I think he probably meant in proportion to disposable income after essentials that everyone has to pay are taken out, such as rent, food, bills. If you take those into consideration those who earn between 20k & 40k usually work out as the highest taxed and those earning over 250k end up paying less tax as a percentage than even someone earning 15k. (I haven't the exact figures with me, but it was something like that)
Are you still standing by this even after GSK have said they had been planning it for months, and Tory Central Office have privately admitted to journalists that they made it up when they heard the news about the jobs (and that they realised it would leave George Osbourne open to a Commons enquiry on why he leaked info to a company about the budget in advance which is against Parliamentary rules and possibly illegal as well.)
I would be a bit dopey to believe that off the back of a budget GSK would immediately announce a huge logistical change like that? I raised it as an example on how tax breaks for corporations are used to get the economy going and how corporations are agreeing with the idea.
So, corporations agree with giving them tax breaks. I could never have worked that out ;-) But the point remains that you (and the Tories) were using this change as an example of what happens with tax breaks, where the reality is they were going to do it anyway, so there is no link between this move by GSK and the budget - unless Mr Osbourne fancies spending time being Bubbas wife.
Thanks for summing that up for me, I couldn't figure a way to put it. Bloody Government taxing Greggs takes the proverbial.
Not all tax avoidance is bad. A lot of loopholes are put into place in order to persuade people to put their money in certain places. Pension schemes and ISAs are a good example of this.
Also, I just found this: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/50p-rate-tax-avoidance-cutting , which backs up what I was saying earler on in the thread. Maybe now that it's explained by a paid journalist and not some boring leftie student some people on here might respond to it and say what they think about it...? Because I think this whole situation is ridiculous. The more I learn about it the more ****e I realise the situation is at the moment. The reason given (albeit vaguely) for the abolition of the 50p tax rate is not valid. It's the very top earners that are to blame for the lack of revenue for the 50p rate over the first year. It's those that have an accountant that is paid to shift money/earnings into places that pay the least tax. This is the area where the most tax revenue is lost. Plainly. But like I've said, the government will not clamp down hard on these individuals as they are usually great allies to have. Because they have all the money. Money, money, money. Money rules everything.
Which is why HMRC define those as Tax Relief and not Tax Avoidance. Tax Relief is when a company/individual use an HMRC advertised scheme to save paying some tax, tax avoidance is when a company/individual find a legal loophole to avoid paying some tax. Does that help?
Precisely, which is why there are the 3 main catagories. The problem being people only seem to diferentiate between legal & illegal, so call anything legal "avoidance" and anything illegal "evasion", which leads to the common myth that ISA's are a form of tax avoidance. Glad I could help clear that up.
Good spot. Congratulations moogster. Bit too much information as to how you felt post conception though. I mean laters.
You forget that those big corporations employ thousands of people. For some reason, that is justification for not paying tax. Even though if they didn't employ those people, they wouldn't make any money. They are in fact doing us a favour by allowing themselves to profit greatly from our skilled workforce and take advantage of our relatively wealthy consumer base. A skilled workforce paid for by the tax system of course through schools and to a lesser extent universities. Silly lefties, how dare they expect a big company to pay their tax. The way I see it, the free market is the justification for the corporations not paying their tax, so therefore the free market can be the justification for letting them leave. Ban any company from trading here if they avoid their tax bill and then the workers, who already possess the skills to run the company, can open up a new company doing the same thing. I'm tired of being told that it is unfair to expect a large corporation to pay their whole tax bill, its not unfair in any way. If they want to leave, let them, and then theoretically a new company would exploit that new gap in the market who do pay their tax bill. Somewhat unrealistic, but we can dream. You'd think the way people talk about these things that big companies were here out of the goodness of their heart. Unworkable in reality, but it would be nice to find some sort of happy medium where it becomes socially unacceptable for a big company to avoid all of their tax bill. Perhaps the government could publish some sort of tax avoidance list and consumers could then vote with their feet - if they could care less of course.
