I basically agree with that. On tax in general, as I said before the election don't be surprised to changes to the way savings are taxed. Tom is absolutely right that we don't know what's coming in the budget but based on things they've said I suspect we'll see more tax on savings. On wealth taxes, they tend not to raise much money and there are various reports they stifle innovation and entrepreneurship and damage growth, which is something Labour have said they want to increase. The general trend over the last few decades has been for countries to abolish them.
Of course not. But the taxes of the wealthy are predominantly funding the 5.5% pay rises they’re getting. That’s how it should work. But cliff edge tax punishments are bad full stop. It should always be tapered.
Slippery slope there because it’s debating values of skills. Nursing is always used because it is skilled and it the lowest paid job relative to the training required (you have to have a degree - and a hard one as well)
I have met a lot of high earners and the vast majority got there through: Connections, bullshitting, connections, and being ambitious. Skill is in a narrow field of jobs. Ask anyone in anything corporate how skilful their boss is...
Wealth taxes in and of themselves don’t work. But I feel something like an NHS levy, or even an education levy on the wealthiest (as opposed to taxing private schools) would be a much better way of ensuring the wealthy pay directly into infrastructure that everyone else could benefit from. The issue with cliff edge tax breaks, like tax free childcare, for example, is that the inevitable consequence is that the woman will then stay at home to look after the child because childcare is so exorbitant. Many of those people are teachers and NHS workers.
There are some people like that but, while I don't know many people who earn six figure salaries, the few I do know at all well work extremely long hours. My old head of service I used to work at a council used to get grief from his wife for sitting at his kids' birthday parties with his laptop on. I also used to work for a guy in his early 40s who's set up his own company. He's certainly ambitious and yeah, he's kind of a bullshitter but there's no doubt he works hard. He basically doesn't see his kids during the week, he's looking at emails and sending whatsapps at 6 in the morning and often still online at 10 or 11 in the evening. Or he's going to dull industry events and nodding along while people who think they're the dog's bollocks tell him how great they are (I went to a couple of these with him, they're not enjoyable). He'd go on holiday with his family and then set up meetings with me where I could tell he was sat at a table by the pool at the hotel. He also wasn't paying himself much to begin with. I'm sure he'll make a success of it and make good money but it's not a life I'd want.
Well some of that's about how well your job scales. A nurse may make a huge difference to the individuals they look after but a nurse can only look after a quite limited number of people. A footballer makes a much smaller difference to each individual but in some cases they impact billions of people. The same goes for Hollywood actors or video game designers and so on.
I know a huge amount of high earners, and though some are in position for the reasons you state (though I’d posit that developing connections and bullshitting are skills), it certainly isn’t the “vast majority” - that’s an Os level of hyperbole. I’d say the vast majority are there through hard work, application, talent, risk taking, a willingness to put their head on the block and, yes, skill.
I have a load of connections (that I’ve built and developed through the years) and am an arch bullshitter. I don’t earn much money though because I rely too much on the previous, and don’t work hard enough tbh.
I would say most high earners are a collective of the above. Mostly highly skilled, knew the right people at the right time, a bit of 'winging it' and good at networking. I agree that bullshitting is actually a bit of a skill, something in work I unfortunately lack. I normally say it as it is. I also weirdly dislike praise for just doing my job and what i am paid for.
The other thing to remember, particularly in business, is that people have worked like trojans to become the boss, and often they are then in a more strategic style role, which on the face of it looks like "less hard work".
I know an awful lot of people earning barely enough to get by. Most of them work extremely hard, many of them in the sort of unremarkable jobs which, if they were left undone, would cause society to fall apart quickly. I also know a few high earners who, if they stopped working for a few months, no one would be any the wiser tbh.
One of the biggest issues is household tax thresholds. Compare two £30 k earners with a couple where one earns 60k the other 0k. I know there used to be tax transfer workarounds but not sure they still exist.
It's complicated. I think the 60k earner and 0 earner could transfer the 0 earner's income tax allowance and reduce their tax bill that way, but they'd still have to repay any child benefit in full while the other couple wouldn't (and nor would a couple who both earned £49.9k). I wouldn't swear to this but I think when the child benefit repayment stuff was brought in it was acknowledged it wasn't the ideal way to do it and it would need looking at again. Although I half remember it being the cost. I think looking at household incomes is a lot more work than doing it by individual income and the government said they'd have to spend a lot (all?) of the money they saved paying people to do those calculations.
The tories deciding to freeze the income tax thresholds for 7 years is the largest tax rise in British post war history. Its called fiscal drag and as the population is largely fiscally illiterate, is mostly unknown. It has allowed the narrative you espouse of "labour raise taxes" to permeate so deeply. While the facts show us quite clearly that in recent times, tories raise taxes on working people.
It isn;t a desperation for them to fail. It is frustration that we were told (not just by salty Tories) they were gonna raise taxes that they denied and how quickly this is coming to fruition. There is a lot more to tax that affects working people than direct things like Income Tax, NI and VAT. Also the fact they talk about a black hole, have rallied around their media pals to get it to be the narrative all the while independents like the IFS have asid it is BS. That you guys choose only to read or listen to sources that are pretty much their media wing is on you. It was predicted, it is happening. Simples. Not saying Tories would have done any better. they are all as bad as each other but Labour knew how the finances were, "fully costed" their manifesto based on it and even said the OBR would be able to chime in on policy costings atm. No-one hid anything from the OBR. Labour just overpromised based on numbers and now they;ve decided to up their promises their "fully costed" manifesto is no more. Politicians be politicians though
Lol. So freesing tax thresholds...........that they vastly increased in their first term in (coalition?) from where they had been? People ar zoning in too much on direct tax. IF they raise taxes on (example) a succesful business category that I work for, or make more levies etc. maybe I won;t get much of a pay rise next year if any.......or maybe my company might make redundancies or even move country. There are a lot more indirect effects to working people than raising taxes directly to take a few quid more a week out of your pocket! It ain't as simple as that! Maybe you should've all voted for Reform who said they would raise the tax free band to $20k? Seeing as you care so much about those of us close to the NMW.
