Income Tax

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Sam-AVFC said:

I find it unfair that some people are born with £100s of millions of low taxed trust and untouched 'farm' wealth passed down from a lucky Norman knight.

People need to realise many already pay way more in inheritance tax than the super wealthy. It's that kind of obscene wealth hidden behind complex legal entities that many believe should be targeted, not grandma's 4 bed semi.

Yeah but what about the ones that dont fall in that catergory? Thats the problem. Im sure most parents would want to leave their kids something as opposed to letting the government have it and waste it on crap like this tory government!

[Sam-AVFC]

29 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Yeah but what about the ones that dont fall in that catergory? Thats the problem. Im sure most parents would want to leave their kids something as opposed to letting the government have it and waste it on crap like this tory government!

Everyone is entitled to leave a house worth up to £1m with no taxation due. That's quite a substantial 'something' imo! Also, we're talking a tax that is under 50% so any of the mega wealthy would still be able to leave vast amounts of their wealth if the trust loopholes were closed.

[foreveryoung]

39 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

Everyone is entitled to leave a house worth up to £1m with no taxation due. That's quite a substantial 'something' imo! Also, we're talking a tax that is under 50% so any of the mega wealthy would still be able to leave vast amounts of their wealth if the trust loopholes were closed.

Agree totally. Inheritance tax on a property left to your kids by your parents grafting there knackers off, is just not on. It's  been bought with money which has already been taxed.

[Sam-AVFC]

23 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Agree totally. Inheritance tax on a property left to your kids by your parents grafting there knackers off, is just not on. It's  been bought with money which has already been taxed.

Unfortunately it doesn't really work if we're not building new and affordable housing stock. I've already worked several times as many years as my grandma, who was able to buy a house in her early 20s for one years' salary as a trainee hairdresser.

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, Sam-AVFC said:

Everyone is entitled to leave a house worth up to £1m with no taxation due. That's quite a substantial 'something' imo! Also, we're talking a tax that is under 50% so any of the mega wealthy would still be able to leave vast amounts of their wealth if the trust loopholes were closed.

Is it a million? I thought it was 750k? When did they raise it?

The thing with inheritance tax it may as well be called a death tax as thats what it literally is

[Sam-AVFC]

1 minute ago, Demitri_C said:

Is it a million? I thought it was 750k? When did they raise it?

The thing with inheritance tax it may as well be called a death tax as thats what it literally is

Based on my vague memories of valuing properties for inheritance tax it's £375K per person in general with another £125K added each if the inheritance is a property that they live in. I may well be wrong though. It's been quite a few years and I did all I could to avoid doing that work!

[Rds1983]

9 hours ago, Sam-AVFC said:

Based on my vague memories of valuing properties for inheritance tax it's £375K per person in general with another £125K added each if the inheritance is a property that they live in. I may well be wrong though. It's been quite a few years and I did all I could to avoid doing that work!

You said everyone could leave upto £1m and then £375/125k here. Assuming the £1m bit was for a couple then which wouldn't apply in a lot of circumstances? 

Curious why you avoided this type of work, was it particularly complex or just naturally unpleasant due to the circumstances? 

[CVByrne]

13 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

Agree totally. Inheritance tax on a property left to your kids by your parents grafting there knackers off, is just not on. It's  been bought with money which has already been taxed.

That's not what we are targeting. It is these massively wealthy people who's kids will never need to work in their lives as a result. 

My view on society is we should give every kid the same chance as the next kid. But they all need to earn their way in life. That's why I believe there should be a cap of say £1m or £2m or something that any single person can inherit and the rest then goes to the state. This would almost eliminate income tax entirely. It would stop grotesque wealth accumulation. 

I know this view is extreme and it wouldn't be workable in a single country. So I would just create single person inheritance tax limits of say £1m at a lower rate of say 30% and increase the remaining balance above that to 60%. This would be applied to any UK assets regardless of where the owner was tax resident. 

I would couple this with a 1% wealth tax again on all assets but reduce transactional taxes like stamp duty and capital gains. The transactions are avoided by the rich so we will just tax the wealth not the transaction. 

I would form a part of HMRC that is set up in the way the Criminal Assets Bureau in Ireland was set up to seize the criminal assets of organised crime. This branch of HMRC would be tasked with working through the network of companies and complicated methods the rich use to hide their assets. Residential property in particular should only be owned by Companies / SPVs which are publicly traded or have individuals as share holders. This avoids the network of companies and off short companies owning residential property in UK. 

 

 

[ender4]

23 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

 

I know this view is extreme and it wouldn't be workable in a single country. So I would just create single person inheritance tax limits of say £1m at a lower rate of say 30% and increase the remaining balance above that to 60%. This would be applied to any UK assets regardless of where the owner was tax resident. It would also apply to all UK Citizens regardless of where they live, like the US does.

