperous era. He's not a very clever man so won't listen and now his new wife looks after his money the trusting fool 🙄 The overall impression I'm left with by the whole generation is "it must be your fault you not well off " 🤣 I've given up attempting to enlighten folk. The way I get through is by having non material goals, happiness, love, health, kindness, and funnily enough I'm happy. But as a low income self employed person I don't think the burden of tax is fairly distributed!!
As people who have been PAYE all our working lives we have always paid our due. Like Punkdoc I agree that if it's needed I would pay bit more BUT, I want everyone to pay up accordingly. So many people especially those in 'business ' that duck dive dodge, claim expenses etc. Close the loopholes, stop these offshore tax havens. My parents always said, they were too well off not to be able to claim anything, but not well off enough for it not to matter. The system is unfair but I admit I don't know the answer.
How do you change it though? As a one man band business at one point who
was paid via dividends, I had an accountant to sort out the company
accounts. Was that wrong? But it gave me vastly more leeway on tax
issues than someone on PAYE. I wasn't rich - but obviously had enough to use an accountant.
I never quite
understood why more wasn't under PAYE - HMRC gets data feeds from all
the financial institutions about who's got what money where - why can
all that all be lumped in with employment salary and then taxed under
that mechanism?
It just seems that there are so many different
mechanisms to intentionally allow people with more money to 'secrete'
it away from the tax man. And the rules seem to be made by people who
use those rules to secure their money, so don't want them changed.
Be
interesting to know how many people in the UK use accountants / tax
experts and how much money they have. Maybe accountancy services should
be taxed!? I wonder how many MPs use accountancy services?
We
have a thing in this country that we are a fair democracy, but the
problem is and has always been that rules are made by those with the
power to enforce the rules, even within a democracy - so the rules
always tend to lean towards safeguarding that power. And with power
comes money - so it's one and the same. Money protects money, power
protects power. And this isn't having a dig at the rich - as the poor,
as (if) they accrue more wealth do the same. You see it now - the
working class are no longer working class as they have big TVs and
fridges (and since Maggie, a mortgage) - but they don't see that
comparatively, the wealth gap just gets bigger and bigger.
@WonkyWomble I really dislike the '..I created the company, I built it with my own hard work, sweat and tears...' that ignores all those people who have worked just as hard and have little or nothing. Life seems to be just a case of being in the right place at the right time - it's luck. You can work harder than the best and still have nothing. I had a very good friend who had a kitchen manufacturing business. Worked seriously hard to build the company up, but it was a struggle. One day, he'd arranged to go to see a buyer at one of the big house building companies as he'd got a new laminated/foil type door that he wanted to push. He turned up at the company, signed in, and got in the lift to go see the buyer. At the next floor a man got in and asked who he was - he quickly explained why he was there and the man asked to see the door. Impressed by what he saw, 'lift man' told my friend to say to the buyer that he'd seen the door and wanted to use my friend's kitchens as a trial in their show homes. Turned out he was the MD. What chance? My friends company got the boost. But he was only too aware without that fluke, he could still have been working out of a converted garage.
Conversely, after then building the business to a multi-million pound company, there was a period in the 80s/90s from what I recall, where there was a tightening of the financial belt in general I think caused by Barclays pulling out of S. Africa and a stock market crash. He had recently bought a new factory and kitted it out using a loan from his bank. Full order books, financially sound. But the bank reviewed the loan. Turned out his accountants had omitted to take depreciation on the kit into the books and the bank called the loan in. A few months earlier he'd been offered millions for the plot itself, as a local car dealer franchise wanted the plot as it had access to roads at front and back. But he was forced into bankruptcy. Kipling's IF comes to mind.
@steveTu so much is in the hands of fate and right time right place! These variables are something that is impossible to measure but should still be acknowledged 👍
I've just come to accept that that is the way it is. There is no decent opposition party, Keir Is a spineless leader that reacts instead of acts. As no one is going to sort out greed I've decided my vote is best spent trying to save the planet so I'll be voting green in all elections from now on.
In a way, being on a low income is very sustainable. We get all furniture second hand in very good condition when other folk decide their fridge is out of fashion. It doesn't go to landfill and isn't driven across the country. I don't like fashion so I buy clothes from charity shops, better chance of getting a good quality unique piece that hasn't been made in a sweat shop by slave labour then transported across the globe by tax dodging companies. This way of life leaves me with a clearer conscience than being a everyday consumer.
I dont begrudge anybody that has had the opportunity to give themselves a good quality of life as long as it isn't at the expense of those less fortunate 😀
I'm weird Wonky - I think everything is cause and effect anyway (as I haven't seen anything that science has said is magic- and all science does is document and catalogue cause and effect) - what happens was always going to happen. BUT because we have this overriding feeling of free will and self determination, it becomes impossible to just see everything as fate. I did it. I decided to. It was me. No, it wasn't.
