Super rich tax.

[BalarnyStone 0]

I think there's also a tendency to have the wrong impression about incomes in this country.

 

The cliched "middle income" earners who everyone seemingly thinks are the bedrock of this country is a misnomer - I think only 11% of "normal" workers pay more than standard rate tax. The media deliberately talk as if theres a nicely spread of incomes up to the top earners - there isn't. This allows BS to talk about "fellow workers" as if they are the ones who'd suffer with a better tax policy. As I said I think most people who are on PAYE who don't have other income streams probably pay an acceptable level of tax imo.

 

This is why I'd have no qualms hitting the real rich - as I said anyone with more than 1m in assets - I think the number of those is something like 200,000.

 

You're way off base. The average doctor, surveyor or accountant is without doubt earning enough to be paying 40% tax, and no doubt has a home worth more than £1m. certainly if they live in London. I wouldn't class them as the real rich. They're well off, but compared to the likes of Abramovich or even the average company director, they're the peasants.

[BalarnyStone 0]

There are no theories of equality as you can measure it. There are theories of equity and social justice that underpin left and right politics though. Aristotle's principle of justice dominate western thought on the matter, that's why he is so famous. As I said, you haven't grasped the difference between equality which is a stark measure and equity which captures the unnderlying value judgements and therefore definition of fairness. Equality is therefore very often considered unfair e.g. People paying the same tax irrespective of income or circumstance.

 

For the sake of repetition, I do grasp it, I just disagree with it. The only value judgements that justify the Aristotle model are those of greed and envy. If that sense of fairness were applied to basic pricing of goods and services, there would be riots.

[Happy Face 29]

They are indeed cartoon examples. It's nothing but empty rhetoric frankly. If you want a real lesson in wealth earned off the back of the masses, you'd do better to look at the examples where people really don't have a free choice in where they live, work, or shop. You'd raise far more by adding just a small amount on the basic rate, than using the politics of envy to justify taking a bigger share from those who have more than you. That really is just basic maths. Your maths is the kind where somehow people think you can fund the annual welfare budget which stands in the billions, from taxing bonuses and salaries that in only the rare cases, reach the million pound mark. Evne if that tax level was 99%, it's clearly bollocks economics.

 

When you increase the top rate the threat is that people will leave the country and live on an island resort at no cost to us.

 

A small increase on the basic rate would mean many low paid workers stop work altogether and start claiming benefits. It ends up costing the country.

 

The point is to have a tax system that incentivises people to work (let low paid people keep most of it) while also encouraging people to pay (don't collect too much from the wealthy).

 

You sound like the woman on Newsnight using household debt to argue with Krugman the Nobel Prize winning economist on why we should continue with austerity. It's not basic maths at all, it's a hugely complex discipline I have little knowledge of but am happy to listen to the experts on.

[BalarnyStone 0]

When you increase the top rate the threat is that people will leave the country and live on an island resort at no cost to us.

 

A small increase on the basic rate would mean many low paid workers stop work altogether and start claiming benefits. It ends up costing the country.

 

The point is to have a tax system that incentivises people to work (let low paid people keep most of it) while also encouraging people to pay (don't collect too much from the wealthy).

 

You sound like the woman on Newsnight using household debt to argue with Krugman the Nobel Prize winning economist on why we should continue with austerity. It's not basic maths at all, it's a hugely complex discipline I have little knowledge of but am happy to listen to the experts on.

 

You're wrongly assuming that I wouldn't adjust the level of benefits to ensure that it always pays to work, which is just good sense, as well as funnily enough also the current government's policy. The people who want to work will work. I would consider anyone who only starts work if they are taxed less than someone whose worked their way up a company, as contemptible.

[Happy Face 29]

The people who want to work can only work if there's jobs available.

 

With lower benefits and lower take home pay for the vast majority of the country there's going to be lower demand for goods and services and with that comes layoffs so there won't be any jobs.

[NJS 4378]

Yep - one vacancy for about every 5 unemployed - and that's before all the sickness "fiddlers" are counted.

[BalarnyStone 0]

The people who want to work can only work if there's jobs available.

 

With lower benefits and lower take home pay for the vast majority of the country there's going to be lower demand for goods and services and with that comes hand in hand with layoffs so there won't be any jobs.

