CAPITULATION: EU ELECTIONS ARE ON.

@Natasha Whittam wrote:

@xmiles wrote:There is plenty of evidence but you choose to ignore it. Which of course is entirely typical of brexit fans.

Last time I asked you to provide me concrete proof that only educated people voted to remain you linked me to a newspaper article!

There is no proof. You've just decided that's what happened and now it's fact in your world.

@Natasha Whittam wrote:

@T.R.O.Y wrote:Like climate change?

Yes, like climate change, like poverty, like lack of foster parents. I could go on.

Getting your knickers in a twist about Brexit is ridiculous.

@Natasha Whittam wrote:

@T.R.O.Y wrote:Like climate change?

Yes, like climate change, like poverty, like lack of foster parents. I could go on.

@Natasha Whittam wrote:How much of your income do you give to the less well off?

@xmiles wrote:How am I contributing to inequality glos?

I am not defending the fact that not everyone receives the same educational opportunities. I am not supporting legislation and other measures that make inequality worse. I would like to see a more equal distribution of wealth and a fairer tax system. Pointing out that the less well educated are more likely to be leave voters is not contributing to inequality directly or indirectly.

@rammywhite wrote:

@xmiles wrote:How am I contributing to inequality glos?

I am not defending the fact that not everyone receives the same educational opportunities. I am not supporting legislation and other measures that make inequality worse. I would like to see a more equal distribution of wealth and a fairer tax system. Pointing out that the less well educated are more likely to be leave voters is not contributing to inequality directly or indirectly.

Xmiles- please tell me how you would make the tax system 'fairer'? Don't go on about closing loopholes about tax avoidance as both main political parties go on about this all the time but neither does anything about it .
So leaving that aside how would you make it ''fairer'?
Practical suggestions only please and not abstract philosophising and hypothetical remedies.

@xmiles wrote:

@rammywhite wrote:

@xmiles wrote:How am I contributing to inequality glos?

I am not defending the fact that not everyone receives the same educational opportunities. I am not supporting legislation and other measures that make inequality worse. I would like to see a more equal distribution of wealth and a fairer tax system. Pointing out that the less well educated are more likely to be leave voters is not contributing to inequality directly or indirectly.

Xmiles- please tell me how you would make the tax system 'fairer'? Don't go on about closing loopholes about tax avoidance as both main political parties go on about this all the time but neither does anything about it .
So leaving that aside how would you make it ''fairer'?
Practical suggestions only please and not abstract philosophising and hypothetical remedies.

Three practical steps:
1. Introduce a "mansion tax" and/or introduce council tax bands for properties worth more than £320,000 (the current top band)
2. Introduce a top rate of income tax of 50% for incomes above £250,000
3. Abolish the non-domicile tax exemption which allows people like Lord Rothermere to avoid paying any tax on his income.

In addition it would be strightforward to introduce real anti tax legislation if there was any political will to do so. For obvious reasons the Tories will never do that but the Labour party has been pretty spineless on this too.

Finally how about employing more tax inspectors. The numbers employed in HMRC have been drastically cut for years. Staffing has been virtually halved since HMRC was formed in 2005 and since a member of staff in the compliance business stream of HMRC brings in on average over £900,000 a year on a £30,000 salary this makes no practical sense.

@gloswhite wrote:

@xmiles wrote:

@rammywhite wrote:

@xmiles wrote:How am I contributing to inequality glos?

I am not defending the fact that not everyone receives the same educational opportunities. I am not supporting legislation and other measures that make inequality worse. I would like to see a more equal distribution of wealth and a fairer tax system. Pointing out that the less well educated are more likely to be leave voters is not contributing to inequality directly or indirectly.

Xmiles- please tell me how you would make the tax system 'fairer'? Don't go on about closing loopholes about tax avoidance as both main political parties go on about this all the time but neither does anything about it .
So leaving that aside how would you make it ''fairer'?
Practical suggestions only please and not abstract philosophising and hypothetical remedies.

Three practical steps:
1. Introduce a "mansion tax" and/or introduce council tax bands for properties worth more than £320,000 (the current top band)
2. Introduce a top rate of income tax of 50% for incomes above £250,000
3. Abolish the non-domicile tax exemption which allows people like Lord Rothermere to avoid paying any tax on his income.

In addition it would be strightforward to introduce real anti tax legislation if there was any political will to do so. For obvious reasons the Tories will never do that but the Labour party has been pretty spineless on this too.

Finally how about employing more tax inspectors. The numbers employed in HMRC have been drastically cut for years. Staffing has been virtually halved since HMRC was formed in 2005 and since a member of staff in the compliance business stream of HMRC brings in on average over £900,000 a year on a £30,000 salary this makes no practical sense.

XM, your revisions to the tax system wouldn't pay for all the sweeping changes we've been promised.

As an aside, who was it that said that a country cannot tax itself into prosperity? (I don't think it was a Labour politician) 

Your quote is from Churchill. However Britain saw some of its highest growth rates and improvements in prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s during times when tax rates were much higher than they are now.

