NHS

If necessary, primrose.
Those are just alternatives to getting back the tax owed by rich people who have committed tax fraud.

What's wrong with wanting to tax the rich to pay for the NHS?

What have you got against Richard Murphy?
You have not told me anyone who thinks like you about him.

That question is simple to answer. I do not want to RAISE taxes to pay for the NHS.

How about an extra property tax on houses over £5 million?
Another very easy way to put more money into the NHS is to stop the cap on NI. All working people should pay NI at the same rate no matter how much they earn. Why should someone who earns over £866 a week only pay 2% on that?

Sorry Jen, but you've gone full Richard Murphy here! You absolutely did say raise taxes.

Yorkshiregel - I agree with you there, I don't have a problem paying for a decent NHS service and if it costs more, then fair enough. That's one reason why I'd like the money kept totally separate from other taxes. I don't want it spent on a new pet project.

If I thought it would go straight to the people who needed the money I would have not objection to paying more tax. The problem is it will not. It will probably be spent on some project the Government wants to make their mark with...Academies for one example. Or even sent in payments for 'overseas aid'. What about the poor people in this country are they less worthy?

Sorry, primrose. I have been teaching my grandson all day, so not been online.
That question is simple to answer.
I do not want to RAISE taxes to pay for the NHS.
IF all those people who are avoiding/evading tax in tax havens actually paid their taxes as they should, then taxes would NOT need to be raised.

It's people who say that doesn't matter who want the poorest to pay more in tax for the NHS, not me.

Lemon, I never thought of you as being more of a tax expert than Richard Murphy. Have I been getting you wrong all this time?
At least Primrose has done/ is doing an MSC in business or economics or something similar, which is why she knows the questions to ask.

I've been reading A Christmas Carol, and looking at Malthusian economics for GCSE.
It's amazing how many times my grandson said it sounded just like today.
How many times have you heard people say that if you give poor people more money it will just make them lazy?
Poor people shouldn't have lots of children as they can't feed them.
Poverty is inevitable.
Poor laws are too charitable; we need to reduce the financial help that is available to the poor.
We haven't got the workhouses back yet, but I am sure that will just be a matter of time with this government.

So how can all these people pay more tax to the NHS?

Primrose it’s fruitless asking durhamjen anything ( about Richard Murphy) I know because I tried a few times ages ago.He is considered a godlike figure, a guru, and anything he pronounces must be so!

Only free at the point of delivery YorkshireG if you are a NI payer.
Don’t imagine that ‘most of the people will have private healthcare’ in the Home Counties.....far from it!

Yorkshiregel - all of the money paid for NI just about covers the cost of the NHS. That's personal and employers contributions too. You're quite right that it's not free - the NHS spend this financial year is £126,000,000,000.
One problem is that we think NI pays for the NHS, for our pensions and benefits, but it doesn't.

Why are we short of doctors and nurses? Ask Mrs May about tuition fees and universities filling up with overseas students. Ask her about the tax she has allowed her Chancellor to slap on the student loan debt. Ask her about university staff fees especially for those at the top of the ladder.

Just want to add that the NHS is NOT free! We all pay NI don't we? Where has the money gone? Is it being used for other things that take priority for the Tory Party? Maybe we should make hospitals accountable for what is being spent? I have heard about cases of NHS nurses going sick for a couple of days so that they can work as Agency nurses and so make up their pay to a liveable standard. Can you blame them?

Instead of visiting only Tory constituencies I believe that Mrs May should go out in to the big wide world, beyond the Home Counties and see what is happening there in NHS hospitals. If she stays in wealthy areas most of the people living there will have private health care, so it follows that their hospitals will be in better shape than they are down south. She is living in a bubble and thinks everything is hunky dory which it certainly is not. People are laying on trollies down corridors for hours on end. Nurses and doctors are reaching the end of their tether and giving up. For God's sake woman wake up. Or is it a deliberate move to put pressure on the NHS so that it can be claimed as 'not up to purpose' and privatised? I think so. Yes, there is a need for better management of resources but if you do not have the resources in the first place how can you manage them better?

They're not provided to show the criticism. This conversation is like pulling teeth. You didn't ask about the actual criticism, that doesn't interest you. You asked about qualifications.

All this because you can't answer simple questions.
I'm not nagging, I'm challenging the opinions you've posted.
If tax is not used to fund the NHS, why do you want to raise tax to pay for the NHS?

At least let's get it back onto topic a bit. We're talking about the NHS here and the ideas on this thread, not the people.

Your links have no criticism of Richard Murphy. No results, even, when the name searched on the first one.