 

These are transient effects. It's not relevant where the proposed model is permanent - whether you earn £15k or £500k, you're 'fair share' is X%. For every lazy asshole that doesn't want to work unless he gets XYZ take home, there's an eager French worker out there happy to get a job in this country and buy our goods and pay for our services, because in their socialist paradise their businesses are totally fucked by heavy taxes and over-regulation, meaning they are very reluctant to hire or expand/change unless the economic outlook is completely rosy. And that economic reality is only going to get worse if they start taxing the rich at 80%. France is so fucked that London is now France's 6th biggest city, and rather than fix the domestic causes of that exodus of talent, they're only idea is to give them representation in their parliament!

[Happy Face 29]

These are transient effects. It's not relevant where the proposed model is permanent - whether you earn £15k or £500k, you're 'fair share' is X%. For every lazy asshole that doesn't want to work unless he gets XYZ take home, there's an eager French worker out there happy to get a job in this country and buy our goods and pay for our services, because in their socialist paradise their businesses are totally fucked by heavy taxes and over-regulation, meaning they are very reluctant to hire or expand/change unless the economic outlook is completely rosy. And that economic reality is only going to get worse if they start taxing the rich at 80%. France is so fucked that London is now France's 6th biggest city, and rather than fix the domestic causes of that exodus of talent, they're only idea is to give them representation in their parliament!

 

your spot on with you're assessment. There they're own worst enemy over their.

[toonotl 2978]

It's incentivised for the rich to save tax - the green credentials are a con to fool the naive.

 

Why do you thgink they've cut back on the Solar panel incentives? (which could be argued are similarly "green") - because too many plebs were gaining and no rich.

 

There are legitimate reasons to encourage sustainable forests. The effects of soil erosion and/or salinization etc. can be catastrophic. I'm in no way a greeny but the problems attached to deforestation are very well documented and better understood than some of the other ways in which humans impact upon their environmental. You're right in that people take advantage of it in terms of tax implications but that comes with the territory.

 

You have a point about the solar panel incentives however the effects of atmospheric pollution are not perceived to be an immediate danger. Probably because no society has ever failed due to over pollution of the atmosphere whereas societies have certainly failed as a result of deforestation.

[Matt 0]

The original feed-in tariffs were ludicrously generous so I'm not surprised the government tried to claw it back. However it did so in such a clumsy way that they have undermined investment confidence for all green energy projects of the type.

[Park Life 71]

Solar panels are one of the most polluting things on the planet. There are whole areas of China which are no-go areas.

[Holden McGroin 6582]

Solar panels are one of the most polluting things on the planet. There are whole areas of China which are no-go areas.

 

What do you mean? The manufacturing of Solar panels?

[Park Life 71]

What do you mean? The manufacturing of Solar panels?

 

"Many of the solar panels that now adorn European and American rooftops have left behind a legacy of toxic pollution in Chinese villages and farmlands.

The Post article describes how Luoyang Zhonggui, a major Chinese polysilicon manufacturer, is dumping toxic factory waste directly on to the lands of neighboring villages, killing crops and poisoning residents. Other polysilicon factories in the country have similar problems, either because they have not installed effective pollution control equipment or they are not operating these systems to full capacity. Polysilicon is a key component of the sunlight-capturing wafers used in solar photovoltaic (PV) cells."

[toonotl 2978]

This is the thing that gets me about western governments enforcing 'green' policies. We may as well not bother if China are not interested in towing the line.

[Park Life 71]

"OVER THE years we have written many articles which explain how Bill Gates uses the Gates Foundation to avoid paying his fair share of tax into the economy he is exploiting. We wrote s great deal about taxation tricks of Microsoft and Gates because there is a lot to cover there. Being a rich company and family, they get to call their evasion of tax “legal” and bribe some politicians to make it so. That’s crony capitalism.

Mr. Salmon, a respectable journalist from Reuters (who recently criticised Gates for hijacking the press), writes about “problematic charitable-donation tax deduction” and includes Gates in there:

It’s hard to answer the first question with any specificity. But the second is easier to answer. Take a look at the $360,000 salary for the director of the Neue Galerie — or, for that matter, the $1.5 million paid to the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, or the other seven-figure salaries paid at non-profit hospitals, universities, and foundations. There’s a rich-people money-go-round here: Jeff Raikes of the Gates Foundation doesn’t need his million-dollar salary, but the foundation is paying it anyway, as a matter of principle, presumably to encourage other foundations to start paying similar sums. These 1% salaries aren’t being paid out of small-dollar donations from the masses; they’re being paid out of large-dollar donations from other members of the 1%. And there’s no good reason for the US tax code to encourage such things. "

[jonasjuice 0]

If I'm China, and some Yankee cunt, after 100 years of profiting from factorys, cars, planes and whatever else they've fancied, tells me that as soon as it's my time to shine for me it's now off limits, I doubt that I would comply either tbh.

