The Conservative Party under Kemi Badenoch

[takno]

The point isn't about tiny violins for high earners paying tax, but that the cliff edge leads those people to make the rational decision to reduce their income and lower the tax take.

That's fine, but the right approach to this is to get rid of the personal allowance taper, funded by making tax over 100k 50%, and then taper the loss of childcare. Any pretence that the Tories are making smart decisions about tax goes out of the window with their nonsense Inheritance Tax proposals tbh.

 

[edwin_m]

And the consequence of that is usually lowered productivity; some of those people are doing consequential work for the good of society or are highly skilled in some other area. (And some aren't!)

The cliff edge thing is real and has real world consequences.

I haven't seen anyone arguing against the cliff edge. The concern I have is the bung to people with unlimited incomes.

 

[AlterEgo]

I haven't seen anyone arguing against the cliff edge. The concern I have is the bung to people with unlimited incomes.

Given there are so few of these people, why should we care too much?

 

[edwin_m]

Given there are so few of these people, why should we care too much?

Perhaps the Tory party ought to care about the optics, for the sake of, as you say, so few votes. Then again, perhaps they don't.

 

[AlterEgo]

Perhaps the Tory party ought to care about the optics, for the sake of, as you say, so few votes. Then again, perhaps they don't.

Maybe they should, but you said it was a concern you had as if it was a bad policy which made you worried.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The point isn't about tiny violins for high earners paying tax, but that the cliff edge leads those people to make the rational decision to reduce their income and lower the tax take.

Several people have suggested the cliff edge is the problem, but the Tory solution is to extend this benefit to people regardless of income.

Even a taper will increase the marginal tax rate for these people, but we are generally talking about people who are in a very specific income band of between £100,000 and £125,000 per year.

But a high marginal tax rate isn’t an issue by itself, the issue is this cliff edge where you lose more from the loss of benefits (and free childcare and childcare tax credits are a benefit) than you gain through earnings. Once you hit about £125,000 or so then you’re overall up on the deal once again.

It does make me smile that the Tories are so focused on those earning £99,999 who don’t want to work extra and lose benefits. But those on Universal Credit who make the same financial decision are shirkers and skivers who need to be hit with a bigger stick.

AIUI, an individual on the Isle of Man who was paid £100k a year would have more take home than an individual in the UK who was paid £120k. A family situation compounds this of course. Yet you are describing yourself as "comfortably off", not "very high income"

You misunderstand my point. We, as a couple, earn this and we are comfortable. If you have two people each earning that then they will be well above comfortable.

High/very high/etc are of course subjective definitions. Compared to the average wage, a wage of £100k is very high. Compared to a FTSE100 CEO, a wage of £100k is very low. Personally, I don’t think we (as in the UK or the IOM) tax the latter group enough and we tax the former group too much.

As for taxation, we have lower income tax here (highest rate of 21%) but our NI contributions are significantly higher than in the UK. I am marginally better off than I would be in the UK but the difference isn’t as big as you’d expect, it’s about £30/month and that’s all because of the NICs. Those who can pay themselves in dividends or other types of income are a lot better off because they’re not subject to NI, which is where the appeal is for HNWIs to move here.

 

[MotCO]

It does make me smile that the Tories are so focused on those earning £99,999 who don’t want to work extra and lose benefits. But those on Universal Credit who make the same financial decision are shirkers and skivers who need to be hit with a bigger stick.

But isn't it better, for example for mental health, for people to go out to work? Also more socially rewarding, (not just financially) to go to work, with the possibility of gaining promotion, getting bonuses etc.

 

[WelshBluebird]

We, as a couple, earn this and we are comfortable.

It is worth saying here that a couple earning £100k between them will likely pay significantly less tax than a single earner on £100k.

Infact, assuming equal wages, a couple could earn £130k between them before starting to hit the amount of tax that a single person earning £100k would pay.
Or to put another way, a couple earning £100k between them, depending on how it is split, could take home more than a single person earning £125k.

So the "we are comfortable, others should be too" argument isn't really something you can say for certainty when it comes to this given how it gets worked out given how much more tax they could be paying.

You said in another post you earn £120k between you and it sounds like you are in the Isle Of Man - that means you take hope as a couple the same amount as a single earner in England / Wales earning about £150k, or to be even more explicit about the different, a single earner earning the same total (£120k) would take home about £15k a year less than you do. A £15k different despite the same "headline" household income is a huge difference.

 

[AlterEgo]

But isn't it better, for example for mental health, for people to go out to work? Also more socially rewarding, (not just financially) to go to work, with the possibility of gaining promotion, getting bonuses etc.

It is, generally. And that's what a good social security policy has to provide - a way out. What people are sceptical about is the blunt tool approach the Tories propose to bring.

 

[The Ham]

The point is that that saturated field has absorbed a lot of water already. When it is full it is full and yes, when it is at capacity that will result in the water flowing further down the river system. But it takes a lot of water to get to that stage. If it wasn’t there, if you concreted it over, that water would also just gone straight into the river system rather than been stored in the field- you’d have had a bigger flood, and for longer.

OK, real world example.

We are working with a developer starts on a large site pre Covid, for 2019 to 2022 every year without fail would complain that their driveway flooded (unsurprisingly it's almost the lowest point other than the ditch next to it for some distance).

That site is majority built now, nothing for the last 3 winters, even when we were getting calls about were our systems suitable as the developer was concerned about the water level in some of their systems (turns out that was due to neighbouring farmland sending water towards the site due to a failed pipe which has now been rectified).

Soil has a bad capacity for storing water, yes there's a lot of it, but let's say it's around 100,000 litres per acre. However, that's a much scarier number than it needs to be.