None of them, they are all a bunch of lying c-words, I used to be a committed Lib Dem. Green if you absolutely have to...
http://www.politicalcompass.org/test Do this test don to decide where abouts the spectrum you are. I've done it twice. A couple of years ago i was a fraction down and right, but more recently a few months ago i did it, i was dead centre, 0.1 to the left i think.
Ha, I enjoyed that immensely. I'm more left wing and anti-authoritarian than the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, I was -7.00 on the social/economic axis and -6.72 on the authoritarian/libertarian axis. There's a good little graph about the political parties in the 2010 General Election too, it shows all three main parties as right wing and that the Labour party was more right wing than the BNP but less authoritarian.
Economic Left/Right: -8.62 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.92 That was fun. So economically I am really left wing, but socially im slightly authoritarian. About right.
I was -8ish on both. The questions were a bit limiting at times. I don't consider myself to be quite as close to advocating anarchism as the results would suggest.
Very interesting and not what I expected. I did not like the wording of a lot of the question as you had to think very carefully how to answer as they were double negatives. Economic Left/Right: -3.12 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.08 Interesting how most people are coming out –ve (left) when all of our political parties are leaning to the right.
I see that they are about to sell RBS for an enormous loss. Brilliant. So far we have lying about privatising the NHS, toll roads, selling political influence to businesses, abandoning the north and flogging RBS to the lowest bidder so we don't even break even on it. Quite the impressive list considering they have only been in power for two years.
Yet all this has had very little press coverage? Do the Tories have some kind of influence over the press?
I do wonder sometimes, although the economic right certainly has done a good job at making it socially unacceptable to be anything other than that which probably contributes to it. Chalk up most of the blame to having a ridiculously ineffective, idiotic opposition party though. It is up to them to shout to the rooftops about all of the terrible decisions of the incumbent government, but with wet blanket in charge they flounder about receiving no coverage and providing. I do find it strange that Livingstone not paying £50k of his tax bill has received more coverage than most of the above though.
Who bought RBS in the first place? As a state, how long should we bear the load and risks associated with owning a high street bank? Lying about NHS privatisation - that's your interpretation and a very narrow one at that Toll roads - Labour were already going down this route. Selling political influence is a fact of life. It's dirty and nobody wants to hear about it, but why else do people donate funds to political parties? It should be stopped, but until we accept that it's the norm, it's going to continue. And that goes for all parties. Abandoning the north? I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. What is the opposite? Opening archaic industries which are not profitable and funding them out of taxpayers money from the south, so that people in Burnley can have something to do between strikes?
Just out of interest, what are people's opinions on the increase in tuition fees? Personally, I think it was all blown completely out of proportion. Nick Clegg originally saying that he wanted university to be free is absurd I think. The universities in this country are some of the best in the world. If you're getting a 1st class education, why shouldn't you pay for it? It's ridiculous I think that some think they should receive a quality education and pay nothing for it. As for the costs themselves, people were complaining that they were going to be in serious debt after uni, but you don't have to begin paying back until you're earning over £15k a year. It's not like the student loans company will take everything from you. Plus, as bad as it may sound, these days are tough economic times, and the rising cost of tuition fees don't affect me at all. I need to be looking out for myself, not people applying to university for next year. Also, I think the rising cost of tuition fees has hopefully made many 16/17 yr olds seriously consider whether or not they actually want to go to uni. A LOT of people come to uni for a holiday, free money every term, parties and the occasional bit of work. I hope that the 9k a year fee has deterred many of the party boys and girls from coming to uni. This means they can go out into the world and get a job/internship whilst there will hopefully be less graduates from universities, which in turn should strengthen the credibility of a degree.
Universities were already full of braying, dumb, middle class twunts whose parents paid for them to go to private school and therefore into Uni and a decent job. having them pay £9000 a year just formalises things and lets parents without this sort of money know that their offspring will never have the chance to be a Dr or a lawyer no matter how hard they work or how clever they are. regardless of when this money has to be paid back it will act as a barrier. Fewer will see it as an option
