Oops. I did actually mean VAT: apologies.
Again, thanks for posting. I've been saying for a long time that taxation should shift from labour (and employers) to assets. Mind you, this is via Piketty who Stevenson uses. If you want to see an alternative proposal for taxation, see ch17 of Capital and Ideology
Cheers will have to read up.
I get the impression he decided that doing a Sunak (getting rich betting against the pound) was not a great way to deploy his talents*.
He is right about the most important thing - The rich are getting richer and using that increased wealth to buy assets.
Indeed. When he touched on the emerging new right (who have never had real power in most of Europe - yet) who are ramping up their madcap racist and classist schemes, for example vilifying foreigners in the hope of attracting more votes, my head was filled with the buzzing of a great number of Farage-style whataboutery tropes and gaslighting comments. But that is obvious stuff.
Agree.
Agreed. The first step is to change hearts and minds.
That isn't true.
Thanks for clarifying.
Sorry, slow to catch up on the discussion and would echo thanks for posting this example. Another aspect to add is that if the earner in your comparison shielded some of their investment income (such as property rents) via a limited company they would probably be able to offset other costs (anything from a vehicle down to part of their non-food shopping such as cleaning materials etc) and reduce tax further. They could also take part of that income as a small tax free dividend. Whilst we do need the limited company framework to underpin genuine start-ups and genuine attempts at building businesses and creating employment, allowing the same framework to be used as a representation for trading around investment income, especially property, needs a major overhaul to unlock the parity we need. Unfortunately HMRC doesn't have the resources to pick apart many small company accounts but I think if you changed the rules of what really constituted a genuine 'trade' and substantially increased the statutory liability on all professional advisers such as accountants to recover tax for HMRC under these new rules it could help address this. Essentially there needs to be a big differentiator between (say) a proper high street business doing their trade and trying to survive vs someone with investments portraying themselves as similarly valuable to society and using the same company accounts system as a genuine trader.
Thank you also for posting: very informative. HMRC has been run down enormously all in the name of 'cutting red tape', 'getting out of the way of the entrepreneurial spirit', etc. I don't even think you'd need too many more staff in order to accrue substantially more revenue by targeting the malpractices that the current system facilitates: AI ought to be able to pick up on this and devise a new framework in line with your suggestions.
The lower dividend rate (0% / 15% / 20% depending on total income) only applies to dividends on US company shares held for at least 60 days - known as "qualifying dividends".
Those of us in our 50s are too because this has been going on for decades. Add in that I've had 14 years of real-terms pay cuts, and the disillusionment spreads further.
Yeah same here.
I've been filing a US tax return for 23 years now.... but thanks for the mansplaining.
I was telling the thread, not you specifically.
Dividends are taxed at a lower rate (because they are out of taxed income, as above) but rental profits are taxed at the same rate as earned income. On £64,747, the income tax due would be nothing on the first £12,570, then 20% on the next £37,700, and 40% on the rest - total £13,323 by my reckoning. Have you any other unearned income that reduced your tax code, perhaps? Or benefits in kind?