Personal tax guarantee

[shaunbhoy]

Labour is pledging

[SueEllen]

That depends entirely on your definition of "rich". If rich is defined as >80k annual income, that's around 5% of the electorate. The top 5% of earners pay around 50% of all income tax FFS! So, indeed, there are many of them and, like Sas, they're walking around with a massive sign that says "kick me". If you're going to define rich, you need to define it against wealth (preferably housing wealth, which is difficult to move around) not income, but the wealthy, and those with properly large incomes, can circumvent these measures to varying degrees. Ultimately, those with moderately large incomes always end-up with the greatest burden, proportionally, because they are "soakable" and they have something worth soaking.

It will be 2-3% of the electorate if that happens.

Lots of people will ensure their earnings don't go above that magic number if they stand to lose a lot until it is well over that figure. People use to do that with the higher tax brand when the 40% rate was worth something and it is also one reason why the 50% rate was abolished.

[meridian]

I'm not running for government though. If I was doing radio interviews on this stuff, I would have every fact researched and nailed down.

Besides, it seems to back up what I said....



That's where they got the 10,000 x 30,000 from. But that doesn't include everything I listed above. Throw 300m at the police service - and you won't get 10,000 plods out the other end,

You may not be running for government, but I'm sure you can use Google and provide at least a little bit of fact rather than conjecture?

You're using a starting salary of £30k and then basing your additional calculations from there. Starting salary is actually between £19,383 and £23,493, depending on location.

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/police-officer

[SueEllen]

You may not be running for government, but I'm sure you can use Google and provide at least a little bit of fact rather than conjecture?

You're using a starting salary of £30k and then basing your additional calculations from there. Starting salary is actually between £19,383 and £23,493, depending on location.

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/police-officer

If you are a politician the best thing is to use no figures and use slogans like "strong and stable".

[jamesbrown]

It will be 2-3% of the electorate if that happens.

Lots of people will ensure their earnings don't go above that magic number if they stand to lose a lot until it is well over that figure. People use to do that with the higher tax brand when the 40% rate was worth something and it is also one reason why the 50% rate was abolished.

Indeed. The pips will only accept so much squeezing but, in the scheme of things, they're the easiest pips to squeeze.

[centurian]

It will be 2-3% of the electorate if that happens.

Lots of people will ensure their earnings don't go above that magic number if they stand to lose a lot until it is well over that figure. People use to do that with the higher tax brand when the 40% rate was worth something and it is also one reason why the 50% rate was abolished.

WSS

What many don't realise - is that in order to earn > £75K - usually means making sacrifices - long hours - long commutes - stressful jobs.

Push up the tax rate too high - and some will opt to take a lower paid job closer to home which comes in below the threshold - especially when combined with the cheaper season tickets (paid out of post tax salary by most).

I am very surprised the 60% tax band between 100-122K has lasted this long, probably because of the stealthy nature of it.

Even so, I bet there is a spike of people in the £95-99K range.

I'd actually be very supportive of bringing in the 45% band at ~70K-80K - and restoring the full personal allowance to all earners.

[AtW]

I am very surprised the 60% tax band between 100-122K has lasted this long, probably because of the stealthy nature of it.

It makes them very steathyly lots of month and who is going to be defending people who make £100k?

It would have been fairer to make 45-50% tax band at £125k, or even at £100k rather than steal personal allowance.

[WordIsBond]

Labour made a pledge in 1997, too. They kept it.

They also didn't raise the higher rate threshold in line with earnings, so more and more people got dragged into higher rate band.

They also zapped the marriage allowance except for pensioners.

They also increased employer NI.

They also brought in IR35.

But they didn't increase personal income tax rates, nice people that they are.

Of course, they used their time in office to consolidate their power. And later, they gave us the additional rate tax of 50%. Nice people that they are.

They also ran the public finances into a hole during periods of economic growth, instead of running a surplus, and encouraged consumerism and economic profligacy, so that when the crisis hit neither the UK government nor many UK citizens had any substantive reserves to cushion the shock. Nice people that they are.

And this is the worst lot Labour has ever had leading them. By the end of the parliament, we'd see withdrawal of the personal allowance starting at £80K, a 45% additional rate band starting at £100K, 50% starting at probably £125K, below inflation increases in the higher rate band threshold, higher corporation taxes, and higher NI "contributions."

[centurian]

It would have been fairer to make 45-50% tax band at £125k, or even at £100k rather than steal personal allowance.

Assuming 45%, then in order to be revenue neutral (anything else would be political suicide), it would have to kick in lower than 100K

Those at £150K would only pay marginally more tax if the 45% threshold was at 100K - with the personal allowance restored - while those earning £110/120/130K would pay less.

Back of an envelope calculation - 45% band probably needs to be around 80K

[chopper]

Employer and Employee NICs need to be merged into a single Income tax band. (kills the IR35 problem too)
Oh but those poor pensioners would end up paying more tax. So maybe you increase the personal allowance for pensioners as compensation if that really is a problem - maybe increase the personal allowance for pensioners by the amount of the state pension then?
Tax dividends for close companies as income rather than dividends

But then there's a problem. You either increase tax to earn more money (it either hits the low paid, or it tries to hit those who can afford to avoid it), you can reduce corporation tax to try and stimulate businesses into hiring more people (more IT tax in without increasing rates), you can try and solve the NHS problem - not by throwing more money at it, but instead legislating against PFI contracts to build hospitals (and schools for that matter) which make huge profits over the actual build cost, instead compensating the private contractors so they at least get their money back and a little bit.


One thing is certain. "strong and stable" doesn't mean that a landslide Tory majority is going to be the party that reduces taxes. It simply means they'll have the landslide majority to do what they want. After all, one of the purposes of this election is to kill off that manifesto pledge to not increase tax (you know, like they tried to do for self employed people a few short months ago - something forgotten about by the short-memoried Tory voter).