"One in three households across Britain is now dependent on the state for at least half its income, it emerged today."
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A few reasons come to mind, but we can start with: "...intended to create a grateful electorate rather than free-thinking citizens"
Not only that, a culture of high tax and benefits creates citizens with a compliant, slaves-to-work (a job should make you happy foremost and then secondly be a source of income) mindset; deprived of hope.
How many of those homes on benefits would readily vote out IngSoc when it may be that they would be voting out the hand that feeds them?
The Tories need to say they will indirectly scrap benefits by cutting the taxes that pay for it. Believe me, more money will be available to taxpayers by not taxing citizens to set up a government-instituted welfare system, than taxing them and letting the money filter through a government bureaucracy and the plethora of civil servants.
To answer your topic, assuming you take, say 20 Billion in tax, and then pay out 20 Billion in tax credits/benefits a year later, what would the interest on 20 Billion/year come to ?
Anyway, the government *likes* it when they take money from you. The more they better, That way they can help you make sensible choices about where to spend it.
An electorate that can be frightened with scare stories that the other party will cut their benefits.. No matter how bad things seem to be, the unknown *could* be worse - no *will* be worse..
An electorate that has been *discouraged* from building up a financial reserve and *encouraged* to be in debt to the hilt - so is permanenlty on a knife-edge where even the loss of a small benefit would have an immediate and disproportionate effect.
An electorate either mortgaged beyond their means or living in rented accomodation, so they have no security and no independance and cannot afford any loss of income at all.
An electorate conditioned to take low pay and poor conditions of employment by the ever present threat of cheap labour from overseas.
The opposition dare not offer jam tomorrow by threatening the loss of benefits obtained today.
Okay, fair enough, if they're pensioners then benefits may be due as their earning power is eroded by very old age.
That said, there was an article a while back about an old woman who ended up with a negative monthly income after deducting Council Tax from her benefits due.
Which brings me back to the question...
I think if people say that the poor will go neglected if the taxman doesn't pay for their benefits, they've obviously not experienced how we are blessed by being a blessing to others.
A £20 bn. tax take has to be collected and accounted for. Thus less then £20bn. in reality reaches the treasury.
In addition £20 bn. paid out in benefits carries with it distribution and assessment cost and so the net public outlay is more than £20 bn.
There must be more than me who find themselves in the position of being both a taxpayer and a benefit recipient. Both of the above costs are therefore incurred in my case.
Two alternative questions need to be asked. If I am so rich as to warrant taxation then why am I receiving benefits or (alternatively) if I am so poor as to need benefit, then why am I being taxed? It should surely not be beyond the reach of human ingenuity to devise a system whereunder what I owe can be deducted from that to which I am entitled or vice versa in order that I may be credited or debited accordingly.
That would certainly create room for reduction of both the tax burden and the benefits bill as well as surely reducing costs of government.
Two alternative questions need to be asked. If I am so rich as to warrant taxation then why am I receiving benefits or (alternatively) if I am so poor as to need benefit, then why am I being taxed? It should surely not be beyond the reach of human ingenuity to devise a system whereunder what I owe can be deducted from that to which I am entitled or vice versa in order that I may be credited or debited accordingly.
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You're assuming...
the benefits should always go to the tax-payer - but not always the case - e.g Child Benefit, CTC/WTC, AA etc
that today's tax-payer is also tomorrow's tax-payer - but not always the case - e.g. if you leave work no mechanism exists to pay your benefit through payroll;
all benefits should cease the moment you're a tax-payer - so would you be happy to lose benefits, just because, say, you receive a state pension, a maybe bit of interest on savings so that your total income slightly exceeds the personal allowance?
self-employed earnings are known before accounts are available, so entitlement to benefits can be established month by month.
There are plenty more reasons - which isn't to say the current system is even close to ideal - but plenty of bright sparks have so far failed to find an answer which pleases everyone.
(By the way, it helps not to post in "quoted-printable" - for those of us using OE, it suppresses the auto-insertion of ">>>" in replies... Thanks)
You, and those in your position, are supposed to be spending so much of your income that you actually need the money you get in benefits to maintain your current lifestyle.
It may be difficult for the party in power to persuade you that the "other party" will increase your taxes. The "other party" may have a reputation as being a lower taxation party than that currently in office.
However, it isn't going to be so difficult to worry you that the "other party" will cut benefits - particularly benefits that you possibly "don't need" because you earn enough to be paying taxes.
Thus the current lot want as many people on benefits as possible - even if they earn enough to pay tax.
