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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I agree Allsorts.

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

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.

Pammie1

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.

There are many different ways to fund all this, other than a 100% IHT on your home.

We should look at the models that other countries use. We don't have to copy them exactly, but it does give ideas.

However, the first requirement is a government - and frankly I don't care which one it is - that is committed to these principles. And the one we've got, isn't. And isn't ever likely to be.

No-one should be penalised for having worked hard to own their home. Equally, the poor should not be punished because they might not have had the same opportunities.

And no-one should have to rely on the state to top up their wages because they are too low to cover the basics. Wages in the UK - certainly in England - have stagnated over the last 30 years, or more. Should we really expect someone working full-time to take on another job, just to make ends meet? Forget owning their own home... some will never earn enough to make that possible, and will feed the property market with its extortionate rents.

Do you remember when technology was in its infancy and we were told that in the future we'd all be working 4 day weeks with more leisure time? How naïve to think that this emerging technology would be used by large corporations, big business and the ultra wealthy to benefit the general working population. They have simply exploited it to cut down on human resources - and because of fierce competition have loaded those human resources with more work than they ever had before! When you make a 'phone call and are "held in a queue and will be answered as soon as an operator is available" - that's the exploitation in full force... because they will not employ more 'operators' to answer your call. You can wait - sometimes at your expense - while the harassed worker tries to deal with one vexed caller after another.

The old model of Capitalism is broken and worn out - it needs replacing with a new Capitalist economy. Some countries are managing it, haphazardly, but there is a recognition that you cannot continue to impose financial burdens on working people to the point where they are continually running faster just to stay in the same place. But we have 'fixes' to plug the gaps of a failing model, and that's what we do... wait for a disastrous event to further impoverish people, and then reactively fix it - by giving people a £200 'loan' to mitigate a 54% energy hike - putting them further in debt.

How long do you keep patching up an old pair of trousers that are so worn they fall apart as soon as they are repaired - how long until you realise you actually have to buy a new pair because they are just disintegrating day by day? The status quo cannot be maintained like this, but that is what this government is trying to do - as the interface between the wealthy elite and the public, to protect them and itself. Not us.

So what do you propose dickens?

Do you think this is the issue? People want to hold on to their wealth so that they can pass it on to their children, and they think those nasty commies want to deprive them of it. Then there are people who are just holding it together and can’t understand why those people with houses and cars think its OK to expect to live in comparative luxury, and hold on to money even after they’re dead.

And never the twain shall meet...

Pammie1

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.

Frankly, the tax man can take every penny I have after I've popped my clogs. I'll be dead and won't be spending it.

Germanshepherdsmum

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.

Including the taxes the recipient has paid him/herself.

Doodledog

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.

Yes.

Germanshepherdsmum

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?

I'm not talking about taking any of it away when people are alive. I'm talking about stopping babies being born unequal.

Yes volver, I’m entitled to hang on to my very nice house and my very nice car, all of which I and my husband have worked bloody hard for, and to pass my assets after IHT to whomsoever I wish. I have also paid a great deal of tax during my working life and still do. What the government of the day chooses to do with that nice chunk of revenue is up to them. As you well know I also support a number of charities of my own choice. Is it any wonder that anyone who has anything to leave votes for a party which allows them that final freedom of choice and doesn’t seek to redistribute everything they have?