Budget 2009 proposals

Where do I vote?

You get to vote at the next election but Brown's 12 year tax and spend binge has prepared a wasteland for the next Tory govt. They will inherit a huge economic mess - just as they did on two previous occasions.

Meantime are there any other such proposals that you would add?

If not, why not pass on the message to your mates who may be members of that group of silent long-suffering taxpayers who worked hard and saved for the future only to see it squandered by Gordon Brown and his bunch of grabbing spongers.

Not sure it'd do any good - may just create a black market in them.

Hmm...wonder what they'd then have to do to feed themselves? Let me think...

Prison costs a lot more than paying someone benefits.

Agreed.

Why? The principle with any business/self employment is that you should be taxed on your profits, ie income minus expenses. Interest is an expense. It'd be better to raise CGT.

This effectively happens now I think with the annual allowance of close to that amount, and I think it's more than 10%. But there may have been transitional rules which protect large pots built up already.

Just scramble it and allow those who want to watch it pay for it.

Erm, who's going to pay back all the money that Brown's borrowed? We need more kids not less, there are two many pensioners being supported by too few taxpayers and this is going to get worse not better in the next decade or so.

Tax credits and income tax should be reformed though, to remove the encouragement for the poor to have loads of kids and the discouragement for middle income people to have kids.

What, by encouraging ambulance chasers? Already been done?

Like that's not done already? It'd be better to have a system where disability premiums in benefits were strictly for additional costs associated with the disability, rather than automatic premiums which don't usually reflect the extra costs.

The UK govt abolish an international quango?

Charge CGT on owner occupiers, but allow roll-forwards so anyone moving upmarket won't pay CGT on the sale of their old house. People moving downmarket would pay proportional CGT, and people moving abroad or leaving their house in their will would pay CGT on the whole lot. Abolish the single occupier discount for council tax. Both these might help stop excessive house price inflation which has been the main cause of excessive personal debt.

In message , Vet Tech writes

Issue everyone with smart black uniforms with a broken cross on the sleeve.

Just one amendment. Cancel No 19, whatever were you thinking of!

You missed some....

So you don't expect your MP from the stix to return to his constituency very often...?

Excellent.

You think old fogies would do a better job...?

This is, and has always been, a gross mis-interpretation. Why give a tax credit when no tax has been paid? (And you can't claim that CT has been paid pre-div, cos (a) it doesn't even amount to 10% in some cases, and if you want to "count" CT, then why not VAT, ER's NI, employess tax etc...?)

Are you discriminating against the like folk who previously did (and in future will ) do likewise for the Tories? The first duty of a government is to secure re-election.

Yes. Tax idiots at 100%, and (non fiscal, admittedly) impose compulsory euthanasia for all call centre staff, bankers, insurance-sector workers, viewers of soaps, civil servants, Radio 1 listeners, and anyone who doesn't support my view of life and everything.

HTH :-)))

And how does that square with Thatcher's comment (repeated in R4 Today Prog this morning) that her greatest legacy was Tony Blair? GB was not "World Chancellor" - but, as you may have noticed, the current financial mess is somewhat wide-spread.

To avoid taxing profits twice. Anyway there *is* a tax credit on dividend income even now, it's just not reclaimable, but it is used to offset tax where due.

So? It does in most cases.

Or levy CT on post-dividend profits then.

Because those are and always have been additive taxes and are designed that way. Taxing profits never was.

Yeah but other countries were much better prepared than us, they paid off debt during the good years instead of borrowing more. Brown was arrogant and stupid enough to think he had "abolished boom and bust" - it was all over government publications up to about a year ago.

That's why the IMF reckon the UK will face a worse and longer lasting recession than all the other major economies.

So they commit more crime to support themselves! Bright.

That must be the same taxpayers who voted for the government....but all deny it now.

Who did you vote for then?

But UK's borrowing is still modest. Think about mortgagees who borrow 3+ years of their pre-tax income. UK is not even borrowing one year's "income".

In most cases divs are paid to investors who have no prospect of claiming back tax. They end up paying 32.5%. Do you think that should be raised to

Are you seriously suggesting that UK should tax that part of profits which are ploughed back into the business?

So you think "additive" taxes are ok, but tax on income isn't?

Obviously, I think you've got it all wrong. Tax concessions (eg GiftAid) are one thing, but government donations to private pension funds (which is precisely what happens when reclaiming CT tax-credit when no tax has been paid) is not justifiable. Better would be putting the money into state pensions for folk who don't have occupational or private pensions.

Lets just say I have never voted Labour. I had to live in a Labour run council for 4 years of my life and that showed me how inept they were even at the local level.

Simple, make them work. Even if it's digging holes and filling them back in. It's cheaper than prison and it keeps them occipied. We must stop this dependency culture. Prison is better than a 3 star hotel. Plus you get better healthcare (eg dentistry) than you get out in the community plus lots lots more. It's far too cushy.

Because it promotes excess borrowing and it fuelled the property bubble.

Re-read. I said ANNUAL TAX

The truth is that families with more than 2 kids are predominantly already getting the other main benefits. They award themselves a wage rise by breeding another kid. Whole generation within these families have never worked and will never work and certainly will never pay any tax. And the ones with the largest number of kids are predominantly from ethnic minorities. And 16 year olds get pregnant so that they get housed for free away from their parent(s)

To stop the fat-cat vbarristers. Legal aid ballooned from £500M to £2Bn between 1997 and 2006 and we have 4 times the number of barristers than before. Do your research please.

Do you agree or not?

It's not an International Quango. It's the Independent Police Complaints Commission!

Bullshit, unless you conveniently exclude debt hidden under the carpet, like PFI projects and public sector pension obligations. Public debt is heading towards 2 trillion, ie close to 100k per family.

I don't think there are *any* cases where the tax can be reclaimed.

No they don't. If they are in higher rate tax band they pay 25% of the dividend they receive. If they are in the basic rate band they pay nothing. Because the dividend comes with a 10% tax credit which is set against their tax liability.

The suggestion is they should *not* pay CT on the profits distributed through dividends. Instead the recipients of those dividends should be liable for tax at their marginal rate (ie 40%/20%, not 32.5%/10% and no tax credit).

Erm, that's they way they are intended to work.

So only reclaim it when CT *has* been paid. Happy now?

Which will be practically everyone soon, the way things are going. The UK had one of the world's best levels of corporate pension provision in 1997, most large and even medium companies had generous final salary schemes. This has been destroyed over the last 12 years, hardly any companies are now offering final salary schemes, instead money purchase schemes which give no guarantees and are far less generous.

Limit overseas aid to poor countries, i.e. stop giving billions every year to rich European Union countries.

Abolish quangos like regional development agencies.

Finance public works through bond issues rather than rip-off PFI - greedy bankers make a fortune who then get bailed out by taxpayers anyway.

What if they prefer to mug grannies?

So address that.

No it didn't. Wasting property fuelled the property bubble - ie buying more housing than is needed. The UK population has increased by about 3% over the lat

So address CTC and means tested benefits. Not child benefit. Or use tax allowances like in most sensible countries, then you have to earn money to use the allowance.

I thought you meant the international panel on climate change.

So how much money would that save, and who would investigate complaints against the police?