Ah, the nasty underbelly of leftist thought (sic) – tax the rich till the pips squeak.
I’m sorry, but no matter how wealthy I was, if the state was taking 80% of my output, I would make damned sure that either I wasn’t earning enough to generate that level of marginal tax or I would up sticks and leave the country, taking my wealth and my spending with me. As it is, I make damned sure that each year my accounts come in below the 40% bracket for exactly the same reason. I go to work to earn a crust for me and mine. I do not go to work so that the state can steal the bulk of it (even though it still does in indirect taxes). I refuse, absolutely to pay a 40% marginal rate because this is daylight robbery. So, my way around it is to stop working – or to spend the money that would otherwise be taxed on business related expenses to make sure that the state does not get its grubby hands on it.
We are already taxed more than enough. The very idea of taxing someone – anyone, no matter how wealthy – at 80% is obscene, repulsive, vile and is nothing more than naked greed and envy, so typical of the champagne socialist. The state does not need this money. What the state needs is to dramatically reduce itself so that it can live within reasonable means. The claim made in the article that OECD states are burdened with debt is simply evidence that they are pissing money away because they don’t have to actually go out to work to earn it. They content themselves with not having to worry about where it comes from, they just steal more from the ever obliging taxpayer and like the protection racketeers they emulate, will make yet another offer we cannot refuse – go to gaol or pay up and we, obligingly, pay up because we have no choice; the state having the monopoly on violence if we refuse.
Yet that burden of debt is manageable, as is any debt as every debtor who has had to face it has discovered – cut your fucking spending. I had to do it when faced with a mountain of debt following a loss of work. This means slashing all unnecessary government departments, stopping all spending on the arts, media and sport, for example, as well as all spending on the third sector – the usual suspects of the fake charities, quangos, think tanks and single-issue pressure groups and to stop pissing it away on foreign aid.
Then we could get to keep more of the money we earn – which is ours – and spend it as we see fit, not as some politician or bureaucrat sees fit. I didn’t have much time for Margaret Thatcher but she was right in her assessment of socialism – sooner or later, they run out of other peoples money. As we see in this nasty little article arguing for theft tax at 80%, the Guardian still peddles the poisonous ideology of stealing other peoples money for the benefits of an obese state and a parasite class that uses violence against its citizens. And as such, is a vile, evil little rag written by nasty little shits.
But we knew that already…
I read a very interesting little article the other day about France and the French Socialists and their tax on the rich http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/10390571/france-hollande-taxes-socialist-farrage.html
The French whose current tax rate on the rich is 80% are in dire straights I bookmarked this article and had intended to use it for a piece for here but read it and see what you think. It shows exactly what and where a tax rate of 80% will get us.
I agree with you why should those who work hard to earn a bit more or are more highly skilled subsidise the lazy left.
My ex boss was a self employed make-Up Artist she travelled all over the world working and I ran her homes and everything else including doing her taxes and making damn sure every penny was accounted for to keep her below the 40% margin, When she had to have a year off due to ill health the tax office tried to extort a whopping tax bill out of her and we really struggled to sort it out, because she was self employed and had private health insurance.
It turned into a living nightmare.
I miss my job but I can tell you the one thing I dont miss is pouring over the receipts and the spread sheets for the tax return.
I am just awaiting the fresh air tax before I finally shuffle off this mortal coil.
If you want to do a piece here about the French tax issues, please do. They are finding out the hard way what a nasty piece of work Hollande really is.
I had a problem with the HMRC a couple of years back. I had not earned enough to pay tax, but that didn’t stop the bastards knocking upon my door making threats with menaces. Time and again, I had to keep saying that I had not earned enough to pay tax and eventually, my accountant got them off my backs, but the menaces and threats convinced me that the HMRC and the state they serve are pure evil.
An excellent piece. I agree with every word.
When I was young and stupid, I thought that it was a fine idea to tax the rich until they screamed. As I got older, I realised that this was based on nothing more than envy. Now that I am old and stupid, I know that taxing the wealthy results in only one thing: they fuck off to a country that is less…demanding. And who could blame them?