[Park Life 71]

Whether they understand them or not, all taxpayers have been sucked into the derivatives virtual reality game, and at great cost.

 

By Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance

FORTUNE -- It's tax time -- and if you are like many people, you may spend a moment contemplating all the benefits your tax dollars bring. But amid all of those benefits, your money is also propping up the proliferation of derivatives in our economic system. Now isn't that something to be proud of?

"Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal," Warren Buffett wrote in 2002. Boy was he right, in more ways than one.

In practice, they're destructive in three killer ways. Strike one: Unbridled manufacture of and investment in them continues to lead to bubbles, an erosion of trust in the capital markets, and they fueled our most recent financial crisis. Strike two: Used in compensation, they encourage risky behavior and economic instability. Strike three: Rather than going to other, useful causes, tax dollars are instead subsidizing both the corporations that dole out derivatives as compensation and the profits of the financial institutions that create them.

Derivatives aren't real in any natural sense, like iron or coal or water. They are a manufactured investment product that is supposed to have a relationship to something that is more real, like a stock, a bond, a mortgage, or a commodity -- but that relationship is sometimes tenuous at best. Whether they understand them or not, all taxpayers have been sucked into this virtual reality game, and at great cost."

 

 

 

 

 

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/16/the-terrible-cost-the-u-s-pays-for-derivatives/

[Matt 0]

That's a very short article attempting to cover a very complex topic and the bit about boardroom options is barely relevant given the scale of numbers in question when thinking over wider OTC derivatives contracts. And CDOs were a lesson in stupidity and greed, not how 'structured products are baaaaaad'.

 

But she's right on one thing, JP Morgan have ensured that retail deposit-taking institutions cannot be allowed to carry out prop trading. This could be implemented very quickly across any major economy with non-bank market participants around to take up the slack. If those traded products cannot survive without implicit deposit bank (and hence govt) support then it's curtains.

 

Retail and commercial banks do (and should be able to) act as a broker to their clients for certain risk management products and will need to bear some market risk in executing the trade- but this risk should be kept to an absolute minimum and under no circumstances should those banks be able to make a market. This is one of the aim of the ICB in the UK.

[ChezGiven 0]

For the sake of repetition, I do grasp it, I just disagree with it. The only value judgements that justify the Aristotle model are those of greed and envy. If that sense of fairness were applied to basic pricing of goods and services, there would be riots.

You disagree with the distinction in the English language and in centuries of philosophical writing on the difference between equality and equity?

 

"One thing that's always perplexed me is why it's considered 'fair' that richer people should pay more tax than the poor. If people were that bothered about fairness, everybody would be paying a flat rate."

 

People are bothered about fairness but its rare to find anyone who believes that paying a flat rate of tax is considered fair. You need to start at the beginning, which is why we have taxes. We have taxes because the initial distribution of income is not equal which means 1. Some have more opportunities than others 2. we have less than full employment and poverty and 3. we want to redistribute wealth. Unless you dont want to redistribute, in which case you dont have taxes. Redistribution occurs if the more wealthy pay more. You need a balance as you need to keep incentivising people to earn more, so you cant take too much but differential tax rates are fairly sensible unless you believe paper boys (under 16s), students, part-time workers etc should pay the same proportion of their income as billionaires? Its a value judgement but most definitions of 'fairness' dont demand equal contributions.

 

Aristotle's principle of fairness is applied to the price of goods and services. The principle of eudaimonia or 'welfare' (see welfare economics for the last 2 centuries) incorporates this concept perfectly. Those things that alllow a man to 'flourish' should be distributed in a fair way (housing, health, education, liberty etc). Goods and services that are not in the set deemed necessary for man to achieve 'eudaimonia' (fancy clothes, skiing holidays) are distributed according to ability to pay.

 

So, incoherent on definitions and wrong on interpretation.

[NJS 4378]

Those things that alllow a man to 'flourish' should be distributed in a fair way (housing, health, education, liberty etc). Goods and services that are not in the set deemed necessary for man to achieve 'eudaimonia' (fancy clothes, skiing holidays) are distributed according to ability to pay.

 

I've never seen what I believe put so succintly. Unfortunately what's wrong is the things in the first list are in no way distributed fairly.

[BalarnyStone 0]

You disagree with the distinction in the English language and in centuries of philosophical writing on the difference between equality and equity?