If they merely offset the benefits against tax and you paid less tax as a result - you wouldn't fear the election of a party that historically reduced income tax, would you? You could only be better off.. But a party coming in that reduced tax, but cut benefits even more....that might cause a bit of anxiety..
Such reports are usually nonsense as a pensioner on benefits income only is likely to be entitled to council tax benefit as well and therefore wouldn't have to pay it. For her to be in a position where she had to pay council tax then she must be on significantly more income than benefits alone and/or have significant savings.
But this is mere dogma e.g. the practice of making child benefit always payable to the mother on the assumption that if it were paid to the father then in 1% (perhaps) of the cases, neither mother nor child would benefit from it. A more sensible system would be for benefits to be either transferable or payable directly into a bank or similar institution which is what recently has begun to happen. The days of the giro encashable at the post office are gone.
Where a taxpayer does not earn sufficient to cover the value of his benefits he pays no tax and instead receives a balance credit which would be paid along with his wages/salary. If he is unemployed the credit could be paid to a nominated receiver (bank, building society, even individual) What does it matter so long as he gets the money?
Let's look at an analogy.
If I owed you £25 and you owed me £20 then I would not pay you £25 as you pay me £20. Rather I would pay you £5 and cancel the debt owing to me. That's because we are sane and sensible. Why can't governments show the same sense?
I have already covered that. Non workers would appoint a receiver.
I don't lose any benefits. If my tax liability exceeds my benefit entitlement, then what I lose on the roundabouts (benefit payments) I gain on the swings (reduced tax deduction)
Self employed people have the problem of meeting annual tax bills (in arrears) as it is.
The beauty of this (not my) system is that it gets rid of one of two seperate systems one expensively employed in collecting taxes and the other equally expensively employed in distributing benefits. It also means that figures relating to government revenues and government spending become more representative in te real sense because they realate to net rather than gross figures.
For example goverment spending on social security is estimated at some £130 bn.? Whatever the figure it is nowhere near that since much of that figure is recovered (expensively) as tax from the recipients. Similarly the government levies an average personal tax rate of around
35% In reality it is lower because it refunds a proportion of the said tax in benefits.
But this is mere dogma e.g. the practice of making child benefit always payable to the mother on the assumption that if it were paid to the father then in 1% (perhaps) of the cases, neither mother nor child would benefit from it. A more sensible system would be for benefits to be either transferable or payable directly into a bank or similar institution which is what recently has begun to happen. The days of the giro encashable at the post office are gone.
### Stuff like CB can - and extensively already is - paid direct to bank. And the parents can choose who receives it. Are you against giving this choice?
Where a taxpayer does not earn sufficient to cover the value of his benefits he pays no tax and instead receives a balance credit which would be paid along with his wages/salary.
### You want to burden small emplyers even more...?
If he is unemployed the credit could be paid to a nominated receiver (bank, building society, even individual) What does it matter so long as he gets the money?
### Because you're proposing another load of bureacracy - to verify cessation (or resumption) of employment and then stop, start and switch payments / receipts.
Let's look at an analogy.
If I owed you £25 and you owed me £20 then I would not pay you £25 as you pay me £20. Rather I would pay you £5 and cancel the debt owing to me. That's because we are sane and sensible. Why can't governments show the same sense?
### You and I would know each other, and simply discuss and agree the £5 xfer. Who would HMRC (or whatever agency) chat to and arrange these things? Employer, individual, bank, spouse.... It's unworkable without colossal extra admin cost.
I have already covered that. Non workers would appoint a receiver.
### A receiver? You mean a bank? Heaps of people don't have banks.
I don't lose any benefits. If my tax liability exceeds my benefit entitlement, then what I lose on the roundabouts (benefit payments) I gain on the swings (reduced tax deduction)
### So you're not arguing that being a tax-payer automatically means you should have no benefit entitlement? (You wrote earlier "If I am so rich as to warrant taxation then why am I receiving benefits...") If you're confining yourself to the payment mechanism, then you need to recognise that physically making the payments is the low-cost trivial bit. Working out (a) what tax, and (b) what benefit is / are the expensive things. To link the results in order to make a single payment or recovery would, I feel sure, cost at least as much as the second payment / receipt you hope to avoid for those people who do actually pay tax and receive benefits.
Self employed people have the problem of meeting annual tax bills (in arrears) as it is.
### A problem - paying in arrears? Try paying in advance - much harder !!
The beauty of this (not my) system is that it gets rid of one of two seperate systems one expensively employed in collecting taxes and the other equally expensively employed in distributing benefits.
### No it doesn't - someone still has to verify income, allowances, entitlements etc. You're only proposing to save some BACS xfrs...