1m3 of water is 1,000 litres, so a pond with a base roughly 4.5m x 18m (by the time you cater for side slopes that's circa 12m x 26m) will easily hold that water.

Now yes, that pond will empty out between rainfall (even if that's a bit) however that's why it works, because there's then more storage (maybe not all but some) for the next rain storm.

It's leaving that site slowly. Typically the goal is that (say going into chalk via soakaways) is that half that water would soak in over a 24 hour window.

If your sending to a water course it is likely to be a bit faster, maybe around 6 to 8 hours for the same output.

Ah, see, some might say, that's going to cause flooding.

The thing is that's 6 to 8 hours after the storm has ended and is 1/2 the water, with the rest maybe taking double that again.

Even fairly normal fields over 10% of the water which falls on it will run off.

That's not even too bad for a 1 in 1 year storm, however, make that a 1 in 10 year storm and you've got to deal with about 150% of the water. Make that 1 in 100 and it's over 250%, maybe as much as 350% of the rainfall.

Yet the drainage systems have to not only cope with 1 in 100 plus 40% and still let the water out at the normal rate, even though it's storing 350% to 490% of the water of a 1 in 1 year storm.

That's before the latest guidance which is requiring more rainwater harvesting (used to be that a rain butt per house was enough, that's not nearly enough now) and whilst there's always the potential that no water was used since the last rainfall, for summer storms (which can be nasty) it's more likely that it'll provide some more storage.

The real issue isn't the volume of water, it's how fast it gets into the place it's going to cause flooding.

If it all gets there in under an hour, that's when you have issues, when you stop 1% of it from getting there until at least 2 hours after everything else then the risk is reduced. Do that enough times and flooding can stop being an issue.

 

[Tetchytyke]

But isn't it better, for example for mental health, for people to go out to work?

Yes, it is. But whilst the Tories are strangely quiet when it comes to removing or at least softening the same cliff edge for people on Universal Credit to encourage them back into work, they’re jumping up and down about the poor hard-done-by people on £100k.

So the "we are comfortable, others should be too" argument isn't really something you can say for certainty when it comes to this given how it gets worked out given how much more tax they could be paying.

Two people earning £60k will have two lots of tax-free allowance but one person earning £120k won’t have much tax free allowance. So yes, the single person will pay more tax, probably in the region of an extra £1000 a month based on my fag-packet maths of (£12k x2 x40%).

So yes, it’s not a completely fair comparison. But nobody earning that much money can say with a straight face that they’re poor.

 

[GusB]

But isn't it better, for example for mental health, for people to go out to work? Also more socially rewarding, (not just financially) to go to work, with the possibility of gaining promotion, getting bonuses etc.

Yes and no. It's certainly better for someone's health to feel that they're actively participating in society but mental health issues are often a significant barrier to getting into work in the first place, especially when it's difficult to get treatment for such conditions. GPs can only do so much, but a prescription for happy pills and access to a self-help app isn't necessarily the best solution.

There are also health conditions, both physical and mental, that fluctuate over time and while someone can be right as rain for most of the time, there will be occasions when they're not fine and completely unable to work. It's not that easy to find a sympathetic employer.

It isn't helpful when politicians simply dismiss mental health problems as "mild anxiety" and suggest that people simply pull themselves together - quite the opposite, in fact. It's also ridiculous to assume that cutting someone's benefits is going to magically give them a kick up the backside and get them back to work; forcing someone into a more stressful situation is far more likely to exacerbate the situation and make them even less fit for work.

Badenoch* is utterly clueless in this regard.

* Autocorrect always tries to change this to "Bad Enoch" :l

 

[WelshBluebird]

But isn't it better, for example for mental health, for people to go out to work? Also more socially rewarding, (not just financially) to go to work, with the possibility of gaining promotion, getting bonuses etc.

Work isn't this magical thing that makes things better all the time.
Infact for some people it actively makes thing worse.
And bad employers actively make things even more worse.

What I will say is that it is better for people to be engaged in society rather than doing nothing. But that could be volunteering, it could be doing some kind of hobby or activity, it could be a small side hustle or business, it could be a WFH job, it could be a job where you set your own boundaries etc. It doesn't have to be a 9-5 work for the man job that we all seem to be railroaded into. Sadly, the systems aren't really set up to allow anything else.

I know people on benefits who could work but don't. You know why they don't work? Because largely employers just will not take on someone who for health reasons may need to take the next week off with short notice. They will not take on someone who can work the evenings but not the mornings. They will not take on someone who could work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday one week but only Wednesday and Thursday the next. They largely now will not take on someone who can work from home despite the job being perfectly doable remotely. Those people I am talking about have tried and tried and tried and been knocked back time and time again. So much so it has then made some conditions worse in a number of cases (mental health issues, physical issues when people force themselves to do what they know their body cannot actually cope with etc).

One of my friends worked for the NHS of all places and they showed a profound and worrying lack of understanding for mental and physical health when it came to their staff.

So yeah - maybe that is what needs to be solved. Rather than taking money off people who already have relatively little.

wo people earning £60k will have two lots of tax-free allowance but one person earning £120k won’t have much tax free allowance. So yes, the single person will pay more tax, probably in the region of an extra £1000 a month based on my fag-packet maths of (£12k x2 x40%).

So yes, it’s not a completely fair comparison. But nobody earning that much money can say with a straight face that they’re poor.

Its about £15k a year assuming no other deductions. Or 12.5% of the gross salary. Nothing to sneeze at and can make a huge difference to how comfortable or not a family may be. For lots of people at those kind of wages that may well be their mortgage payment!