Keir Starmer's definition of working class

I seem to remember that even the Rolling Stones were domiciled in Switzerland(?) at one time to avoid punitive tax rates then in place in the UK.

Really wealthy people are far more internationally mobile than they were in the past and with non-dom status going as well (I do not defend it). i would think that a lot of these mobile multimillionaires and billionnaires still living in the UK, will be planning to move offshore.

Personally, I think fairness demands that no one, no matter what their income, should be expected to hand over more than 50% of their income to the tax authority.

I agree. 19/6 in the £ was disastrous.

Yes my father in law complained about 90 percent and was determined to recoup some of his taxes via his NHS treatments in later life. Good for him I thought.

Apparently Mick Jagger is worth £500million. Does anyone really think that governments have him and his ilk in mind when coming up with tax policies, or when deciding on concessions for pensioners?

The poor old soul is dragged into discussions about bus passes, free TV licences, tax bands and more, when (parsimonious as he is alleged to be) he is not in need of any special pleading.

When you earn (and own) as much as he does you are an outlier even amongst the super rich, so much of your money will sit at above the higher tax rate. Most people who pay the 60% rate will have that applied to a much smaller percentage of their income, so the financial advantages of moving away from friends and family to live abroad will be far less enticing. The Stones stood to save millions, and their lifestyle was such that it didn't matter where they lived - they would be recording and touring all over the world whatever their address for tax purposes. They also had homes in the UK anyway. Again, most people are not in that position.

The Stones have not being paying full tax in the UK for many, many years, in fact since 1972. At that time the PM was Edward Heath.
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1601018/The-Stones-pay-just-16-tax.html
This article is from 2006

Doodledog If people go round talking about taxing the rich then we need to include the billionaires and rich popstars. Any one with an income of, say £200 million a year, will pay much more tax if the rate goes up by a penny than someone on the national wage and 100 billionaires with those kinds of incomes will probably pay in extra tax of 1p in the pound more than the rest of us put together.

So, yes these people matter. If 40 or 50 of them decide to domicile themselves overseas, that is an awful lot of tax not collected.

I was looking up the 90%+ taxation.

I found an interesting long and detailed post on reddit which concluded that there was a variety of reliefs and reductions which could be allowed on high incomes. Without any of these the most that someone would pay would be 73%. If they could claim the reliefs etc. it brought the figure down to 65%

There's some stuff about comparative values, too.

www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fn5171/why_were_british_tax_rates_so_high_in_the_1950s/

Also long, but interesting. some research into public perceptions of taxation from the 1940s to the present.

www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/income-tax-rates-and-popular-attitudes-lessons-from-post-war-british-history

Interesting that our current PM and former Chancellor published his tax affairs it turns out that a very wealthy man only paid 22% tax on his income...

M0nica

Doodledog If people go round talking about taxing the rich then we need to include the billionaires and rich popstars. Any one with an income of, say £200 million a year, will pay much more tax if the rate goes up by a penny than someone on the national wage and 100 billionaires with those kinds of incomes will probably pay in extra tax of 1p in the pound more than the rest of us put together.

So, yes these people matter. If 40 or 50 of them decide to domicile themselves overseas, that is an awful lot of tax not collected.

Yes, you're right, but they are not numerous enough for it to be sensible to build policy around them. Anything can happen to 40 or 50 people. Laws and policies have to be made around the tens of millions of the rest of us.

The Tories always refer to "hard working families. Are these the same as Starmer's 'working people'?

That’s exactly what Labour have done though, Doodledog. Much of their spending is predicated on receiving tax from non doms, whose numbers are decreasing.

Germanshepherdsmum

I agree. 19/6 in the £ was disastrous.

The majority of people didn;t pay that. Plus you are forgetting all the reliefs that they got before the tax was calculated.

annodomini

The Tories always refer to "hard working families. Are these the same as Starmer's 'working people'?

I think so. People who work for a living. These are the people on whom the current tax burden falls. I think he was suggesting that he does not intend for that burden to get worse, but instead he will tax those whose income is not derived from work.

What he said about the cheque book will have been said because Every Bloody Thing he says has to be defined, redefined then redefined again, and he was asked to define the term 'working people', rather than be allowed to talk about his tax policy.

As ever, people are concentrating on the definition of a term instead of what he said. I don't know about you, but it would drive me mad if everything I said were scrutinised in the way it is with KS, and I would struggle to communicate.

Has anyone done that exercise where you have to describe something familiar to you (eg your sitting room) but you can't use words containing the letter T? It's often used to show how difficult it can be for speakers of English as a second language. Try it if you haven't been on an Equality and Diversity course lately - it's really difficult after a few sentences, but it is fun. It shows that people become hesitant and uncomfortable when they can't use the word that comes naturally. They can't be witty, they can't show nuance, they can really struggle when they are having to second guess every word. I think that KS is playing this game every time he speaks to the press.

