Help Changes to UK tax system

[ileks]

OK so I have an interview tomorrow where I have to give a presentation in which I suggest some changes to the UK tax system (given the defecit we are running - no changes to public spending, just tax changes).

I've given up trying to be clever here. You can't quantify anything - tax increases decrease net spending but reduce GDP.

Does anyone have any suggestions? All I have to talk about so far is inheritance tax. My argument is completely unscientific. Right now inheritance tax makes up just 2% of UK tax receipts. That's less than we take from Beer and Cider. I think (given how much property prices have risen, how the gap between rich and poor has increased) this should be higher. I'm going to suggest a more progressive system (right now it's just a £325,000 cut off) that results in more tax revenues.

Along with a load of statistics from the OBR about defectits, GDP growth and total public debt that's all I have. If anyone's read any interesting articles lately, or encounters a tax that's clearly bullshit in real life please let me know! Cheers.

 

[Scouse]

Wealth cap of £100,000,000. Any wealth beyond that returned to the state, immediately.

Hey presto, shitloads of cash for the treasury, the tiny amount of people worth more than a hundred million pounds are still rich beyond the wildest dreams of almost everyone.

Education and healthcare spending can go through the roof! Society transformed, yadda yadda yadda.

Job jobbed.

 

[Chilly]

A reduction in corp tax coupled with a new income tax band at half a million quid. The reduction in corp tax would grease the wheels of the economy and ultimately not reduce tax receipts as the money would just circulate anyway (into salaries, dividends, price cuts and other profit distribution).

Also remove any and all tax dodges available that are based on residential property.

 

[ileks]

Wealth cap of £100,000,000. Any wealth beyond that returned to the state, immediately.

Hey presto, shitloads of cash for the treasury, the tiny amount of people worth more than a hundred million pounds are still rich beyond the wildest dreams of almost everyone.

Education and healthcare spending can go through the roof! Society transformed, yadda yadda yadda.

Job jobbed.

Slightly extreme but I do appreciate the reply

 

[Chilly]

Wealth cap of £100,000,000. Any wealth beyond that returned to the state, immediately.

Hey presto, shitloads of cash for the treasury, the tiny amount of people worth more than a hundred million pounds are still rich beyond the wildest dreams of almost everyone.

Education and healthcare spending can go through the roof! Society transformed, yadda yadda yadda.

Job jobbed.

Why would Mr Branson bother continuing to build his highly successful (and socially useful) empire after he'd got his first £100m? He wouldn't, would he? Stupid fucking policy conceived out of greed and stupidity.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Increased taxing on "harmful" products, like sugar, tobacco, alcohol, prostitutes. Tax prostitutes. Legalize prostitutes. 6.9.

 

[Scouse]

A reduction in corp tax coupled with a new income tax band at half a million quid. The reduction in corp tax would grease the wheels of the economy and ultimately not reduce tax receipts as the money would just circulate anyway (into salaries, dividends, price cuts and other profit distribution).

Yep. Reduce corporation tax to zero already ffs.

I'm fed up of paying tax (when I actually bother working) - and corp tax is certainly the best way to help anyone running a business tax-efficiently take their profits out of the company without having to pay PAYE or any of the other "optional" poor people's taxes that the vast majority of workers have to pay.

I promise I'll spend it on the poor of the UK, rather than a house in the Caymens and the slow drib-drab of cash out of the country every time I catch a tax-deductable (on the company) flight. HONEST.

I mean, last time I worked I had to pay almost 20% on my gross proceeds!

 

[ileks]

A reduction in corp tax coupled with a new income tax band at half a million quid. The reduction in corp tax would grease the wheels of the economy and ultimately not reduce tax receipts as the money would just circulate anyway (into salaries, dividends, price cuts and other profit distribution).

Also remove any and all tax dodges available that are based on residential property.

I like the idea of a corp tax cut. Not keen on the higher tax band because they will just argue it will be avoided (see the 50% rate collecting less tax than when it's 45%). I can justify the corp tax cut with the increase in inheritance tax. I could potentially quantify this as well. Good stuff.

 

[Scouse]

Why would Mr Branson bother continuing to build his highly successful (and socially useful) empire after he'd got his first £100m? He wouldn't, would he? Stupid fucking policy conceived out of greed and stupidity.

I knew this would be your argument.

