Sunday 13 January 2008

Fiscal Arithmetic

'A minor Civil Servant accepted early retirement on an annual pension worth, from April 2008, £8515.

The tax free allowance for 2008/9 is £5435 - leaving £3080 as taxable income.

Under the previous regime, £2320 of this would have been taxed at 10% (£232) and the remainder, £760, at 22% (£167) - a total tax bill of £399.

Under the new improved Gordon Brown engineered tax cut, ALL of the £3080 will be taxed at 20% - a total of £616. That’s £216 - over four quid a week - more! Four quid taken from the mouth of a poor pensioner!

Gee, thanks, Gordon - of course I’ll vote for you.'
(comment from Mirthios on Politicalbetting)

The doubling of the rate of tax on the lowest income tranche, from 10% to 20% comes into effect this year.

13 comments:

Sackerson said...

I think I've seen somewhere that the tax take (direct + indirect) on the poorest section of society is around 40%.

hatfield girl said...

Mirthios again:
'because of the DOUBLING of tax from 10p to 20p on the first tranche of taxable income, everyone whose income is less than 375 quid a week (the poor) will be paying MORE tax. No cut there!'

S, tax foxes most of us most of the time, which is why it tends to be unposted and uncommented on perhaps; so easy to betray lack of intellectual grasp.
Richard Murphy at Tax Research UK is on Angels' links, though he is after other and bigger game than Gordon Brown. Problems of cross border jurisdictions and global financial proper governance need accountants' training more than most.
But discussion of the morality and justification of taxation, and its avoidance, and the line between evasion and avoidance, and the acceptance of taxation, and the uses to which revenues are put is for all of us.
Brown's doubling of tax on the poorest in the country is wholly despicable.
I no longer accept that I may be taxed by the Labour regime if I can stop them. That is a terrible destruction of civic solidarity by New Labour, when the First Law of Angelic Analysis is applied.
(FLAA - if I want to do something, or am driven to it, so is everybody else).

Sackerson said...

The 10% thing was only a stunt anyway, a temporary expedient, a headline-grabber from Grabber.

hatfield girl said...

Paid for by some of the poorest and least defended people in the country.

Electro-Kevin said...

And the most numerous - or soon will be - the pensioned classes.

How do they withdraw their labour in order to protest ?

The lowest paid workers can try striking but only to be replaced instantly by grateful migrant labour keen to support Nu Lab at election times.

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Slightly O/T, I read recently that the National Lottery was seen as a tax on the poor; not a bad description that!

Newmania said...

Yes I`m mystified by this and even more so by the end of the taper which as a good thing. I really hope brown doesn1t think he can tax and spend his way out of recession ... that would be like puting out the fire with gasoline

lilith said...

Oh Shit...

I love FLAA...I am a middle class professional albeit working "part time" 30hrs p.w. If I am feeling the squeeze then others are in real trouble.

hatfield girl said...

FLAA and finance with feeling makes Mr HG wring his mental hands in anguish, L, but evidently this kind of fluffy, personalised 'thinking' is quite fashionable for study in circles that look at thinking.
By the way, if you are reduced to caravan living you can plug in your van here (though no where near as posh as TT's).

hatfield girl said...

E-K, withdrawal of labour is no longer the act it used to be, is it? We are so interdependent now that when we sell our labour we enter a conract with a much wider world than that of our employer and ourselves.

I'd been turning over thoughts about union action in the modern world, or even unions at all in the modern world - we're no longer able to behave like 19th century textile workers, but equally, we're no longer treated like 19th century textile workers.

The political model currently used by some, particularly the Labour party which was founded as the political wing of the trade union movement, seems illegitimate now.

Your work must give immediate insights into this vaguely sketched set of thoughts.

Is it acceptable to use organised withdrawal of work as a means to achieve localised ends in a generalised world?

hatfield girl said...

It would be quite nice if council tax had a lottery element attached Scroblene, don't you think? The prize could be either cash, or exemption from paying council tax next year

The most off-putting thought on the lottery is that there are far higher chances of all sorts of extremely unpleasant fates likely to be suffered than winning it; somehow entering then feels a bit like entering the lists for all the unpleasant fates as well.

hatfield girl said...

When Brown has sunk to doubling the tax rate on the poorest of all it's hard to believe there's anymore tax to be had; any further tax will have to be raised across accountants' dead bodies - that's why it's so particularly vile to tax the undefended.

I did wonder if Brown isn't doing so badly now he might be taken down by more permanent power groups - he's bringing the whole governance system into disrepute. And financial reputation.

Anonymous said...

"How do [old age pensioners] withdraw their labour in order to protest ?"
E-K: Even old age pensioners go on strike - once every five years...