@xmiles wrote:

@gloswhite wrote:

@xmiles wrote:

@rammywhite wrote:

@xmiles wrote:How am I contributing to inequality glos?

I am not defending the fact that not everyone receives the same educational opportunities. I am not supporting legislation and other measures that make inequality worse. I would like to see a more equal distribution of wealth and a fairer tax system. Pointing out that the less well educated are more likely to be leave voters is not contributing to inequality directly or indirectly.

Xmiles- please tell me how you would make the tax system 'fairer'? Don't go on about closing loopholes about tax avoidance as both main political parties go on about this all the time but neither does anything about it .
So leaving that aside how would you make it ''fairer'?
Practical suggestions only please and not abstract philosophising and hypothetical remedies.

Three practical steps:
1. Introduce a "mansion tax" and/or introduce council tax bands for properties worth more than £320,000 (the current top band)
2. Introduce a top rate of income tax of 50% for incomes above £250,000
3. Abolish the non-domicile tax exemption which allows people like Lord Rothermere to avoid paying any tax on his income.

In addition it would be strightforward to introduce real anti tax legislation if there was any political will to do so. For obvious reasons the Tories will never do that but the Labour party has been pretty spineless on this too.

Finally how about employing more tax inspectors. The numbers employed in HMRC have been drastically cut for years. Staffing has been virtually halved since HMRC was formed in 2005 and since a member of staff in the compliance business stream of HMRC brings in on average over £900,000 a year on a £30,000 salary this makes no practical sense.

XM, your revisions to the tax system wouldn't pay for all the sweeping changes we've been promised.

As an aside, who was it that said that a country cannot tax itself into prosperity? (I don't think it was a Labour politician) 

You are completely missing the point glos. Rammy asked me to give some practical suggestions for making the tax system fairer and that is all I have done. I have not attempted to estimate the amount of extra tax raised.

Your quote is from Churchill. However Britain saw some of its highest growth rates and improvements in prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s during times when tax rates were much higher than they are now.

@luckyPeterpiper wrote:There's one way the tax system could be fairer and provide at least the same revenue as all current direct and indirect taxes do now. It's called a 'flat rate' system and (to match current estimated revenue from current taxes both direct and indirect) it works like this.

For every individual in the UK the first £12,500 of income are non-taxable and not subject to class 1 NI contributions. (Class 2 and 6 are paid by the employer and frankly I'd do away with them entirely since the revenue from them only barely covers the cost of collecting them).

For everything above 12.5K the set rate of income tax would be 22% with NI(1) at 8%. However NI would be used only to fund the welfare state and NHS, nothing else. This is important, until recently the NI 'pot' actually had a surplus but successive governments raided it either for 'special programmes' or to fund cuts to Income Tax especially the higher rates. It's part of the reason the NHS is now in such a terrible mess.

There would be no higher rates of income tax for higher incomes. However there would also be no loopholes. At all. No special exemptions, no making yourself a personal service company or creating a 'holding company' and making yourself an employee. All income paid to you would be personal income and subject to the 12.5K limit.

Done this way anyone with a basic education and a calculator will be able to find out for themselves precisely how much tax they owe and there's no guesswork or worries about who qualifies for what rebate or deduction or worse being told they've underpaid and now have to find more money to make the taxman go away.

Some friends and I modelled this out on a computer (we were helping a mate who was doing his doctorate in economics) and we were startled to find that with the above numbers we could abolish fuel, alcohol and tobacco duty, all VAT and even the various versions of Corporation and Company taxes and give the exchequer a working profit. A large part of the reason for that was it would be far simpler and cheaper to collect the money in the first place (most would continue to be subject to PAYE and automatic NI deductions from salary) and much, much easier to enforce since the tax code itself would be vastly simplified. Of course it would hurt accountants and tax lawyers and a large number of civil service bureaucrats would be now obsolete but the overall net effect would be to provide a government with far more useable revenue while actually decreasing the amount more than 90% of the population currently pays to the government per year. In fact the main losers would be the super rich for a change since they are able to afford lawyers who can reduce their tax bills to pennies under existing law assuming they pay tax at all).

We modelled this using the governments own statistics for how many people in the UK are currently of tax paying (ie working) age and compared it against the published current revenues the government claims to receive. John's thesis (which outlines everything we did and shows both his and the governments figures) will be available on line from September.

I don't know how many times we re-ran the numbers before accepting they were right but it was at least four and every time we ran them we got the same answer. Since this is a long post even by my standards I'll end it here except to say that once the thesis is published I'll provide the URL for anyone who's interested.

@Hipster_Nebula wrote:The turnout for these elections is going to be shocking.

@Natasha Whittam wrote:I voted for Nigel. I gave the ballot paper a kiss as I dropped into the box.

@Hipster_Nebula wrote:I couldn't resist a cheeky vote for the brexit party