You still haven't said what makes you qualified to say what you do about Richard Murphy. That was the question I asked, not the question you wanted me to ask.
You ask as many questions as you like. I will just say I believe the experts, particularly Richard Murphy, however much you nag.

What are your qualifications to be more expert than him?

That's the wrong question.
"What are the qualifications of the experts who criticise him" is the question to ask.

You can validate them here

www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/faculty-research/tax

and here

www.ifs.org.uk/

If I criticise some dodgy theory about the world being made of orange jelly and Stephen Hawking thinks the guy who calls himself a 'science expert' is worthy of criticism too, my physics exam results are not really that relevant to the debate, are they?

My post asking for an answer was not in response to me having to wait. It was in response to you making 3 previous posts that didn't answer the questions I've asked. You were avoiding answering my questions, which is disrespectful. You make assumptions without looking for a rather obvious explanation that isn't confrontational.

Any chance of some answers now, as I've had the courtesy to answer your questions?

Where are you, primrose?
You've had 20 minutes to respond.

www.internationaltaxreview.com/Article/3773353/Global-Tax-50-2017-Richard-Murphy.html

Pathetic isn't a name; it's an adjective.

Do you have a personal reason to put down Murphy?

"Richard Murphy (59) is a chartered accountant and a political economist. He has been described by the Guardian newspaper as an “anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert”. He is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK. He is a non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics.

According to International Tax Review Richard was the 7th most influential person in global tax in 2013. In 2016 Richard was in the same journal's Global Top 50 in tax, one of only two people to have been so for the whole five years it had published such a list. In 2017 he was ninth on the same list."

Sounds well qualified to me.
What are your qualifications to be more expert than him?

"The government’s Gradgrindian approach also means there’s no easing up on austerity – a policy that is pushing families into poverty and threatens the foundations of the welfare state. After the chancellor sits down on Tuesday, MPs will face a vote to block a plan to restrict free school meals in England to families with net earnings under £7,400 per year. This saves the Treasury £500m but at what cost? A million children living in poverty will go hungry, almost entirely in working families.

Austerity is a political choice; talk of Britain facing a borrowing crisis is meaningless while we remain a monetary sovereign nation and the state debt is mostly owed to domestic creditors. Britain is a trickle-up economy by design."

So we'll just carry on with austerity, shall we, with people dying in hospitals and a million children living in poverty going hungry?

No need to call me names Jen. It just puts people off posting and I think it's nicer when there's lots of different ideas.

I'm not being pathetic. And Richard Murphy is not an expert, as I've pointed out before. He's just an accountant, not an economist, who contradicts himself frequently. He's been criticised by many people far more qualified than me (like Oxford uni centre for taxation and the IFS). I like reading experts opinions. However, he's a self-appointed expert with a political agenda, which isn't quite the same.

It's not my fault that his arguments contradict each other and you can't explain them. That's a poor reason to be rude to me.

Stop being pathetic, primrose.
I've actually been looking at videos of my six month old grandson for an hour.
Didn't realise you required specific answers.
You've also asked so many questions I have no idea what you want replies to.

Unlike you, I have no expertise in finance or business.
Instead I read the experts, assuming they know more than I do.
The latest Taxresearch link seems to me to encompass all the relevant information about why the government can print money to fund public expenditure in terms that most people can understand.

After all, the Tory government has been doing it since 2010.

Any chance of an answer Jen, or do you just not know it. I don't mind, it's just really disrespectful to ignore questions.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/02/26/the-role-of-public-sector-borrowing/

The government can print as much money as it likes.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/10/poverty-benefits-families-cuts-austerity-hammond-poor-welfare

The government wuld rather do this to families than pay out enough money for them to feel healthier and not need the NHS.

The government can put as much money as it wants to into the NHS. It doesn't want to. It doesn't want a hypothecated tax, as that would mean it would stay in the public domaine and not be privatised and sold to its US friends and Branson.

I can see how people could feel that way Ilovecheese. But I suppose those things they object to the NHS providing will be provided however they are paid for. There are 2 different issues there - how the NHS is paid for and what the NHS does. If I was changing how the NHS is paid for, I wouldn't change what it does at the same time.

I agree that people should not pay any more money to start with - that just complicates the issue for me. I would take it out of general taxation. The NHS costs about half of what the government receives in Income Tax. So I would just split it into 2. If you pay 40% tax rate, you now pay a 20% tax rate and a 20% NHS rate.

Then, if people want extra money to go to the NHS, you simply raise the NHS rate.