 

"One thing that's always perplexed me is why it's considered 'fair' that richer people should pay more tax than the poor. If people were that bothered about fairness, everybody would be paying a flat rate."

 

People are bothered about fairness but its rare to find anyone who believes that paying a flat rate of tax is considered fair. You need to start at the beginning, which is why we have taxes. We have taxes because the initial distribution of income is not equal which means 1. Some have more opportunities than others 2. we have less than full employment and poverty and 3. we want to redistribute wealth. Unless you dont want to redistribute, in which case you dont have taxes. Redistribution occurs if the more wealthy pay more. You need a balance as you need to keep incentivising people to earn more, so you cant take too much but differential tax rates are fairly sensible unless you believe paper boys (under 16s), students, part-time workers etc should pay the same proportion of their income as billionaires? Its a value judgement but most definitions of 'fairness' dont demand equal contributions.

 

 

Aristotle's principle of fairness is applied to the price of goods and services. The principle of eudaimonia or 'welfare' (see welfare economics for the last 2 centuries) incorporates this concept perfectly. Those things that alllow a man to 'flourish' should be distributed in a fair way (housing, health, education, liberty etc). Goods and services that are not in the set deemed necessary for man to achieve 'eudaimonia' (fancy clothes, skiing holidays) are distributed according to ability to pay.

 

So, incoherent on definitions and wrong on interpretation.

 

Your premise is wrong. We tax to fund the things we deem should be publicly funded, like schools, hospitals etc. Redistribution of wealth as an actual purpose of government is more Mugabe/Stalin's style. If you want to incentivise people to work, you'll do better by invoking the American model, rather than the Stalinist one. You don't eliminate poverty by screwing over the rich, all that produces is the redefiniton of poverty as is happening now - it used to be based on the ability to feed yourself, now it's based on whether you can afford a decent telly. Full employment is irrelevant, this unfair system is used even when employment is at record lows. I sign up to the idea of a tax allowance, so paper boy's are irrlevant, but other than that, I see no moral basis in the idea that just because you earn less, you should pay less in percentage terms. In my dictionary, equity is the "quality of being fair and impartial". Making communist like assumptions that the only reason someone earns a lot is because they inherited it or otherwise didn't really earn it in a way a 'normal' tax payer does, or that they somehow had different opportunities in life, is not being impartial.

[Meenzer 15518]

I sign up to the idea of a tax allowance

 

Why? Seems inconsistent with your approach to the matter generally.

[BalarnyStone 0]

Why? Seems inconsistent with your approach to the matter generally.

 

Not really. You can't in all fairness class people doing a little part time/peice work, the sort of stuff where you earn under the limit, in the same bracket as full time workers.

[Meenzer 15518]

Not really. You can't in all fairness class people doing a little part time/peice work, the sort of stuff where you earn under the limit, in the same bracket as full time workers.

 

Nonsense - whether you earn £1k or £500k, you're 'fair share' is X%.

[Park Life 71]

You disagree with the distinction in the English language and in centuries of philosophical writing on the difference between equality and equity?

 

"One thing that's always perplexed me is why it's considered 'fair' that richer people should pay more tax than the poor. If people were that bothered about fairness, everybody would be paying a flat rate."

 

People are bothered about fairness but its rare to find anyone who believes that paying a flat rate of tax is considered fair. You need to start at the beginning, which is why we have taxes. We have taxes because the initial distribution of income is not equal which means 1. Some have more opportunities than others 2. we have less than full employment and poverty and 3. we want to redistribute wealth. Unless you dont want to redistribute, in which case you dont have taxes. Redistribution occurs if the more wealthy pay more. You need a balance as you need to keep incentivising people to earn more, so you cant take too much but differential tax rates are fairly sensible unless you believe paper boys (under 16s), students, part-time workers etc should pay the same proportion of their income as billionaires? Its a value judgement but most definitions of 'fairness' dont demand equal contributions.

 

Aristotle's principle of fairness is applied to the price of goods and services. The principle of eudaimonia or 'welfare' (see welfare economics for the last 2 centuries) incorporates this concept perfectly. Those things that alllow a man to 'flourish' should be distributed in a fair way (housing, health, education, liberty etc). Goods and services that are not in the set deemed necessary for man to achieve 'eudaimonia' (fancy clothes, skiing holidays) are distributed according to ability to pay.

 

So, incoherent on definitions and wrong on interpretation.

 

Top post.

 

I was waiting for you to lay the smack down.

 

...And it's one of the reasons capitalism has survived by redistributing wealth (to a degree) and keeping 'people in the game; qv Soros "The periphery".