But how do you fund anything for society - like social care - when you try to spread the burden so that those most capable of carrying that burden because they have the greatest wealth, do - if that wealth can be hidden or diminished by financial tricks that aren't available to those who don't have enough wealth to do the same? Someone who has three jobs, trying to make ends meet, gets £x - and HMRC is aware as those earnings are declared and you can be prosecuted for fiddling your tax, so they have no option but to pay tax on £x. Someone like T. Blair then comes along, earns £12m within his companies and pays £350k tax because he employs someone to sort his tax out (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blair-s-company-paid-just-ps315-000-tax-income-more-ps12m-6287001.html). Tony's not alone. He's one of thousands of millionaires in this country alone. If T had paid £2m tax and if the rest did the same - what sort of figure would we be talking £2b..£4b pa? But I had an accountant who sorted my stuff out - so that's hypocritical of me eh? How can this ever be right? Would we even be having this thread if everyone - everyone - actually paid tax in the same way? Boris then taxing across the board to fund social care - where again the PAYE folk have no option but to pay, just continues down the same road doesn't it? Don't get me started on tax paid by big corporations.
The working class don't want to hear it anymore though - they're not working class because they 'have'. It's quite a simple thing to do isn't it? - give the poor more, but give the wealthier even more. The poor then don't feel so bad because they 'have' and the money filters back up the chain to the rich anyway. I sound like a raving socialist. I'm not - I just hate injustice - especially when it's hidden in plain sight.
If you take your example though @steveTu of your kitchen company man, he employed, I imagine, dozens of people on good wages doing skilled work. All of those people made a lot less than him, no doubt, and were all part of making the business successful, so one could argue it's unfair that he made more. But then, as the outcome shows, he was the one taking the risks at every stage, start up, growing, expanding and at any stage it can all go wrong and he could lose everything. So why would anyone do that, and start businesses and create wealth for working people, if there wasn't a prospect of better reward than you get for working for someone else?
No question that it's all out of whack and the people who make most are not the ones running ordinary businesses, but changes to the system which might make the people who are withdraw from the risky side of life are not, in the end, helpful overall. So how to penalise the chancers without dis-incentivising the real entrepreneurs? Even in small businesses, as the pandemic has shown, the business owners are flying without a safety net - the state will not step in to help them when it all goes to s**t, so there has to be some sort of compensation, even if it's just that you can keep a little more of your income so you can try to put money into a pension (which no employer will match).
The tax rules for the small and micro businesses like your own (like the ones I work for and like Wonky's, probably) have changed a lot in the last few years, and there's far less difference now between self employed and PAYE than there was until quite recently. But you still have to have an accountant if you don't want to alarm HMRC - they prefer it if you do. So it's not wrong to do that, it's 'built in' to the system.
The baby-boomers are a very lucky generation. Most of them are not conscious of their good fortune. They are generally the pensioners now and their numbers are straining the system, which burden falls on the far smaller cohorts that came after (as compared to when they were working age and the pensioners were the far smaller generations who fought in the wars). There's not really any way to address it. We just have to try to find a way through
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
If you take your example though @steveTu of your kitchen company man, he employed, I imagine, dozens of people on good wages doing skilled work. All of those people made a lot less than him, no doubt, and were all part of making the business successful, so one could argue it's unfair that he made more. But then, as the outcome shows, he was the one taking the risks at every stage, start up, growing, expanding and at any stage it can all go wrong and he could lose everything. So why would anyone do that, and start businesses and create wealth for working people, if there wasn't a prospect of better reward than you get for working for someone else?
No question that it's all out of whack and the people who make most are not the ones running ordinary businesses, but changes to the system which might make the people who are withdraw from the risky side of life are not, in the end, helpful overall. So how to penalise the chancers without dis-incentivising the real entrepreneurs? Even in small businesses, as the pandemic has shown, the business owners are flying without a safety net - the state will not step in to help them when it all goes to s**t, so there has to be some sort of compensation, even if it's just that you can keep a little more of your income so you can try to put money into a pension (which no employer will match).
The tax rules for the small and micro businesses like your own (like the ones I work for and like Wonky's, probably) have changed a lot in the last few years, and there's far less difference now between self employed and PAYE than there was until quite recently. But you still have to have an accountant if you don't want to alarm HMRC - they prefer it if you do. So it's not wrong to do that, it's 'built in' to the system.
