Good time to bug your MP

[mudskipper]

Probably because they love the security of permiedom.

And is that not a difference between being an employee and being a contractor?

[doodab]

What happens if you don't pay tax atm? The gov gets shirty for a few years and then sends the repo man round i guess.

For most people it's not an option as it's collected PAYE. So we could probably expect avoidance to go up massively as many more people were given the opportunity.

I'd also guess that with a need to fund the whole of government spending purely from land owners we'd see rents skyrocket and business would move somewhere cheaper. Entrepreneurship would die out as new businesses would basically be forced, vie their rent, to pay tax as if they were already profitable.

[Robinho]

You may well be but not everyone is, and the fact is that we don't get tax breaks compared to other self employed people, which covers all sorts from lawyers to van drivers, so there is a wider question about how you treat them as well. Would you just whack their taxes up by 10%?

Well i think i've outlined my tax plans so far, ie you wouldn't have to worry about any of that crap. I would pretty much scrap employment regulations anyway. Want redundnacy? Ok make sure it's in your work contract. Want paid holiday? Make sure it's in your work contract? etc. All the gov would need to do is make sure there is no breach of contract. A "contractor" would just be an employee with a short work duration, and a "permie" an infinite duration with a redundancy get-out clause or whatever.

You also need to account for the employers share of NI. Saying "I consider both parts of NI income tax" is all well and good but for the vast majority this is paid by the company they work for so you can't simply whack up income tax rates and recover it from their pay packet without the gross amount undergoing a corresponding increase, and that would have a knock on effect on everything from pension contributions to mortgages.

Not really, people would just earn all they earn + their employer's insurance and would pay the new income tax themselves and you'd be back to square one but it'd be a lot more simpler.

[Robinho]

For most people it's not an option as it's collected PAYE. So we could probably expect avoidance to go up massively as many more people were given the opportunity.

It's not really any different to paying the water bill. It would be basically impossible to claim you don't owe tax. So the only thing that could go up is refusal to pay it but you couldn't really do that for long because you'd have absolutely no case. I don't see an issue with collection tbh.

I'd also guess that with a need to fund the whole of government spending purely from land owners we'd see rents skyrocket and business would move somewhere cheaper. Entrepreneurship would die out as new businesses would basically be forced, vie their rent, to pay tax as if they were already profitable.

Rents would only go up by what the market would bare, which would be based upon how much money was freed up from people not having to pay other taxes. As a nation we'd still have the same tax burden it would just be allocated in different (superior) ways.

There would be an increase in entrepreneurship because all of a sudden the means of running a business is drastically simpler. In fact i suspect in such an environment companies would be crawling across broken glass to set up offices here.

[Sysman]

Robinho

You are Richard Murphy and I claim my 5 pounds (tax free)

I'm glad that Richard Murphy isn't a chartered accountant or some other profession that requires basic numeracy...

[tractor]

...

I have no idea what the milk yield per hectare is but are you saying that a dairy farmer with 1 hectare who might make a small annual profit should pay as much tax as a factory owner of a similar site that nets 20m profit pa? Are you saying that a home owner with a 500sq ft home pays as much as an office owner that charges premium rent in a city centre for the same space?

Aside from that not being fair, I can see many classes of business going bust and selling their properties or worse, the government taking them off their hands in lieu of unpaid tax pretty quickly. Then when the government owns half the land and no one will buy agricultural land because it cannot be profitable, who is going to pay the added burden? Oh yeah, everyone else.

That's really fair lol. I grant you it's simple

[Robinho]

You are Richard Murphy and I claim my 5 pounds (tax free)

What on earth are you talking about?

[Robinho]

I have no idea what the milk yield per hectare is but are you saying that a dairy farmer with 1 hectare who might make a small annual profit should pay as much tax as a factory owner of a similar site that nets 20m profit pa? Are you saying that a home owner with a 500sq ft home pays as much as an office owner that charges premium rent in a city centre for the same space?

