Here is the News.

Fine. Let's do that then. Instead of reducing benefits for the people who are already in the gutter / disabled to try and balance the books.

They aren't the problem, unless they are tying up their wealth in schemes that are not strictly income and thus don't pay tax. Avoidance isn't evasion. Not exactly, and definitely not legally.

My point was more aimed at Russ who suggested folks earning over $1m don't care about the income tax rate as they aren't paying it.

If you're a salaried employee I don't think there are any grand avoidance schemes that means you don't care about the tax rates.

Getting stuff into the capital gains tax regime reduces the rate, but any shares you get will be income taxed at time of award.

People always imagine there are such grand schemes, but these things are typically to reduce/avoid tax on gains from investments not from employment income.

Everyone thinks there are grand avoidance schemes. I've never seen any that work other than moving abroad.

Unless you are vastly wealthy and use offshore trusts. That isn't anyone earning £1m per year.

FTFY

Of course, there is nowhere more in need of simplification than the interaction between benefits, tax, and working.

I suggest starting from the premise that tax and benefits are all the same thing. Fundamentally.. where does one pay into the pot, and where does one draw out of it. If you start from the (correct) premise that enjoying the services and protections of society comes at a cost, then, for example, tax free bands are a benefit.

There are no higher ‘tax’ rates than those faced by people on welfare who also work. This is the product of a system designed to appease the Daily Mail set who will go faint at the notion of someone not both poverty-stricken and entirely ‘deserving’ getting any kind of welfare payment.

Yet this is never way anyone means when they say ‘reform the welfare system’.

And this is why UBI is the first step. An amount that everyone gets, without condition, and with no withdrawal if they do some work. The tax free income band is already this for working people… so extend it to everyone and align with the basic rate of unemployment benefit. The only complication to work out is whether people get it in cash from the guvmnt or in the form of reduced tax by their employer.

So that’s a good start and totally affordable because money is fake. UBI should be around the level of ‘this is sufficient for you to not starve of freeze to death’ because we, as a society, generally agree that we’re ok to pay so that people don’t do that. And yes, I know people still do. At least with UBI people can live on the poverty line without being made to beg, and those able to do a bit of work will get to take home the same portion of the wage as everyone else.

If you wanna hit things on the other end and pull more into the pot from the wealthy.. well wealth taxes are problematic in a thousand ways but land tax is a decent proxy and much more workable. It also hits those who dominate consumption of one of our most precious resources… and one that is really tough to hide or move to Switzerland.

I can agree that things could be done to tax the rich (scrapping VAT free private schools was a start).

But it can be pointed out that there are too many people claiming benefits who simply can work, and this is what some of the reform is trying to address.

My wife’s auntie could claim hundreds per month in housing allowance as she had a child and was a single parent with no savings of her own. But only if she worked 3 days a week. So here we had a person absolutely capable of working but wouldn’t/couldnt due to the system. She’s not exactly poor either, driving around in a brand new lease car and using the Covid winter fuel handouts to get air con fitted at home.

Now repeat this across thousands of households across the country and you can see why there is an issue.

It’s not being extreme to suggest the system needs sorting.

Any time you try to reform benefits, there are going to be a bunch of sob stories from people on the wrong side of those reforms. Assuming by reforming, you are aiming to cut the overall bill. So any government attempting to do so has to be strong enough to push through those headlines. And if one with a majority of over 160 isn’t strong enough, I don’t know where that leaves us, other than with a spiralling debt that, sooner or later, isn’t going to be able to continue to keep increasing at the current rate.

Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take the government being unable to borrow before any real reform is possible. And in that circumstance it’s going to get very ugly.

The 160 majority seems worthless.

I'm reading lots of Labour MPs think they will be out next election whatever they do (I'd agree) so they have no loyalty to the party and are essentially behaving like independents.

Lots of small majorities so presumably want to be able to campaign on their personal records next time around.

You’d have thought the Tories could have, they wouldn’t have lost their core vote.

Increasingly it looks like a Reform government of some type will be in power in 4 years and not sure they would have the appetite for it either as they appeal to Wayne and Waynetta Slob.

If I'm correct, we currently have 20 percent economic inactivity in working age people. And rising. I don't see how that is sustainable. There's a cultural issue to address. But it would be so much better if Labour hit the wealthy first even if it's only performative

It’s handy for the wealthy that whenever people not working gets discussed, the blame is put on those people and the answer is to cut their benefits. It’s never, say, to raise wages and improve working conditions. I mean… assuming there are jobs out there that need doing and these people are able to do them but they’re just sitting about living the life of Riley in the dole** isn’t there a ‘free market’ case to be made for employers to sweeten the deal enough that people actually want to work for them?

Again. UBI. Nobody has to starve but if you’re able to work then you’ll need to do so to raise your standard of living above the minimum. If you do work you get taxed at a reasonable rate. But, on the other side of it, the employer has to offer enough that the job is worth it as they no longer get to offer shitty jibs and shitty wages to people bullied into it by the unemployment system.

* generally there aren’t
** usually they’re not
*** if it’s so fucking cushy how come everyone isn’t doing it? Are these millions of people just, y’know, worse than you?

Reform are populists. Their policies at the last election were a combination of spending pledges and tax cuts.

They'd be worse than any of the other options.

Absolutely. But it's going to happen.

They'll just list a load of issues that people will look at and go "wow they all annoy me too, here's my vote".

Just have to try and take humour from the shitshow that follows and hope there is still a country left afterwards.