Who is Most Evil?

[Xann]

Are you suggesting the Departure Tax, VAT, Petrol, Road and Beer tax should be means tested?

Lovely idea Nick, but probably not practical.

Would have to look at the merits of each in turn. Then look at accompanying admin costs.

I'd certainly change the way tax is levied and spent in each case. Additional VAT for Sunny Delight is immediately obvious. Petrol and Road tax should be based on damage wrought. Ideally Departure Tax could have been used to subsidise affordable greener public transport - But there's a bit of a gap in the market there. Alcohol duty is proportional by ABV and has VAT added. So luxury costs more and provides more tax per unit than the cheap gear anyway.

[Pelle]

Delaney. Always blame Delaney.

[maccadooby]

Just noticed this thread at the top followed by two appropriate others, making it read like a new and very valid question:

Who is more evil?

Christiano Ronaldo

The Mercat

[lee_av]

Poll Tax - fair. What a load of Tosh.

My Dad went from spending £400 Rates, in a typical suburban 3 bedroomed house, to receiving a bill for in excess of £1200, because there were 3 people over the age of 18. He couldn't afford it and I had to chip in for my bill. Considering that I was 18 at the time and dropped with a bill for £440, I was not impressed.

My mate's dad paid the same, even though his Dad was a multi millionaie and they lived in a house 3 times bigger.

[lee_av]

It had nothing to do with rich, because relatively there weren't that many of them (and still aren't). As always the socialists and so called 'working class' decided to pin it on the rich in order to spread their anarchic bile.

Poll tax was fair to normal people who, rather than spend their money on drinking, smoking and gambling, use their earnings to better their family. Ultimately it was they who lost out, and still do.

Again, what rubbish.

My old man liked a pint, was not a heavy drinker. He smoked, but not a huge amount, however he was the first person in his family and in fact in our street to have a mortgage, even though he had to lie about his income, because he thought that it was the best thing for his family in the long term.

He was placed with an unfair Tax, as this was not set on his ability to pay, or even on the value of the property that he could afford, even though he worked his bollox off, but for a Tory Government that couldn't give a shit about the Working Class.

I'm not a Socialist by any means, I vote for who is best at the time, but the gladly this shit Tax, helped bring down a Government that couldn't give a monkeys about people that were at the lower end of society.

[tonyh29]

My Dad went from spending £400 Rates, in a typical suburban 3 bedroomed house, to receiving a bill for in excess of £1200

What is he paying now i wonder ? add that to his higher cost of beer ,petrol and cigs and I'll bet any money he's far worse off .... wonder why nobody is protesting on the streets of London ?

I know some don't like it but the size of your house to my mind shouldn't reflect how much tax you have to pay .. the millionaire has already paid tax on his million so he's already contributed around £300,000 in tax (or more) ..where as say a man on £30 k has contributed £ 14k in tax ... tax needs to be fair for sure but how many times should the rich have to pay it ?

that couldn't give a shit about the Working Class.

Which government allowed the working class to buy their council houses on the cheap ..and then make a killing on them a few years later ?

[snowychap]

.. the millionaire has already paid tax on his million so he's already contributed around £300,000 in tax (or more) ..where as say a man on £30 k has contributed £ 14k in tax ... tax needs to be fair for sure but how many times should the rich have to pay it ?

From your figures, why is it fair that the tax burden on the richer person should be around 30% and on the poorer person just under 50%?

That's hardly fair.

Not sure what these figures represent, though?

If someone earning a million pounds has only paid 30% in direct taxation then they are part of some tax avoidance scheme and they'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes, brother.

[Gringo]

Why not go with Levi's suggestion and tax on a percentage of wealth, not income.

VAT should be scrapped anyway as the poorest in society are the ones who spend the highest proportion of their income on it. Plus it's just a stupid administrative nightmare.

Govt gives Joe Bloggs 20 quid income benefit.

Joe pays 20 quid to sky for his daytime 700 channel fix

2.97 of which is VAT, due to be paid to the govt.

Sky buy services from company A and so claim back the VAT.

company A buy x amount of services from company B and so claim back the VAT..

...

and so on

...

and so on

...

through the system until you get to

...

an original producer who has no other suppliers and thus has to hand over the money to HMRC.

Each company along the way have to account for their treatment of the money (as it belongs to HMRC not them), yet they don't get compensated for collecting the govt's tax?

An utterly ludicrous system of taxation.

[snowychap]

But getting rid of VAT would leave carousel fraudsters without an income stream.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

But Thatcher is not even remotely like any of the others on the list.... totally **** useless poll, just saw this... \

How was Thatcher any more evil than Blair, well she wasn't, **** idiotic to include her!!