Aside from that not being fair, I can see many classes of business going bust and selling their properties or worse, the government taking them off their hands in lieu of unpaid tax pretty quickly. Then when the government owns half the land and no one will buy agricultural land because it cannot be profitable, who is going to pay the added burden? Oh yeah, everyone else.

That's really fair lol. I grant you it's simple

It's based on land value. Land value in the centre of the city is normally many magnitudes higher than farmland in the country. If there is no demand for land in a particular area, the tax on that land is going to be virtually zero so farms shouldn't really have a problem. Realistically the position of farms and offices and houses etc has already been set based on land value. For example let's say you owned a farm in the square mile. Well your land would be worth probably billions so instead of continuing to run that farm and make a meagre profit, you'd simply sell the land which would be converted into offices and go and buy another farm where land is cheap. This process has essentially already happened which is why we don't have farms in central London, farms exist where land is cheap already. Offices and shops tend to exist on expensive central land near transport hubs, and houses normally in intermediately priced suburbs.

And it's perfectly fair, you are using a scarce resource (land) so you'd better make the most of it. If someone can make better use, then you need to step aside and let them.

As i mentioned the 2 genuine potential problems are the transition to a system and actually determining what the value of land would be, because an item is worth what its purchaser is willing to pay after all, but it can be difficult to determine that if not a lot of people are buying. The solution to the first problem is a gradual transition over say 15 years. As for the latter, well it doesn't necessarily have to be perfect, you could probably set it at a postcode level. IE the rent in this postcode is £X per square meter based on an average, even though within that some bits of land would be worth more than others as determined by the free market.

Other than that market forces should take care of the rest.

[tractor]

...

It's not really any different to paying the water bill. It would be basically impossible to claim you don't owe tax. So the only thing that could go up is refusal to pay it but you couldn't really do that for long because you'd have absolutely no case. I don't see an issue with collection tbh.



Rents would only go up by what the market would bare, which would be based upon how much money was freed up from people not having to pay other taxes. As a nation we'd still have the same tax burden it would just be allocated in different (superior) ways.

There would be an increase in entrepreneurship because all of a sudden the means of running a business is drastically simpler. In fact i suspect in such an environment companies would be crawling across broken glass to set up offices here.

That's what they said about electricity, water and the essential utilities when they privatised them. You can see what happens to offices when the rent is too high. Landlords would rather keep them vacant than reduce the rent and renters will always go somewhere cheaper. To combat this, the goverrnment would introduce more and more and more planning regulations to keep office/industrial developments away from brownfield and cheaper land bases, making the property system the same nightmare as the taxation system is today.

There would not be an increase in entrepreneurship because banks will not lend money full stop. As for your other suppositions about free market and people being profitable or stepping aside, you are talking about a polar argument, cast your mind back to the poll tax and remember what happened there. It was never going to fly and neither would this. In any event how would it be fair that large companies with a tiny footprint pay next to nothing but consume huge amounts of public resources and small/medium org and housholders pay relatively huge amounts? You seem to be arguing for multipliers and factoring different types of land use whereupon you start to complicate matters and your current complex tax system transitions into a hugely complex and inherently unfair system.

The problem with all taxation is that over the years/decades/millenia, they become too unwieldy because as soon as you introduce allowances and bandings, it becomes unfair and incentivises people and organisations to make artificial arrangements that enable them to take advantage of beneficial positions. Your system would over the years, do the same. It could not cope with foreign ownership and that's where the rest of the land ownership would end up. Much of it is foreign owned already anyway.

Yes, tax needs simplification but not replacing.

[Robinho]

That's what they said about electricity, water and the essential utilities when they privatised them

And that's probably what happened. Thing is it already happens with land anyway so nothing will change.

You can see what happens to offices when the rent is too high. Landlords would rather keep them vacant.

No they wouldn't, because they don't get any money when rent is high but nobody is renting.

There would not be an increase in entrepreneurship because banks will not lend money full stop.

What?