The baby-boomers are a very lucky generation. Most of them are not conscious of their good fortune. They are generally the pensioners now and their numbers are straining the system, which burden falls on the far smaller cohorts that came after (as compared to when they were working age and the pensioners were the far smaller generations who fought in the wars). There's not really any way to address it. We just have to try to find a way through
"the state will not step in to help them when it all goes to s**t"
That's exactly what the State has just done for the last two years. The capitalist ethos of let them go to the wall if a business cant stand on its on merits has just been thrown out with the biggest bail out of private business by the State ever.
Socialism is fine when it suits your purposes , but for the rest of the time your just a dirty communist.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
Posts
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I have a certain amount invested and the way it is taxed is madness, being much less than my rate of income tax. Much more should be made of this avenue for raising money.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
I have to remind him that Harry Enfield created the loadsa money character about people just like him. He believes anyone that works hard 9-5 should have everything he does and if they don't its something they have done wrong not that he lived in a more prosperous era.
He's not a very clever man so won't listen and now his new wife looks after his money the trusting fool 🙄
The overall impression I'm left with by the whole generation is "it must be your fault you not well off " 🤣 I've given up attempting to enlighten folk.
The way I get through is by having non material goals, happiness, love, health, kindness, and funnily enough I'm happy.
But as a low income self employed person I don't think the burden of tax is fairly distributed!!
I really dislike the '..I created the company, I built it with my own hard work, sweat and tears...' that ignores all those people who have worked just as hard and have little or nothing. Life seems to be just a case of being in the right place at the right time - it's luck. You can work harder than the best and still have nothing. I had a very good friend who had a kitchen manufacturing business. Worked seriously hard to build the company up, but it was a struggle. One day, he'd arranged to go to see a buyer at one of the big house building companies as he'd got a new laminated/foil type door that he wanted to push. He turned up at the company, signed in, and got in the lift to go see the buyer. At the next floor a man got in and asked who he was - he quickly explained why he was there and the man asked to see the door. Impressed by what he saw, 'lift man' told my friend to say to the buyer that he'd seen the door and wanted to use my friend's kitchens as a trial in their show homes. Turned out he was the MD. What chance? My friends company got the boost. But he was only too aware without that fluke, he could still have been working out of a converted garage.
I've just come to accept that that is the way it is. There is no decent opposition party, Keir Is a spineless leader that reacts instead of acts. As no one is going to sort out greed I've decided my vote is best spent trying to save the planet so I'll be voting green in all elections from now on.
In a way, being on a low income is very sustainable. We get all furniture second hand in very good condition when other folk decide their fridge is out of fashion. It doesn't go to landfill and isn't driven across the country.
I don't like fashion so I buy clothes from charity shops, better chance of getting a good quality unique piece that hasn't been made in a sweat shop by slave labour then transported across the globe by tax dodging companies. This way of life leaves me with a clearer conscience than being a everyday consumer.
I dont begrudge anybody that has had the opportunity to give themselves a good quality of life as long as it isn't at the expense of those less fortunate 😀
The working class don't want to hear it anymore though - they're not working class because they 'have'. It's quite a simple thing to do isn't it? - give the poor more, but give the wealthier even more. The poor then don't feel so bad because they 'have' and the money filters back up the chain to the rich anyway. I sound like a raving socialist. I'm not - I just hate injustice - especially when it's hidden in plain sight.
No question that it's all out of whack and the people who make most are not the ones running ordinary businesses, but changes to the system which might make the people who are withdraw from the risky side of life are not, in the end, helpful overall. So how to penalise the chancers without dis-incentivising the real entrepreneurs? Even in small businesses, as the pandemic has shown, the business owners are flying without a safety net - the state will not step in to help them when it all goes to s**t, so there has to be some sort of compensation, even if it's just that you can keep a little more of your income so you can try to put money into a pension (which no employer will match).
The tax rules for the small and micro businesses like your own (like the ones I work for and like Wonky's, probably) have changed a lot in the last few years, and there's far less difference now between self employed and PAYE than there was until quite recently. But you still have to have an accountant if you don't want to alarm HMRC - they prefer it if you do. So it's not wrong to do that, it's 'built in' to the system.
The baby-boomers are a very lucky generation. Most of them are not conscious of their good fortune. They are generally the pensioners now and their numbers are straining the system, which burden falls on the far smaller cohorts that came after (as compared to when they were working age and the pensioners were the far smaller generations who fought in the wars). There's not really any way to address it. We just have to try to find a way through
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
"the state will not step in to help them when it all goes to s**t"
That's exactly what the State has just done for the last two years. The capitalist ethos of let them go to the wall if a business cant stand on its on merits has just been thrown out with the biggest bail out of private business by the State ever.
Socialism is fine when it suits your purposes , but for the rest of the time your just a dirty communist.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'