Keir Starmer's definition of working class

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

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.

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Yes, and how many left the country?

Counter-productive.

Wasn’t 90 percent tax paid at one time?

MaizieD

equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

The 'wealthy' might be few in number but they are 'high' in wealth.

And lightly taxed..

The very wealthy, 10%, pay over 60% of income on tax. Many of these people run Business, employ people. How much would you make them pay.

For what?

Germanshepherdsmum

Bribes from banks and building societies?

Dividend tax will almost certainly be raised by Labour, along with capital gains tax. And they expect private investment …. Before you say it Maisie, of course many shares are bought on the market and not from the issuing company, but such moves will have a detrimental effect on the markets imo, and on the value of companies as their share prices go down.

What evidence for this?

MaizieD

Interest on savings is quite different from share dividends. And is taxed, as are share dividends.

Do go on abusing me. I can handle it.

If you’re given money, and you put it in the bank do you turn down the interest?

Weren’t you affected by the removal of MIRAS and GB’s actions on pensions. If you weren’t, then lucky you.

Do go on abusing me, I can handle it as well as you can.

Of course MaizieD must be aware, Germanshepherdsmum as were most people who had a mortgage.

Although - not everyone needed a mortgage I suppose, those who were wealthy or inherited property.

We had to scrimp and go without to pay ours at 15%.

Building societies were never owned by the state Maizie, so they could not be privatised. Those which became companies were previously mutual societies owned by the people who saved with them. When they became companies those people were given shares as I’m sure you are well aware.

Interest on savings is quite different from share dividends. And is taxed, as are share dividends.

Do go on abusing me. I can handle it.

MaizieD

Thatcher oversaw the privatisation of building societies, nationalised industries and utilities, with their 'giveaway' of free shares as a way of creating voters for the tory party . It was a bribe.

Taxing unearned income more lightly from share dividends is inequitable. I don't have a problem with share ownership, just the way dividends are taxed.

I apologise if I misinterpreted Callistemon's post as being a defence of this inequitable taxation.

If that’s an apology 🤣🤣🤣
Gordon Brown robbed pensions and stopped MIRAS.
You probably weren’t affected by either of those actions, but millions were at the time and now have to live with the outcome of that robbery.
Incidentally, do you refuse the interest on your savings, or consider it a bribe?

👍🏻

MaizieD

Thatcher would be proud of you, *Callistemon'. One of the few who held on to the bribes.

Why be so sarcastic (downright nasty)?

Oh dear.

That was not an apology. It was further compounding an insult.

I suppose we should have refused them on principle even if our finances were strained at the time.

You may have not needed every little extra bit of income but some of us were thankful.

It didn't bribe me btw.

Leave it be MaizupeD, will you? You just take every opportunity to sneer. It's not a pleasant trait.

What would be the effect on investment and the markets if dividend tax and capital gains tax were significantly raised Maizie?

Thatcher oversaw the privatisation of building societies, nationalised industries and utilities, with their 'giveaway' of free shares as a way of creating voters for the tory party . It was a bribe.

Taxing unearned income more lightly from share dividends is inequitable. I don't have a problem with share ownership, just the way dividends are taxed.

I apologise if I misinterpreted Callistemon's post as being a defence of this inequitable taxation.