Not all popstars are tax exiles. One very well know guitarist owns a house in Holland Park where he has lived since 1972. Another member of the group lives in Worcesterhsire. Eric Clapton lives in Surrey. They appreciate what the UK offers and are not all tax exiles.

Germanshepherdsmum

That’s exactly what Labour have done though, Doodledog. Much of their spending is predicated on receiving tax from non doms, whose numbers are decreasing.

Well if they are decreasing that's good, surely? Doesn't that mean that they will now be paying tax here?

Having a separate law for those who choose to live here but register for tax elsewhere seems to me sensible. It is not sensible to base a whole taxation system around them though. My point was that the likes of MJ is a rarity, yet he is the one trotted out to illustrate what some see as the unfairness of having universal benefits, or what might happen if taxes rise.

When he and the other Stones moved away to escape 90% tax it was a different world for one thing, and for another his actions were not typical so he doesn't illustrate much there either.

Dinahmo

Not all popstars are tax exiles. One very well know guitarist owns a house in Holland Park where he has lived since 1972. Another member of the group lives in Worcesterhsire. Eric Clapton lives in Surrey. They appreciate what the UK offers and are not all tax exiles.

Of course they do. People with family and cultural ties here are unlikely to move away for the sake of money - particularly when they already have far more than they can realistically spend. This is what I was saying upthread - the super-rich are outliers, and using them as exemplars is pointless. They are too few in number to show trends. Some will go where they can keep more of their millions, some will stay near their loved ones and where their way of life can continue.

Stop them (those who do) from exploiting loopholes, plug the gaps in the system (eg non-dom status) that allow them to pay less than they should, but also stop suggesting that their lives can be mapped onto the behaviour patterns of the rest of us - they can't.

Why should people obtain higher rate tax relief on their pension premiums? It should all be reduced to the basic rate only.

Why should capital gains tax be at a lower rate than income tax? If you are given a picture, for example, some years ago,and it has hung on your wall all that time. The artist becomes popular, its value increases substantially and you decide to sell it. You have not done anything to earn that increase so why should you pay less tax?

This not the politics of envy.

I enjoy looking at items I've bought for very little money and seeing how much they are worth now. Usually a few hundred pounds. So. if I was to sell them I would probably be exempt from CGT because of he goods and chattels rules. But, if I had bought something for say £50 and it is now worth say £50k I would not mind paying tax at income tax rates.

Doodledog, when I said that the number of non doms was declining I meant that they were leaving the country - which if your spending is predicated on getting tax from them is not good news.

What about the increase in value of shares though Dinahmo? What would increasing the rate of CGT do for investment?

I agree. It's so unfair that someone who works for their money is charged tax on it but someone who doesn't pays nothing.

Obviously if people have nothing it's different, but those who don't earn but claim that they are paying tax when they spend seem to fail to see the irony of that claim. Workers pay VAT too - it's not reserved for those who are living on someone else's earnings, and it's supposedly only charged on non-essential items.

It's not envy at all - it's just saying things that those who benefit from the current unfairness don't want to hear.

People still would buy investments. What else would they do with their money?

But, if I had bought something for say £50 and it is now worth say £50k I would not mind paying tax at income tax rates.

I would call that serendipity.

That is a dishonest tax. I think we eed a more open, honest taxation system.

Yes we do. At the moment it benefits the wealthy. As has been said before the poorer pay a larger proportion of their income in tax that the wealthy. Just look at Sunak.

Doodledog

I agree. It's so unfair that someone who works for their money is charged tax on it but someone who doesn't pays nothing.

Obviously if people have nothing it's different, but those who don't earn but claim that they are paying tax when they spend seem to fail to see the irony of that claim. Workers pay VAT too - it's not reserved for those who are living on someone else's earnings, and it's supposedly only charged on non-essential items.

It's not envy at all - it's just saying things that those who benefit from the current unfairness don't want to hear.

Where do you get the idea that someone who doesn’t work for their money pays nothing? Take the example of someone who has some rental properties. They pay income tax on the rent - there are fewer deductions allowed now - and when they sell they will pay CGT on any increase in value. You seem obsessed with the idea that someone who isn’t on PAYE isn’t paying any taxes.

No obsession here - that's another word used when people say things others don't like😂.

What I am saying is that currently it is those who work who pay income tax, which is what we were talking about when discussing the historical rates that drove out a minute number of people who still spend a lot of time and money in the UK.