"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

It isn’t a loophole if an Indian citizen pays tax in India on their
earnings in India and pays tax in the UK on their earnings in the UK. But I’m sure everyone’s delighted that Mrs Sunak has said she will also pay tax in the UK on her Indian earnings.
Btw UC is paid for by everyone’s taxes.

It's morally wrong to have a chancellor who is supposed to be in charge of closing tax loopholes but will not do so given that his family may suffer financially if he did. Instead he does nothing to support the disabled,the elderly the working poor people through this financial crisis.
We live in a country where the rich do not wish to pay an employee enough to live on when they work full time. Instead they want the money for themselves. This government goes along with this and tops up the employees income with universal credit. Universal credit is paid from the taxes taken from poor people. Hence the rich get richer. The poor get poorer.
So much for levelling up

I agree Allsorts.

I do. I didn’t start out with any money at all and didn’t go to university so pretty much a standing start, studied whilst working full time. I guess my only advantages were the mental and physical capacity to do that and not having children at that time. Not everyone is born with that mental or physical capacity, whether they have children is a matter of choice.

I fully sympathise with you as regards the demon Amazon but if you were to increase corporation tax by 5% across the board the UK would lose an important competitive advantage and with that jobs and tax revenue would be lost. If you were to increase income tax by that amount we could have the proverbial brain drain. Increasing taxation becomes counter productive.

There is no easy answer.

In my opinion it is absolutely immoral for the state to simply steal take the entire estate of a person who dies. Thank goodness it doesn’t work like that. In my case there will be no inheritance for me, my mother is currently in a care home which costs rather a lot of money. We could have chosen a cheaper one, but no way would I have not chosen the best I could find, despite her never having been the best mother to me. I visit her regularly and sort out all the things for her that need sorting (when a person goes into a home it certainly isn’t the end of sorting things out, as many people think.) Nonetheless I do hope I don’t end up in care as the sums involved are eye wateringly high, unless you’re very wealthy, which we are not, because I would much prefer my adult children to have the benefit of any money I may have left and of course, our house.

Richie’s wife didn’t do anything wrong, she paid tax on all earnings here, what she had in India was taxed there. Why would she relinquish her status in India and change her passport to British, it’s archaic, I wouldn’t give up my passport if went to live in Australia if I married an Australian. I do think if you are super rich you can’t really understand the grinding existence of poverty thinking of should I eat or be warm. Being rich however doesn’t stop Richie being good at his job, in lockdown we had a good package almost straight away. We are a country coming out of Covid, now this war in Europe, our plight is nothing to theirs. I desperately want the very hardworking poor people in this country to be helped, it’s not fair that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, there isn’t any easy way, if we tax the super rich that provide the jobs, they take their business out of Britain and thousands more lose their jobs.

Germanshepherdsmum

Resentment of perceived wealth always rears its head on these threads Rosalyn. I worked hard for my professional qualifications and then worked very long hours for which I took home a healthy sum after paying a lot of tax. I only have one home but have savings and investments. So I feel the resentment quite keenly and the notion of some that everything I have earned should be taken when I die and redistributed is abhorrent.

I'll ask again. Where does "resentment" rear its head on this thread? Again, I am not saying it doesn't, just that I haven't seen it.

It does help if you include a quote and then we can see what you mean.

Yes, agreed GSM, but some do not have the opportunity to start out equally and my point is that the amount of money to change someone's family from not managing/just about managing to actually having a little left at the end of the month, is very little. We are not talking here about confiscating yachts, or punitive taxation, or 100% IHT, just maybe, it would be good if those who lived and traded in the UK contributed a bit more to the country which has made it a safe and generally fair country to do business. Another 5% tax wouldn't hurt Amazon, or Ms Murta's family, but 5% less tax would make a hell of a difference to a struggling family, or pensioner. Simplistic I know, but I think you understand my point.

It's absolutely not a choice between taking people's money and providing equality of opportunity. If we had a fairer system of progressive taxation we could have a system which ensured that every child had a good start, regardless of their financial expectations.

As I said upthread, by the time most people who are going to inherit do so, the opportunities from their parents are well on the way to their own children. A good education, a network of contacts, a culture of deferred gratification and many other factors that five people a 'good start in life' are all bestowed long before (in most cases) parents die and leave their offspring an inheritance.

Would those who want to remove inheritance take those things from those who have them, so they don't start life with an advantage over those who don't? If not, why push to take away inheritance. It's not a race to the bottom, and fairness can be achieved by giving rather than taking away.

I can identify with that Rosie. My Dad was blind and a kind aunt left him a legacy with that in mind. Not a lot, she wasn’t rich, but it helped him. Who can presume to dictate what we do with our money when we die and have paid maybe a fair bit of IHT in addition to all the taxes we paid whilst alive?

For those unable to understand the desire to leave an inheritance, I have a grandson with severe autism and learning difficulties who may never be employable. Why should I not leave money to him, obviously held in trust, so that he can have a better standard of life than that achievable on benefits? Under growstuff's 100% IHT proposal my money would be seized and used how a government wanted, money I saved rather than spend to ensure his security.

I think we both come to this from a position of having worked hard and having something to show for it Gill. The resentment seems to come from some who have probably also worked very hard all their lives but have little to show for it. We all take different paths in life and we are dealt different hands. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth and haven’t had it easy by any means but all our lives are different. We are all dealt different hands and we play them as best we can. Even if we all started out absolutely equal we wouldn’t end up equal.

Germanshepherdsmum

Resentment of perceived wealth always rears its head on these threads Rosalyn. I worked hard for my professional qualifications and then worked very long hours for which I took home a healthy sum after paying a lot of tax. I only have one home but have savings and investments. So I feel the resentment quite keenly and the notion of some that everything I have earned should be taken when I die and redistributed is abhorrent.

