The government is crying at full lung that the budget won't reach. And whilst they've taken a few bob off the raging richie landowner gentleman farmers and leathery old cruise-guzzling, Daily Mailer boomer bastads, more is always welcome. I have an innovative idea for a new tax that will raise millions for our hard-pressed public services, will be extremely well-targeted and will not be controversial in the least. In fact I am certain that the *vast* majority will wholeheartedly support it. It's a tax on luxury goods. Personalised number plates. If you can afford to lash out however much to have R1CH or whatever as your number plate, then you can afford a little tax. Similar to what the mainly poor drivers of cheap old polluting bangers have to pay each year. After all, personalised number plates pollute and contaminate our view. So if your car has anything other than its original registration number, then it's £500 a year extra on the car tax. Not even a tenner a week. Very reasonable. If you don't want to pay, then you can change back to the original registration number at a minimal cost.
You obviously don't understand Clive. If you tax the rich anymore they will flee the country and we will lose...erm...something. They pay relatively low tax and many offshore their wealth....but they are "wealth creators" apparently so we can't do anything to upset them. We all get better off thanks to the trickle down effect.....any day now.
So what's propsed is a tax on a retained possession. The original issue price of numberplate is 100% tax, plus admin & implementation fees that are also taxed. There is an industry sector managing the marketing of issued plates as well as manufacture. This industry creates profit that is taxed and jobs and income that are taxed. If you want to put it on car then there's a government cost, which is taxed. If you want to hold on to your purchase, an item you own but not actually use, theres a cost, which is taxed. You are now proposing that to actually use your purchased item, which was made from remaining income after tax and after purchase tax and administration tax you should be taxed. Given every tax has an inherent cost and hence ineficiency to administer at what point do we stop taxing and actually look at what is being spent? Is it before or after the whole country grinds to halt. What happens if someone bought the plate years ago has now retired and has no disposable income. Do they have to sell assets to fund it? Reports are that 55% of the population are net receivers, think it's about time we thought about reducing spending rather than increasing taxation.
Yes. And the petrol they put in the car is taxed! And the oil! And their income! It's so unfair. Everything you do is repeatedly taxed. Your entry to the football is taxed. And the programme. And the burger. That's just a fact of life. It's no use whinging about it. Yes I agree there's a supposed "industry" in these vanity plates, but it's not like we'll exactly miss their labours, is it? If they want a job, we're desperate for carers. The person without disposable income from years ago, can sell the plate to a Richie or change it to a normal one at minimal charge. Anyway, the idea of a vanity plate is vanity, right? To show off about how well off you are. After my plan is implemented we will all be even more impressed with just how wealthy and well to do you must be. It's a win-win as far as I can see.
My post as per I think yours was somewhat in jest. However we can't keep thinking of things to tax. The number of people we're taking tax from is getting smaller and the number of people we're giving tax to is getting larger. It's unsustainable especially when you consider that less than 100% of the tax taken is given out due to administartion costs and inefficiencies. I get it, you don't like that some people have some disposable income. You can only penalise them so much before they say **** it and go on the take like the majority.
No, I returned your car to your drive and posted the keys through the letterbox when I had finished borrowing it,
You don’t need a new tax. Just reduce the VAT registration value to the personal allowance value. Then all those do it for cash businesses would have no incentive to avoid VAT by accruing cash and not putting the work through the books. Tax evasion by sole traders and small businesses dwarfs the amount avoided by Non Doms. Put VAT on everything, with say VAT on land and houses above £1 million at 5% above £2 million at 10% and above £5 million at 40% - you could then raise inheritance tax threshold to £1 million for every individual.
I quite like the idea of raising the taxes of people you don't like the look of or on things that are a bit naff. Clive is on to something I reckon. I propose a 'tracksuit tax' payable by anyone found to be wearing sportswear when not actually playing a sport
Some decent suggestions there. Assuming that the VAT on property would replace existing stamp duty, I'd add 20% or double the rates on 2nd properties. I'd still remove the primary family home from IHT though, especially if the VAT rule comes in. You could therefore reduce the IHT threshold to £500K. Receuving £500K tax free liquid assets in my opinion would be more than genorous, but I would but the onus of payment on the receiver rather than the estate and make it £500K per recipient not £500K total possibily even. there is the risk of this inflating the housing market, but hopefully the more draconian penalties on mulitple homes would counteract that side effect.. If you are to stick to IHT then you do need to remove the 7 years gifting and trust exemptions or make them applicable either side of death. Having a tax that can be fairly easily planned for to avoid only penalises the unfortunate or unprepared, not the rich which is it's intention.