I work for a German/Swiss company and the boss is an entrepreneur. If it wasn’t for people like him, risking all, I would not have a great job today. We should not ‘reward’ these people by stealing all of their money.
Tax cuts. For all. That would leave more in our pockets to spend (something they need us to do to keep the economy moving) and/or save more (which reduces our ‘burden’ on the state when we retire) and I cannot for the life of me see why they don’t get that.
As you say, they should stop the frivolous spending. Leaving the EU would help us out to the tune of 140 billion a year, for a start.
CR.
When I was younger, I was happy to call for the rich to be squeezed. Like you and unlike the nasty little toe-rags who wrote the article in the Groan, I grew the fuck up.
Yes, 80% is too much, but please, do get real!
Just how many people who “should” pay tax at 80% will pay tax at 80%?
They will pay very clever accountants lots of money to avoid the tax by, for example, becoming a non-dom, setting up a family trust, putting the cash off-shore, paying into a pension plan, working in a low tax environment etc etc, the same way that companies like Starbucks do. Similarly, they can avoid National Insurance contributions by having lots of jobs which pay just below the threshold or by taking dividends rather than wages. As long as the accountants fees are less than the tax to be paid at 80% they are making a profit!
There is a whole industry out there working on tax avoidance. Just think, if we simplified the system and got all the tax that we should from the “rich” them we would all be paying less tax. and the brains that devise the dodges could be re-directed to something productive.
We could start by adopting the American system: you want a US passport – you pay US income tax.
Doesn’t really matter, the principle is still wrong. The state has no business stealing that much money from anyone. We do not work for the state, we work for ourselves. It’s one thing to argue for collective provision of services, it is another to arse rape peoples’ wallets because you think that the efforts of their work should be redistributed to those who are not productive. It is unethical.
I agree that tax should be kept simple. However, even with a simple system, tax avoidance is the proper way to go about things – it is our duty to withhold as much as possible from the avaricious, grasping, greedy bastards who will steal it and use it to fund their own lavish lifestyles. As a self-employed sole trader, I engage in very aggressive tax avoidance and have every intention of continuing to do so. I work for me, not the fucking state. The state is my enemy and we are in a state of war.
“if we simplified the system and got all the tax that we should from the “rich” them we would all be paying less tax”
That says it all about your views, Strawbrick. You think 80% is too much but you do think the rich should pay more so that you can pay less. I don’t consider myself rich as, at 54, I’m not able to retire but by most measures of the envious lefties I am. My annual income puts me in the hated 1%, I can do that on professional fees alone (working about three days a week with 10 weeks holiday) but I prefer to also be a one sixth owner of a company that employs 70 people. The reason I put in this extra effort, working 6 days per week and being contactable whenever I’m on holiday, is not so entitlement junkies like you can pay less tax but so that I can retire within 5 years completely independent of any state pension and able to continue to enjoy the lifestyle we currently live.
The real question is: why should the so-called rich pay a disproportionate amount of their hard earned income so that the less industrious can pay less? I don’t have a problem with paying more on a simple percentage basis, e.g. I earn a million so pay 200k if the tax rate is 20% while someone who earns 50k pas 10k. But why the eff should I pay 400k or 500k through progressive taxes so that others don’t pay their share. I reckon if I’m paying 20 times the tax that the average income earner is paying then I’m paying my fair share.
“We could start by adopting the American system: you want a US passport – you pay US income tax.”
What utter bollocks. If you live outside of the UK and make no use of the things the UK government provides through taxpayers money, why the hell should you pay UK taxes?
You’re just one of those people who feels others should work hard and succeed so that you can pay less for the things you receive from the government courtesy of taxpayers. Well, I’m not sorry that, while the tax system is so unfair to high earners, that I and my accountant do everything we can to minimise my tax liability. If the tax system was fair and simple, e.g. everyone pays 20%, then I’d fire my accountant and happily write a cheque for 20% of my income but you wouldn’t be paying less, Strawbrick, you’d be paying closer to what you owe in return for what you receive.