I don't think that would work.  Wouldn't rich people just sell assets in the UK and buy them elsewhere as they get older or ill to make sure they have no tax to pay to the UK govt?

[CVByrne]

10 minutes ago, ender4 said:

I don't think that would work.  Wouldn't rich people just sell assets in the UK and buy them elsewhere as they get older or ill to make sure they have no tax to pay to the UK govt?

Yes, that is the most likely scenario but if they sold the assets we would still be able to tax them via capital gains tax. 

[Demitri_C]

45 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

That's not what we are targeting. It is these massively wealthy people who's kids will never need to work in their lives as a result. 

My view on society is we should give every kid the same chance as the next kid. But they all need to earn their way in life. That's why I believe there should be a cap of say £1m or £2m or something that any single person can inherit and the rest then goes to the state. This would almost eliminate income tax entirely. It would stop grotesque wealth accumulation. 

I know this view is extreme and it wouldn't be workable in a single country. So I would just create single person inheritance tax limits of say £1m at a lower rate of say 30% and increase the remaining balance above that to 60%. This would be applied to any UK assets regardless of where the owner was tax resident. 

I would couple this with a 1% wealth tax again on all assets but reduce transactional taxes like stamp duty and capital gains. The transactions are avoided by the rich so we will just tax the wealth not the transaction. 

I would form a part of HMRC that is set up in the way the Criminal Assets Bureau in Ireland was set up to seize the criminal assets of organised crime. This branch of HMRC would be tasked with working through the network of companies and complicated methods the rich use to hide their assets. Residential property in particular should only be owned by Companies / SPVs which are publicly traded or have individuals as share holders. This avoids the network of companies and off short companies owning residential property in UK. 

 

 

I think two issues with this

1) makes rich people leave or declare themselves as no longer residents living in uk so they dont lose all their cash

2) a lot more fiddling from the rich

I agree the super rich should definitely pay more but not pay amount that is likley they dont pay anything as they will find a loophole to pay minimal or none at all.

Your plan only works onky if every country adopts these same rules

[foreveryoung]

Was gonna say this. The government are scared to over tax the rich and there companies as they will just move abroad. You would be shocked what subsidies these billion pound companies get in tax to stay in the country. I think Eccleston had something like 15 million written off from a owed tax bill.

[Sam-AVFC]

2 hours ago, Rds1983 said:

You said everyone could leave upto £1m and then £375/125k here. Assuming the £1m bit was for a couple then which wouldn't apply in a lot of circumstances? 

Curious why you avoided this type of work, was it particularly complex or just naturally unpleasant due to the circumstances? 

It would nearly always apply because you inherit your spouses unused allowance when they pass away. It's fairly uncommon for this not to apply as pretty much all inheritance is to children/grandchildren implying a couple. Obviously not unheard of though because there are plenty of single people leaving an inheritance, and there is the Virgin Mary to consider!

It wasn't particularly pleasant, but that's not why I avoided it. It was a box to tick for me training as a chartered surveyor and valuing houses isn't particularly exciting work.

edit - also can differ because of divorces etc, but each parent still gets the same tax free allowance to leave it's just unlikely to be used on the same house. If you're the only child of divorced parents and their remarried partners you could get a £1m property from each side with nothing to pay

Edited July 7, 2022 by Sam-AVFC

[CVByrne]

29 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

I think two issues with this

1) makes rich people leave or declare themselves as no longer residents living in uk so they dont lose all their cash

2) a lot more fiddling from the rich

I agree the super rich should definitely pay more but not pay amount that is likley they dont pay anything as they will find a loophole to pay minimal or none at all.

Your plan only works onky if every country adopts these same rules

1) They will need to give up their citizenship of the UK as well as their residency. They will also need to sell their UK assets which we tax via capital gains. 

2) As I said we set up a branch of HMRC like a criminal assets bureau to stop this. Assets in the uk (like uk stocks / property) will be taxed regardless of where the person owning them lives when they die. 

So all of this or just pay the higher rate of tax. Most of this can be done without changing the rate of tax from 40% to 60%  just so we can actually tax these people. 

I agree it requires more governments to have an agreed level of inheritance tax to become more effective.

[chappy]

18 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Decrease tax. Increase public expenditure.

I am a Civil Servant.  The Government and the Civil Service combine to waste ridulous amounts of money.  

The Government introduces flawed policies.  The Civil Service then implements them badly.  

I see this every day.

This is what I would’ve voted for but it wasn’t an option.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

59 minutes ago, chappy said:

This is what I would’ve voted for but it wasn’t an option.

It’s totally feasible but Governments need to change their ways.  Ministers are not interested in long term achievements.  They want results before the next election.  This leads to half arsed ideas being implemented in ridiculous time scales just to win popular opinion.