Or cyclohexanol. That’s the only thing I learned from A level chemistry.
Hang on a mo, in 2010 the personal allowance was 6475, now after a number of progressive changes,it will be almost 12k. Are you saying that this has been a shit policy?
BTW if is not a tax break for everybody. Once you hit a certain income, you lose the Personal allowance
I’m a bit confuzzlecas to what McDonald would actually do. He said he’d nationalise PFI contracts and then said only some. He said he’d pay off all student debt but seems to have pulled back from that. He said he’d renationalise the railways and then seemed to pull back from that. I’m not saying these are bad policies - just that he seems to like to give the impression of one thing but when pressed, things aren’t how they might have appeared.
You are going to get a “bless” from pap for that one
I prefer to call him McDonald (it was autocorrect, honest guv) so every time I see him I can go e-i-e-i-o
It’s an utterly shit policy.
You are correct that those earning over 100k lose it gradually. That’s 1m people out of 30m taxpayers. It’s not a lot of people. It’s a tax break for the vast majority of taxpayers. It’s still billions lost to the exchequer, still almost fuck all to the individual.
I think everyone should pay income tax, It gives people a sense of ownership in their society, and if wages were set appropriately, it’s no problem. Those billions could be used on public services.
Taking the personal tax allowance in its entirety, discounting those north of £100k, that is £66 billion a year to the exchequer, or £2,360 to the individual. I’m not saying that sum is not substantial.
I simply argue that more of the cost should be borne from the companies that thrive here, and that £66 billion might be better spent on reducing the tax we pay after our take home has been calculated.
I seem to recall as they started to raise the personal allowance they squeezed the higher rate limit mean8n* anyone paying 40% tax was broadly neutral. So it was a giveaway but only to the lower paid. Also anyone earning minimum wage in full time employment is paying tax. If they work 35 hours a week they earn 13650. They will pay roughly £400 in tax. How much do you want them to pay?
They can pay the full £2360.
Their employers can pay them better than poverty wages so they don’t lose out.
The workers are better off, public funds are better off. The only community that loses out is the business community, who let’s face it, have operated on increasingly favourable terms since 1979.
I can live with that. It’s time they paid their share. And if, as is often posited, they fuck off to other countries to escape paying a bit of tax, I’m sure there will be other companies prepared to pay a living wage and financially fit enough to know how to do it.
It’s a market north of 60m people, after all.
That works out at a minimum wage of £13 - reckon that might be somewhat inflationary
There are levers you can pull to reduce costs across the board. Fuel duty affects business and consumers, and is baked into the price of everything. That might be a short term lever to reduce inflation.
There are long term infrastructure decisions you can make to reduce them too. More efficient transport networks, less traffic on the roads, less pollution in the cities, less maintenance.
You cannot do that if you’re selling vast sums of the public purse for cheap political soundbites, or to benefit your friends that run large corporations, which is exactly what the last few chancellors have done.