But your situation is not what people are describing as unfair, many of us worked hard and are now managing ok. It doesn't have to be either/or, it can be something inbetween. As growstuff listed above, everyone should have equality of opportunity; this does not mean equality of achievement as some will make more of the chance, some will have hindrances, some will have misfortune or ill health. It is unfair and incorrect to describe those who would like to see a bit more sharing out, as being resentful, in my case this is not true, and I have run my own business, have had employees, have taken a chance with my own money to start said business so, on a small scale, I do know what I am talking about, and it is not about punishing those who make a success of business, far from it.

If you have earned your wealth in a perfectly legal way and paid your taxes, why should other people ‘get their hands on it’ growstuff? How is that remotely fair?

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD not all employers make millions in profits, especially at the moment.
There are thousands of small businesses who are just about managing and any extra costs incurred have to be passed on to the ^end user^

Sorry, GG13. Where have I mentioned SMEs? I'm not stupid. They are the lifeblood of a domestic economy. They are not the ones making £millions, or £billions in profits.

volver

I also don't understand why people advocating a more equal society are thought to be resentful. Its quite disparaging of people who would like the world to get better.

Because the people who make that claim don't like to think that other (non-deserving, of course) people might get their grubby hands on the wealth they think they deserve.

I get where you’re coming from volver. People really shouldn’t expect everyone else to fund their care so that their children can inherit their home, that’s grossly unfair. As is deliberate deprivation of assets in an attempt to escape care costs. Completely immoral yet we regularly have people on GN gaily saying they have done it or intend to do so.

growstuff

OK! So people won't accept the idea of ensuring that all babies do at least have an equal opportunity the moment they are born, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

How about ensuring that every child has the best possible start in life by providing them with a genuinely world class education and funding state schools at the same level as the average for all private schools?

How about making sure that everybody receives genuinely free healthcare with no queue jumping, without money being siphoned off to private providers?

How about making sure that everybody can afford basic nutritional food and has adequately heated homes?

How about accepting that there's a very poor correlation between "working hard" and acquiring wealth? And accepting that some people don't deserve their wealth on their own merits - or their poverty?

I wouldn’t disagree with any of this and I haven’t seen a single post that disagrees with equal opportunity. But you propose to fund it by a 100% IHT on the property people leave behind when they die. Property that they’ve worked for all their lives and which are already subject to what amounts to confiscation by the state should they need care services in later life. Add the fact that they’ve already paid tax in various ways on that property throughout their lives, I think it’s a bit rich to ask people to stomach the tax man coming along and taking the lot, the moment they pop their clogs.

GrannyGravy13

That’s exactly how I feel Germanshepherdsmum

I’m sorry but something has passed me by here. Why does anyone feel resentment towards you gg13 and gsm?

What have you done to attract such resentment?

Working Family Tax Credit (as was) was a great benefit to the large employers, such as supermarkets, who paid their employees less in the knowledge that the workers would get a to up. That differential contributed to the dividends that the companies paid. If they put their employees wages up they would certainly increase their prices. Or hammer some of their suppliers. They most certainly would not want to reduce their dividends.

In the past we use to holiday at a friend's house in Lot et Garonne. One of our activities was to tour the vinyards and buy wine direct. One of the areas was Fronton. We used to buy Fronton from Sainsbury but they stopped selling it. We ended up at the same vinyard and asked the shop lady why we could no longer buy it. The answer was that one year JS asked the makers to reduce their price. Which they did. The same request was made the following year and was rejected. It was a brave thing to do because the owner had poured a lot of money into restoring the vines and investing in new plant etc.

I think that a similar thing is happening now to milk producers.

I also don't understand why people advocating a more equal society are thought to be resentful. Its quite disparaging of people who would like the world to get better.

trisher

Rosalyn69

It seems like there is a lot of resentment of people who are “well off”.

Why do people always regard a desire for equality as "resentment"? It's not resentment to think that there should be some degree of fairness in the system. The system now not only discrminates against the very poorest but also against the middle income famiies who find themselves with expenses for their children even when they reach adulthood. The very rich of course buy second or third homes in lovely areas, is it resentment to think that everyone should be able to live in a decent, secure, reasonably sized home? And to realise that if the very rich stopped buying property they don't use there woud be more and cheaper housing available?

I don't 'resent' the wealthy as such. I resent the fact that there is all that wasted money being hoarded when there is so much that could be done with it. There are countries crying out for help to mitigate and delay man made climate change, for a start.

If, as suggested somewhere this morning, money is a tool, why keep it locked, completely idle, in the tool shed?

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t have a ‘pathological need’ to pass money to my son volver though I believe that may be the case in some cultures. It is as you surmise a natural desire that I have. I love him and wish to leave something to him and also to a number of charities that I support. The government will take quite enough of my hard-earned and already taxed money to ‘redistribute’.

I apologise for phrasing it that way GG13.

I don't understand when people get upset that they have to sell their houses to fund, for instance, their care costs in residential care. I don't understand how people can say they want to hold on to an asset that they will never again use but that we should pay up for their care, so that their son/daughter can inherit something that they haven't worked for.

That’s exactly how I feel Germanshepherdsmum

Resentment of perceived wealth always rears its head on these threads Rosalyn. I worked hard for my professional qualifications and then worked very long hours for which I took home a healthy sum after paying a lot of tax. I only have one home but have savings and investments. So I feel the resentment quite keenly and the notion of some that everything I have earned should be taken when I die and redistributed is abhorrent.