I think if we asked everyone in the UK if she should be on the list the majority would say yes. The reasons could be many, far too many to list here but she made a lot of people very unhappy. Maybe it was just the fact that she came across as enjoying the pain of others that sets her apart from other Prime Ministers. IMO it would be "**** idiotic " not to include her !

[tonyh29]

From your figures, why is it fair that the tax burden on the richer person should be around 30% and on the poorer person just under 50%?

Picky :-) .... it was just approx I didn't sit there and work it out exactly ...

I think if we asked everyone in the UK if she should be on the list the majority would say yes

do you really think that ? disliked , by some I could understand , but evil I can't see it ...

[lee_av]

My Dad went from spending £400 Rates, in a typical suburban 3 bedroomed house, to receiving a bill for in excess of £1200

What is he paying now i wonder ? add that to his higher cost of beer ,petrol and cigs and I'll bet any money he's far worse off .... wonder why nobody is protesting on the streets of London ?

I know some don't like it but the size of your house to my mind shouldn't reflect how much tax you have to pay .. the millionaire has already paid tax on his million so he's already contributed around £300,000 in tax (or more) ..where as say a man on £30 k has contributed £ 14k in tax ... tax needs to be fair for sure but how many times should the rich have to pay it ?

that couldn't give a shit about the Working Class.

Which government allowed the working class to buy their council houses on the cheap ..and then make a killing on them a few years later ?

Well, I'd be surprised if he is protesting on the Streets of London, he's dead.

They allowed those "working class" to buy their homes - bully or them.

They also allowed people to get caught in the Poverty trap and negative equity, including Council owned flats that are not worth the paper that they were signed across on. They also kept taxes artificially down, by blowing all the proceeds from assets that the Country already owned as public services under Privatisation and North Sea Oil Revenues.

This lot in now are no saints, but for the love of God, I hope that if we have another Tory Government, they have no fecking Thatcherites.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

Quote:

I think if we asked everyone in the UK if she should be on the list the majority would say yes

do you really think that ? disliked , by some I could understand , but evil I can't see it ...

I know what you mean but it's all about perception (Evil is the wrong word, close but a bit OTT). The average geeza on the street might think back to the 80's and think "my kids went without food because of her" or "She shut down X,Y,Z etc) etc... so it really depends on the about of pain she inflicted, which is why I said the majority as she inflicted pain on whole areas of people not just one or two and them areas were always inner city high population which is why I said the majority. She has nearly 10 % v's the the guys above which are all the the prem league of evil. (She is in a play off place in the championship).... :-)

It's all about opinions anyway but I left school in 1987, so I think my opinion of her and that party is a valid one

[lee_av]

. the millionaire has already paid tax on his million so he's already contributed around £300,000 in tax (or more) ..where as say a man on £30 k has contributed £ 14k in tax ... tax needs to be fair for sure but how many times should the rich have to pay it ?

Tax should be fair, I agree and by and large, Income Tax is.

So, how is Poll Tax fair. If I have a bigger car, I pay more insurance. If I want to pay less Insurance, I buy a smaller one.

[snowychap]

From your figures, why is it fair that the tax burden on the richer person should be around 30% and on the poorer person just under 50%?

Picky :-) .... it was just approx I didn't sit there and work it out exactly ...

Sorry.

FWIW, as there is so much indirect taxation and this taxation tends to be regressive I would be interested if there were any analysis on the relative tax burden for people at different levels of income.

I imagine it would be difficult to do because this indirect taxation differs greatly on habit - it would still be of interest because the tax burden figure that usually gets quoted is a flat figure which surely can't be relevant to anyone other than the 'average' person.

[tonyh29]

So, how is Poll Tax fair

Imagine a place with no tax accountants, where the annual return takes a businessman an hour to complete. Think how you could lead a country and design an economy just as you liked. Consider the joy of creating a tax system with no loopholes and exemptions, where everyone is treated the same.

When he became the prime minister of Estonia at the tender age of 32, Mart Laar saw this opportunity as a beautiful thing. The Soviet regime that once ruled his country had been overthrown, and he was starting with a clean slate - and the confidence that came from reading only one book on economics.

url=] mayeb it works ?

As a former history teacher with a fondness for Guns N' Roses, he had given little thought to what kind of tax system he should introduce when he won office. Within a year, however, Estonia had become the first European country to introduce a single rate of income tax.

Now, 14 years later, Mr Laar is hailed as the prophet of a revolution - the flat tax insurrection enveloping much of Europe. As the "father of the flat tax" he is sought out by economists and politicians from across the globe, anxious for his counsel.

Dressed in a grey T-shirt and black chinos, Mr Laar - chubby, bespectacled and with a scrubby blond beard - sat on a park bench outside the Estonian parliament in Toompea Castle in Tallinn, the capital. It was the arrogance of youth in the post-Soviet dawn, he said, that had turned him into an unlikely poster boy for free-market economists everywhere.