It's retarded outdated 18th Century thinking and shows a total lack of understanding of human motivation.

Branson does it because he enjoys it. There's a handful of money counters - but successful people do it because they enjoy the challenge of what they do.

They wouldn't stop. They could happily work to provide money for a Bill & Melinda Gates style foundation which gives anything above 100 million back to the society they earned their money off. Doesn't have to go back to the state necessarily.


And whilst you're at it - inheritance tax of 100% for anything over five million*. Your kids should be comfortable but they should have to work for their living rather than generations of self-entitled arseholes who're living off granddaddy's wealth and running businesses that they had no hand in helping build whilst making billions in investment profits on money that they never earned in the first place.



*Edit: And that'd land us the billions that the Queen and her family of inbreds have sat earning them even more money.

Keep the Queen, the Royal Family. They can have their titles. But the wealth that they've got locked up should be doing good. And at £100 million per person wealth cap they'd still be a billionaire family.

It'd also give an incentive for rich people to have loads of kids - if their wealth has given them a fantastic level of education, better health, a better outlook on life and better manners then we need these people to be breeding like rugrats to counter the bazillions of chavs that are pumping them out

 

[ileks]

And whilst you're at it - inheritance tax of 100% for anything over five million. Your kids should be comfortable but they should have to work for their living rather than generations of self-entitled arseholes who're living off granddaddy's wealth and running businesses that they had no hand in helping build whilst making billions in investment profits on money that they never earned in the first place.

This is more feasible.

 

[soze]

Wealth cap of £100,000,000. Any wealth beyond that returned to the state, immediately.

Hey presto, shitloads of cash for the treasury, the tiny amount of people worth more than a hundred million pounds are still rich beyond the wildest dreams of almost everyone.

Education and healthcare spending can go through the roof! Society transformed, yadda yadda yadda.

Job jobbed.

How could that work though. If it was announced as coming I would move all of my money out of the UK as soon as possible. Or transfer cash to Diamonds and Gold stick them in a safety deposit box and not declare them. All I see happening here is everyone with that sort of money jumping ship.

 

[ileks]

Increased taxing on "harmful" products, like sugar, tobacco, alcohol, prostitutes. Tax prostitutes. Legalize prostitutes. 6.9.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten the High Class Hooker Metric (HCHM) first proposed by professor Tohtori in 2012. I shouldn't be dealing with GBP or dollars but in Hooker hours (Hhs). Amateur mistake

On a serious note, we already tax alcohol and tobacco significantly. There are arguments for a tax on sugar but they're not really economically motivated.

 

[Gwadien]

Don't look at the tax payer for a source of money, and look at the waste at local councils.

Job jobbed.

Letting off a bunch of minimumish wage people, when there's people in the council on 60-70k who's primary job is to decide who keeps a job or not.

Get rid of THEIR fucking job.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Ah yes, I'd forgotten the High Class Hooker Metric (HCHM) first proposed by professor Tohtori in 2012. I shouldn't be dealing with GBP or dollars but in Hooker hours (Hhs). Amateur mistake

Don't forget to bring up that the HCHM needs to be compared to the Low Class Hooker Metric because of the 2003 Equal Hooker Taxation act, wouldn't want the working class to get shafted. Also the Hhs in LCHM only applies to money earned above the Reasonable Hooker Cost, as set yearly by the General Hooker Commission.

 

[Raven]

Why would Mr Branson bother continuing to build his highly successful (and socially useful) empire after he'd got his first £100m? He wouldn't, would he? Stupid fucking policy conceived out of greed and stupidity.

And a huge creator of jobs, tax revenues, innovation leading to the betterment of mankind (like cheaper space travel)

 

[ileks]

Don't look at the tax payer for a source of money, and look at the waste at local councils.

Job jobbed.

Letting off a bunch of minimumish wage people, when there's people in the council on 60-70k who's primary job is to decide who keeps a job or not.

Get rid of THEIR fucking job.

Needs to focus on tax changes, although I accept these go hand in hand with spending changes.

 

[Gwadien]

Needs to focus on tax changes, although I accept these go hand in hand with spending changes.

Is this interview at a council by any chance?

 

[ileks]

Is this interview at a council by any chance?

No it's at a big financial services company. This makes the issue of tax loopholes a bit of a no-go as well.

