With Niall's point on the media if your ever not doing anything much for a day watch a couple of hours of BBC news 24 or Sky News then flip to Al Jazerra and watch the same stories again, see how different EXACTLY THE SAME STORIES are. Al Jazerra are the least biased mainstream news channel IMO.
As for the "high earners" in the south east being able to afford it, WE CANT. I live in a very modest 1 bed house on the outer edge of the commuter belt (an hour train journey to the center of town) but my mortgage DOUBLE what a northen member would pay for the same house. My council tax is more, the supermarkets are more expensive (by pennies mainly but they are), pubs and resturants are more expensive and TBH anything where they have to pay staff is as the staff have to earn more for the staff to be able to afford to live in london and the south east. Yeah we earn more but the cost of living is substantially higher. I read a statistic a few months ago that said that most of the country spend about half of their earnings on their mortgage/rent, in london it's 2 thirds!
You will never get the entire world to agree level taxes and TBH when we do facebook will launch an intergallactic space station from which to base their operations and as nobody owns space they will pay no tax. I know you wont believe me and think that is the most mental of ideas but consider this, How much did facebook make last year? How much to launch a space mission? Which is cheaper, I'd bet the space mission if it isn't cheaper would pay off in a few years.
What pisses me off is something I found out while doing a fact check for posting in this check in an earlier post. At £100 or £150k/pa you go into the highest rate of income tax jumping from the 40% I pay to 45%. Could be more maybe but did you know that past about £50k you only pay 2% NI rather than 12% that most of us pay which pretty substantially offsets the higher income tax.
As for the "high earners" in the south east being able to afford it, WE CANT. I live in a very modest 1 bed house on the outer edge of the commuter belt (an hour train journey to the center of town) but my mortgage DOUBLE what a northen member would pay for the same house. My council tax is more, the supermarkets are more expensive (by pennies mainly but they are), pubs and resturants are more expensive and TBH anything where they have to pay staff is as the staff have to earn more for the staff to be able to afford to live in london and the south east. Yeah we earn more but the cost of living is substantially higher. I read a statistic a few months ago that said that most of the country spend about half of their earnings on their mortgage/rent, in london it's 2 thirds!
(28-10-2015, 10:34 PM)Kezzieboy Wrote: Sadly Chris' argument is partly correct, but that doesn't mean we should be combating tax avoidance. We have actual off-shore tax havens under our regulatory control; the Channel Islands, Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands. Why aren't we working together, at least in the EU if not the world to help force the wealthy to make their contribution to society?
I don't mean you, Chris, much as you bemoan the fact you have to pay taxes (even though it pays for your wages, education and healthcare), you are not the target of all this. The target are those earning 10x or 100x or more even than that of what you earn, and pay less tax as a percentage of their wealth. Does that not piss you off?
You will never get the entire world to agree level taxes and TBH when we do facebook will launch an intergallactic space station from which to base their operations and as nobody owns space they will pay no tax. I know you wont believe me and think that is the most mental of ideas but consider this, How much did facebook make last year? How much to launch a space mission? Which is cheaper, I'd bet the space mission if it isn't cheaper would pay off in a few years.
What pisses me off is something I found out while doing a fact check for posting in this check in an earlier post. At £100 or £150k/pa you go into the highest rate of income tax jumping from the 40% I pay to 45%. Could be more maybe but did you know that past about £50k you only pay 2% NI rather than 12% that most of us pay which pretty substantially offsets the higher income tax.