"Most experts advised against it and said it was a very stupid idea," he said. "My finance minister said don't do it, the IMF said don't do it. But it's not very easy to convince a young person that he is wrong and I was that type of young person. So I did it."

The economic results of the flat tax in Estonia were stunning as the tiny Baltic state emerged from 50 years of Soviet oppression and a Bolshevik-style planned economy to become a modern, prosperous country.

Inflation dropped from more than 1,000 per cent to just 2.5 per cent, in line with western Europe. Unemployment fell from 30 per cent to six per cent and growth has soared to six per cent, a rate that Gordon Brown would envy. Investment poured in and the initial 26 per cent tax rate has been cut to 23 per cent. Next year, it will be cut again to 20 per cent.

He said the tax was fair, "because rich people are paying significantly more tax even with the same percentage. It is very easy to collect and control."

Also, he said: "In a highly progressive tax system there is no incentive to work: the harder you work, the sooner you get to the next, higher, tax level. A flat tax generates more growth and therefore more revenue for the government."

[snowychap]

And as if by magic: Treasury reveals tax burden is heaviest on poor

An excerpt:

BRITAIN’S richest people are paying 4p in the pound less in tax than any other section of the population, according to new figures released by the Treasury.

The data show the top 1% of households hand over 31% of their income when all direct and indirect taxes are accounted for, compared with an average of 35% for everyone else.

Much of the gap has opened up because, while the rich pay a higher rate of income tax, they pay a smaller proportion of their income in indirect levies such as television licences and Vat on goods and services.

The Treasury analysis .. covers figures for 2005-6, the latest available.....

During the summer there was public controversy about the low rates of tax enjoyed by private equity tycoons, some of whom can pay as little as 10% on their earnings.

The controversy was stoked in June when Nicholas Ferguson, chairman of SVG Capital, admitted in an interview that he felt uncomfortable paying lower taxes than his cleaner.

“Any commonsense person would say that a highly paid private equity executive paying less tax than a cleaning lady or other low-paid workers . . . can’t be right,” he said.

.....

For the lowest 10% of earners, the average annual income per household is £8,366, of which 44.2% is paid as tax.

At the other end of the spectrum, the top 10% of households receive an average £88,334 and pay 35% in tax. The highest-earning 1% have an income of more than £92,300. Households on the median income of £24,700 pay 35.3% in tax.

....

(more on link)

[snowychap]

The Estonia example is interesting, Tony.

He does still have VAT which is a flat rate, regressive tax.

Is Estonian VAT 18% on everything or just those things which are taxed at 17.5% in this country. I.e. are there any exemptions? I would assume not as the point of the system is to be simple and exemptions would complicate things (without exemptions VAT becomes even more regressive than it currently is).

I don't think the Estonian social tax of 33% would find much favour amongst the CBI or many Chambers of Commerce (at least not those concerne with SMEs), though the IOD might not mind.

That seems to be a particularly regressive way of taxing companies.

Regardless of whether regressive taxation can actually achieve the same decent level across a national economy as another taxation sytem, it still does not address the issue of fairness with regard to progressive or regressive taxation.

[Gringo]

So, how is Poll Tax fair

Imagine a place with no tax accountants, where the annual return takes a businessman an hour to complete. Think how you could lead a country and design an economy just as you liked. Consider the joy of creating a tax system with no loopholes and exemptions, where everyone is treated the same.

When he became the prime minister of Estonia at the tender age of 32, Mart Laar saw this opportunity as a beautiful thing. The Soviet regime that once ruled his country had been overthrown, and he was starting with a clean slate - and the confidence that came from reading only one book on economics.

mayeb it works ?

That's not a poll tax, it's not a capped tax, it's a flat rate tax.

It seems to have worked in some second/third world states playing catch up. Would it work in a developed state? Maybe not.

A similar level of freedom from administrative burden could be achieved through the scrapping of VAT and income tax, to be replaced, as per Levi's suggestion, with a wealth tax, where everyone pays x% of their wealth into the govt coffers each year. Such a systems combines your avowed reduction in bean counters whilst being more of a progressive tax where the poorest pay the least and the super rich pay what they can afford. I wonder if you prefer the one that leaves you better off or one that is "fairer"*?

*fairer being a subejective concept of course

[snowychap]

A similar level of freedom from administrative burden could be achieved through the scrapping of VAT and income tax, to be replaced, as per Levi's suggestion, with a wealth tax.

Would Levi's suggestion be a personal wealth tax or a wealth tax for any legal entity?

If there is no taxation on income then why would a wealthy person not just set up an offshore company which holds the assets which effectively are the assets of the individual and then an income stream comes from that offshore company to the individual?