For example goverment spending on social security is estimated at some £130 bn.? Whatever the figure it is nowhere near that since much of that figure is recovered (expensively) as tax from the recipients.
### Who wants to employ loads more civil servants working that out. Or - precisely parallel - working out how much of our defence budget is immediately recovered as PAYE on soldiers pay? Or VAT on the things school teachers buy with their state salaries?
They could chat to themselves. For most families HMRC do two separate assessments of income, once for income tax and once for tax credits. The *same government department* requires them to declare their income etc twice (with slightly different definition of income so as not to make it too easy). HMRC work out how much tax is due, and in a completely separate exercise, HMRC work out how much tax credits they are due. One can never be offset against the other.
If the family are also claiming means tested benefits like housing benefit etc, or EMA, they then need to declare their income etc *again* to the govt.
Colossal admin costs? We're there. How about assessing a family *once* for all taxation and benefits.
The reason to tax and pay back benefits is to pay for the stuff nobody really wants to pay for, i.e. the things many people appear to believe should be 'free'.
If you ever lived in a flat you see this effect in micro-cosm - nobody gives a flying fig about cleaning/repairing the common parts which typically get neglected and vandalised. The only exception is when people are forced to pay for it through a service charge.
Child allowance, like all other benefits, would be replaced by a tax allowance of equal value and thus would become payable through wages through reflection in the tax code which, unlike the present code would empower employers to add to wages in cases where tax liability didn't exceed benefit entitlement. Negative income tax in effect.
No extra burden at all. Employers already have to maintain tax records and utilise tax tables un PAYE arrangements. The only difference would be that new tax tables would extend below the zero tax liability level. I realise of course that most employers these days employ software to which the systerm would be a cynch.
No I'm not!
All I'm proposing is that the new P45 or its equivalent should reflect tax/benefit status (in the form of a code) and a statement of net tax/ benefit deducted/paid pretty much as is the case now.
It's merely the principle I was illustrating. A receiver bank would only be used in the absence of an employer in which case benefit would be paid directly into a bank account as is the case now,
Which is the very reason why I use the term receiver. An unemployed or casually employed woman might for example prefer to transfer her benefit entitlements to a husband or partner or even a relative who would simply combine them with his/her own and hand over the money. It would simply be a matter for the individual.
No I'm not, I'm simply proposing a complete integation of the tax and benefit systems under one department. I really don't see where the problem lies. Someone either has responsibility for children or not. They are in work or they are not. Sick or well, disabled or able bodied and so on. It's a box ticking exercise really. It gets expensive when it becomes too elaborate through trying to be all things to all men which probably ends up by causing as much injustice as justice.
Both the present tax regulations and the present benefits regulations run into tens of volumes each. This comes about through regular "tacking on" of each Chancellor's effort to introduce more justice into the system. The overall result is a godsend to accountants and financial advisors. It's a nightmare to the rest of us. A tax or a benefit system that is so complicated as to only be comprehensible to professional experts (and even they tend to run to courts for rulings on it) is long overdue for reform. The volumes should be pulped as soon as expedient.
I'm sure these same accountants and financial advisers would disagree with me. Of course they would and we all know why.
I've been a PAYE contributor all my working life and beyond.
No more than is necessary under the present system and probably a damn sight less. On the income side the system is to a large extent self monitoring.
I certainly don't wish to see more civil servants. The one and only target I would ask any government to set would be a 10% cut in the size of the civil service within the space of one parliament and a further 10% cut during the next. Such savings can only be made if government is prepared to sweep conservatism and departmental inertia to one side and look for new and better ways of doing things,
I can't understand this!
I use Google groups and can recommend it. The drawback is that it doesn't allow killfiling (but the best killfile of all is non response) and I suppose would get either fiddly or expensive if you were using a pay-as-you-go dial up.
I've had no other complaints and when I look at others' posts involving myself the >> are there alright.
Back in the stone age when I used OE I seem to remember that the > could be replaced by any other symbol by entering one of the facilities on the action bar. I even went to the trouble of loading down the group using OE on this machine and then tried to find the appropriate facility.
Alas I failed. Perhaps OE has been updated since I used it regularly.
Most employers determine wage/salary by reference to an employee's age. By age 40-45 employees are getting to be expensive to employ, so at the next review of staffing levels it is the staff over 40-45 who are chosen for de-selection. The recent legislation against age discrimination in employment makes no practical difference.
40-45 is not 'very old age', given the increase in life expectancy.
The result is that many of us are pushed out of work with little prospect of ever getting again the kind of work for which we are experienced and qualified, and although we may diligently apply for job after job have no hope of re-employment.
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