Raise the pension age to 75.

I have recently been told that if a person has more than one job, each paying less than £166 they still don't pay NI, so they could be earning nearly £500 without paying NI, but I may have been miss informed as I always thought you paid on total earnings.

I've never had a job paying less than the NI lower limit, but I get a retrospective tax calculation that says (income from A, income from B, total income, total tax paid, total tax due, NI paid, NI due) and usually a small refund of overpayments.

The tax allowance I believe is usually granted by tax code to your "main" source if on PAYE and the other ones some kind of estimate. But until after the end of the year, when Actual figures are known, there will be some estimating of your band and deductions. I still prefer PAYE and keeping inside allowances because it saves the effort and cost of preparing a tax return and possibly dealing with queries.

For some foolish government reason the NI band limits are not the same as tax bands, and I believe pension and benefits amounts change at a different date, just to make the calculations more complicated. I'm told that on Universal Credit, people so often get paid the wrong amount, and are subsequently ordered to repay it, that some of them can't bear the stress and stop claiming. People on benefits often have so little money that they don't have savings and can't afford to live on air if a benefit is suddenly stopped or reversed. I recall Iain Smith saying that people on benefits would have to learn to budget better....
 
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This man...

Smith.jpg


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I'd like to see Duncan plumbing at 74. Lives in a diffrent world

"As the report states: “Working longer has the potential to preserve mental and physical health, to contribute to the economy and to significantly relieve fiscal pressures.”

The UK state pension costs just under £100bn a year and represents 12% of total public spending. As more people live longer those costs will rise. But the glaring difficulty with enforcing longer working lives is that many will simply not be physically capable of it. Manual workers, and those who operate under great physical and mental stress, cannot work until they drop. They need and deserve as long and healthy a retirement as the state can afford. They have earned it."


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/23/iain-duncan-smith-tory-mp-work-state-pension
 
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"Duncan Smith's department had previously announced... people with disabilities and illnesses ranging from cancer to paralysis to mental health may be forced by the UK government to work for free or else they can risk being stripped of up to 70% of their welfare benefits.[54]

In June 2015, a judge ruled that there had been a "breach of duty on the part of the secretary of state to act without unreasonable delay in determination of the claimant's claims for PIP,” the replacement for disability living allowance. One of the claimants, an ME sufferer with visual impairment was twice required to travel to attend an assessment –a request which the judge described as irrational.[55]"


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Duncan_Smith#Disability_benefits_policy
 
Taking a different angle...

Imagine if during your working life, your National insurance and tax was put in a managed fund which performed reasonably well. From that fund, your cost to the state was deducted. Healthcare, education, pension, benefits. Even allowing for those who die young or put more in than they take out. Is it right that a person should expect to get back significantly more than they put in?

Perhaps the government needs to encourage people to save for early retirement, or even look at how to create more "wind down" jobs for people in their 50s and 60s? When the pension age was set, people were lucky to get more than 5-10 years in retirement. Its more like another 10+ today.
 
"The minister responsible for cutting income support for the poor, Iain Duncan Smith, lives on an estate owned by his wife's family. During the last 10 years it has received €1.5m in income support from taxpayers."
Is that the money the eu pays British farmers NOT to grow anything so the French have farming all to themselves ?
 
no.

See link previously provided

"Farm subsidies. The main subsidy, the single farm payment, is doled out by the hectare. The more land you own or rent, the more money you receive.

Since 1999, more progressive European nations have been trying to limit the amount of public money a farmer can capture under the common agricultural policy. It looked as if, this year, they might at last succeed. But throughout the negotiations that ended last week, two governments in particular resisted: those resolute champions of the free market, Germany and the UK. Thanks to their lobbying, any decision has yet again been deferred.


There were two proposals for limiting handouts to the super-rich, known as capping and degressivity. Capping means that no one should receive more than a certain amount: the proposed limit was €300,000 (£250,000) a year. Degressivity means that beyond a certain point the rate received per hectare begins to fall. This was supposed to have kicked in at €150,000. The UK's environment secretary, Owen Paterson, knocked both proposals down.