Excuse my ignorance on the subject but how about something simple like making sure huge corporations such as Starbucks, Amazon etc pay what they owe?
Bit complex that. They do pay what they owe, technically and legally. The issue with multinational companies is that they can shuffle profit about to the place that charges them the least. They pay better accountants to do this than HMRC or any other government can afford. If you start to penalise them too much they stop employing in your country. In fact, there is an argument to say fck it. Lets have no corporation of business tax and load it on to income tax. At least they'll employ more in country, wages will go up, tax take will rise etc etc. For a global company we need to set global rules and we're never going to agree on that, so lets, just give local companies the same rules global companies enjoy and let them compete on a level playing field.
How much money were you expecting to raise ? And how much tax were you expected to lose with your plan ? Listen Pointdexter, as long as people spend their cash , as opposed to stashing it off shore then the wheels of the economy will grind on .
Threaten offshore places, UK and Non-UK connected, with nuclear annihilation if it is discovered any British money has been stashed there.
Rather than fiddle around with lots of complicated taxes simplify the tax system. I would start with income tax zero up to a fair minimum annual salary level - say £20k for starters. Then 10% on the next £10k; 20% on the next £10k and so on up to 60% at £80k and then 5% increases up to whatever top level takes your fancy. I would include the value of bonuses and share options as income as well as any other "perks" Set VAT at a low or zero level for basic goods then have a standard rate and a luxury rate Corporation tax set at a level that makes us internationally competitive Abolish other taxes that cost more to collect and admininster than they bring in - probably inheritance tax would fall into that category - better to tax the rich while they are living than when they go. I am sure there are lots of variations to these but anything that is simple to administer and difficult to avoid has to be better tha the mash up we currently have.
I would introduce a 100% business purchase tax - paid by overseas buyers of Uk businesses. Sure they could create a Uk company as a Trojan horse to buy a UK asset. But that investment vehicle would be subject to Uk law and tax.
In theory great in practice not sure it would be workable as you could simple duplicate the business off shore move the assets out and then close down the UK company. You'd then lose and UK corp tax that would have been collected and any UK based jobs. The only way to close that loophole would be tariffs. Better to give UK based companies the tax advantages international companies can benefit from so that they can compete on a level playing field then collect UK income tax from their employees and the other taxes on their spend.
It would make more sense to incrementally tax each cumulative lifetime £ earned beyond thresholds. It is when people start and have no assets at all while having babies it is most difficult - first £70k earned tax free to enable deposits to be built up by the yoof or squandered on blow if they wish. If you earn £100k straight out of university then your thresholds are used up faster while the minimum wage worker might get multiple years of tax-free income to reach their tax free threshold. If you are generating millions/billions per year then you are going to fly through the thresholds At the moment everyone’s income is backweighted to the coffin years when they need money least. By making a cumulative tax system it allows people to smooth their income more easily as they have effectively deferred paying tax on their income to later when they can more easily afford it. It is likely also easier to track long-term as it is just going to be a ledger of declared income over the previous years summed up, no weird predictions.
Great in theory but it just prevents people working when they build up some wealth. We have problems now getting senior doctors to work a full week because of punitive taxation, this would make it worse. If you let people accrue a lump sum before taxing then all you do is push the price of homes up. When you have a limited resource and give people more money to buy that resource it causes more issues than it solves. You need to tax income at a sensible level. One where the poorest are not taxed below a minimum living wage, middle income is where you start to tax and a higher rate for high income, but not too high as to take the incentive away from working. We don't need a system that taxes people too much then has to refund in credits and benefits and we can't have a system where more than half of the population are net receviers. We also need to make sure that those that are able to work do and it has to be cost effective for them to do so. I think the current middle and higher rates are in the right ballpark. The starting threshold needs to be higher though and the vast array of benefits, top-ups allowances etc need to be cancelled. Make the system simpler and cheaper to administer and therefore harder to evade/avoid. But more than anything we need to get a grip on our spending.
We need to bin off the overly generous advantages of salary sacrifice car schemes. All it does is give a tax discount to well paid people and inflate the profits of mainly foreign car companies. In no way can it be fair that buying a 2 year old electric car on finance directly is more expensive than getting the same model brand new on salary sacrifice.
It also creates a labour market friction in favour of the company as generally employees need to stump-up cash up-front to release themselves from these sort of benefits in kind schemes if they find a higher paid job elsewhere, which essentially gives the company a lot of power over wages.