 

[Chilly]

I like the idea of more harcore inheritance tax rules, but taxing someone on money they earned themselves above some magic number is just insane, in my view. Fine, cut the kids, off, give them motivation to get busy, but fuck you and your communist friends if you think I'm not allowed to somehow work my way to £10bn and then do whatever the hell I like with it.

 

[Gwadien]

Don't inheritance taxes already cripple old money families?

 

[Chilly]

Don't inheritance taxes already cripple old money families?

No, because you can muck around with trusts. The number of loopholes is decreasing in that regard but if you're properly rich, there are ways around it.

 

[ileks]

Don't inheritance taxes already cripple old money families?

It's 40% of everything over £325,000 (including gifts within 7 years of death), yet it only raises around £3bn a year (or less than 2% of our tax receipts). I could be talking out of my arse here but it just seems like far too little.

 

[Raven]

Quite frankly I would rather burn my money and property when I die than give it to the state.

Fuck the state and the lazy fuckers that leach off it tbh.

 

[ileks]

Quite frankly I would rather burn my money and property when I die than give it to the state.

Fuck the state and the lazy fuckers that leach off it tbh.

If I said you could have really high inheritance tax but lower income taxes, VAT and corp tax which would you choose?

The argument that the state leeches or wastes money is becoming less viable as well. By 2018 we will be spending the lowest % of GDP on public spending since WW2 (assuming, of course, that proposed cuts continue and GDP grows as forecast). Dunno about you I had no idea this was the case until today.

 

[Scouse]

And a huge creator of jobs, tax revenues, innovation leading to the betterment of mankind (like cheaper space travel)

Wouldn't stop. Would continue doing.

Do you think if Branson was only allowed personal wealth of £100million he'd throw his toys out of the pram and go "I'm not going to take us to space".

Of course not, he'd have his island, his private jets, a shitload of cash and would continue to work with his companies funding space programs.

It's just that when he dies, we get to spend it on the betterment of mankind, rather than on his kids, who should be out creating wealth of their own rather than lounging about on daddies...

 

[Scouse]

Quite frankly I would rather burn my money and property when I die than give it to the state.

How you gonna do that when you're dead?

And you don't give it - the state takes it.

fuck you and your communist friends if you think I'm not allowed to somehow work my way to £10bn and then do whatever the hell I like with it.

And how is it "communist" to be allowed to have one hundred million pounds personal wealth? That's just ridiculously lazy thinking.

Like I said - doesn't have to be the state. But you don't get to piss it up the wall - you and your personal need to blow ten billion on hookers and coke can fuck off - you either better mankind from your massively priviledged position or you go to jail.

Jail for people like that = much better life for everyone else.

 

[Raven]

Wouldn't stop. Would continue doing.

Do you think if Branson was only allowed personal wealth of £100million he'd throw his toys out of the pram and go "I'm not going to take us to space".

Of course not, he'd have his island, his private jets, a shitload of cash and would continue to work with his companies funding space programs.

It's just that when he dies, we get to spend it on the betterment of mankind, rather than on his kids, who should be out creating wealth of their own rather than lounging about on daddies...

Nope, he would just move elsewhere and do it and take his job creation with him.

 

[ileks]

Nope, he would just move elsewhere and do it and take his job creation elsewhere.

This is the main problem. It's also why closing tax loopholes is largely pointless unless done globally or aimed at the (relatively) poor.

 

[Raven]

How you gonna do that when you're dead?

And you don't give it - the state takes it.

Exactly, fuck the state and all its inequality. Everyone should put in to the state whether through finance or through labour. Playing Xbox and watching Jeremy Kyle is not benefiting the state. Total exclusion of the lazy tbh.

 

[Chilly]

Wouldn't stop. Would continue doing.

Do you think if Branson was only allowed personal wealth of £100million he'd throw his toys out of the pram and go "I'm not going to take us to space".

Of course not, he'd have his island, his private jets, a shitload of cash and would continue to work with his companies funding space programs.

It's just that when he dies, we get to spend it on the betterment of mankind, rather than on his kids, who should be out creating wealth of their own rather than lounging about on daddies...

So what happens when you need private investment of billions of pounds? A privately built bridge or giant factory? Since no one is ALLOWED to have that much money, they won't be able to invest. It's such a stupid policy.