When our government says "we must help the farmers", it means "we must help the 0.1%". Most of the land here is owned by exceedingly wealthy people. Some of them are millionaires from elsewhere: sheikhs, oligarchs and mining magnates who own vast estates in this country. Although they might pay no taxes in the UK, they receive millions in farm subsidies. They are the world's most successful benefit tourists."
 
"Thanks in large part to subsidies, the value of farmland in the UK has tripled in 10 years: it has risen faster than almost any other speculative asset. Farmers are exempted from inheritance tax and capital gains tax. They can build, without planning permission, structures which lesser mortals would be forbidden to erect, boosting both their capital and income. And they have a guaranteed income from the state."

Take a wild guess. Do you think there is an overlap between ultra-rich landowners and support for a particular political party?
 
Is it right that a person should expect to get back significantly more than they put in?

That's one way of looking at it. Suppose, for example, you were crippled by multiple sclerosis at age 25, shortly after marrying and having two children.

I have a feeling that in the remainder of your life you would not be a high earner, yet you might be a substantiantial consumer of healthcare resources, and possibly find it difficult to provide for your family.

Suppose on the other hand that I were to be in good health, with a high income and no dependents.

Should I receive more benefits, and pay less tax, than you?

If your neighbour was a multibillionaire garage proprietor, should he receive millions of pounds in taxpayer-funded handouts as a reward for investing in land and property? Even though the concepts of "need" are totally alien to him? Should he pay any tax on the profits of the company he controls, which he carefully domiciled in the Virgin Islands, even though it operates exclusively in the UK, selling to UK citizens living in the UK, and making all its money from revenue earned in the UK?

What did Jesus say a rich man should do in order to build up treasure in heaven?

How did the UK come to have schools and hospitals, even for people that were not rich enough to pay for them? Was this to the advantage of the nation?
 
to put it another way: Is it right that the majority of the population should expect to get back significantly more than they put in?

That is the reality of long state funded retirements. Those in your examples represent significantly less than 10%

Number_of_Individuals_in_the_UK_by_Total_PreTax_Income.png
 
to be fair we need facts and balance to make a well informed choice
most people have been primed with "twitching curtains " and many other unessisery often evil divide and rule tactics to demonise one group against another to suggest most benefits go to the unemployed "lazy"
where in fact around only 2.2% off benefits go on unemployment benefits at a massive around £ 72ish pounds a week
there are apparently 4.1% claiming unemployment benefit
https://www.statista.com/statistics/279898/unemployment-rate-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ but this includes single parents who can have young children but must try to find work around there difficult school and family needs
now indeed they may take say a charity shop placement or other often lowly job to keep the job center happy and not to be counted on the statistics to fit within school hours but they still get the same or similar support but under another name
the greatest part off the benefits bill about 45% goes on pensioners
the next group is on mostly hard working parents with children
the next group is disabled
with only 2.2% going on unemployment
now my statistics are perhaps 5 years out off date but with the tories claiming unemployment has reduced year on year perhaps the 2.2% on unemployment benefit should be less ??
 
to put it another way: Is it right that the majority of the population should expect to get back significantly more than they put in?


Number_of_Individuals_in_the_UK_by_Total_PreTax_Income.png
The problem with that argument is that you have to understand that with a lack of social mobility, the majority of the population don't have the possibility of earning enough to put in more...

Money stays in roughly the same hands!

5 families in the UK have more wealth than approximately 13 million people in this country put together...

And yet strangely they pay lower tax rates, or indeed none at all...

For example, when the Duke of Westminster died he passed on £8.3bn without inheritance tax being paid. Had it been paid at the same rate as 'ordinary folk', the amount would have been almost the same as that entire year's inheritance tax take!

So is it right that a minority of people avoid paying their dues?
 
You need to be practical about who will fund the cost. Its easy to look at the top 0.01% or 0.1% of earners (£650K+) and argue they don't play fair and I'm sure plenty don't, but the top 1% (£160K+) pay nearly 30% of all taxes. Contrast that with the fact that 40% of Adults pay less than £2000 per year in income tax.

Then you have to look at where the money will actually come from. Imagine the current over 65s living 1 more year each. Thats £70bn, the people paying the tax will be those working. If you want to retire young, its up to you to save for it.
 
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