Beelbeebub

I assume she has royalties and advances as her primary income plus however she has her savings invested - stocks and properties I imagine. But again writers and singers and artist are another example of complexity creeping in. If you had your perfect tax system that taxed everyone progressively on their annual income what do you do with the person who earns £100k in one year (sells painting) and then nothing for 5 years. They should pay the higher rate of tax as a 100k earner but in reality they only earn £20k a year so should be taxed at a lower rate There are provisions in the current system but it's another example of how taxes become more complex as exceptions are required. It's very well to say "no exceptions" but they always run up against messy reality. The "pre owned asset" tax was created to stop people giving away their houses to their kids and renting them back for £1 to avoid IHT. So the rule is you can't ever benefit from an asset you gifted. If you did the gift is considered never to happen and the IHT bill appears. Great, except this also covered houses you helped buy. So lots of people who helped their kids with their home are then unable to move into that home when the age and become infirm. So they had to create an exemption for elderly care. Which opened up a loophole (a financial advisor tried to persuade us to use my father's dementia to to access this loophole - we declined as it seemed very sketchy) There are so interesting ideas here and God knows the tax system is complex and creates all sorts of perverse incentives and opportunities for avoidance (or sometimes inadvertently cruel traps (eg the inteste IHT rules have forced mothers to sue their infant children to avoid all of them being forced out of the family home) But the dream of simplification and cutting red tape is somewhat of a mirage.

Yup. Leather is a very hardwearing and easy to clean finish. Makes it easier to clean after I get in wearing muddy trousers guv.... It was getting bad - crew cab pickups in particular - that HMRC has clamped down really hard. Now anything with a 2nd row of seating is considered a company car and taxed appropriately. This actually affects me as my preferred work vans are converted people carriers with all (including the front passenger) seat removed. This is now considered a company car, so will have to go when the transition period ends. But I can see why it had to be done. There are loads of builders wives driving the kids to school in souped up pickups with a tow bar (never used) and tiny roof rack clearly claiming them as work vehicles despite the fact they are crap as work vehicles and never haul anything bigger than a fold up pram. I've had plumbers turn up in sign written crew transits with kids seats in the back.

I would definitely be in favour of CGT tweaks to make it more comparable to income, but I can see how it would be much more complicated than the "x% of the profit" we have at mo. Ideally it would be the profit amortised over the years held and taking account of inflation. But then you need the past earnings to work out if that equivalent income took you over the higher rate thresholds etc. it all gets complex fast - which is my point One tweak I would definitely do is equalise the CGT rate with IHT, or effectively make IHT into capital gains tax. When you hear about the amount of IHT avoided what isn't always clear is that it is avoided by transfering before death which incurrs CGT, which is lower. On IHT I would allow people to "pre pay" IHT before they die with some sort of account you can pay taxes to and then can be out against your IHT bill when you die. This helps reduce the issue where the lump sum (or 10 year spread) is the issue rather than the overall amount. It would also provide a forward revenue stream for the government now.

Yep. AFAIK the way you decide a tax is progressive/regressive is to see what overall percentage of income the tax takes, not the headline rate. If the tax takes a greater percentage of income from poorer people then the tax is regressive and there are likely better ways to extract the same amount of money. (assuming you want either a income neutral tax or a progressive tax). It's very difficult to eliminate every regressive tax. What is most important is the overall tax burden (including benefits). You could (for example) make the vat tax less regressive if you provided a low income benefit that approximately canceled out the vat. Despite the 'vibes' the UK tax system is progressive overall (could it be better? Absolutely, but it isn't regressive)

That would be money decay by time - effectively inflation. It does incentivise spending quickly rather than saving because it effectively prevents saving. I was suggesting money decay by use. Your £ can sit in the bank forever and not lose value. I wasn't suggesting a bitcoin copy (I have many issues with bitcoin) just illustrating that a digital only currency is possible. Our current £ is becoming more and more digital, I barely use cash now and there are plenty of places that are no cash. The card fees are now equivalent or lower than using cash for a business. Maybe if the UK (or EU and UK) set up an equivalent of MasterCard or visa, that had card fees lower than both but the fees went to the respective treasury. You could even imagine two fees one to your treasury and one the merchants so buying a crepe in Paris would send some tax to the UK and some to France but pie and mash in London would send both sets to UK.

🤣 Isn't that analysis based just a testament that poor people don't have much spare money? (I'll ignore zero rated vat for now) Poor person earns 1k a month and spends all of that on stuff that is 20% vat - has paid £200 in vat ie 20% of income Rich person earns 100k a month and spends half of that on stuff at 20%vat - has paid £10,000 in vat ie 10% of their income This forms a core part of the argument for lower vat rates (or even zero) on certain products Poor people spend a lot more of their income on food, energy etc than rich people so the argument goes well should lower rate it. Likewise kids clothes and other things Nobody would claim vat on mink coats, gold watches and diamond tipped canes is a regressive tax on the poor. But if we lower vat on food, that means we lower the tax on fillet steaks, caviar and fois gras. Then we have the difficulty of restaurants. Charging vat on restaurants but not food, but where is the line between a restaurant serving meals and a shop selling food? If a pizza in a restaurant is Vat is a frozen pizza you cook at home vat free? What about a pizza base, block of cheese and a jar of topping? Take away? It all gets complex fast Your simplification already has multiple get outs and exemptions .... What is a personal benefit? Is having physio a personal benefit or good employee care? Is providing tea and coffee in the break room a benefit or good practice? Does your work van need leather upholstery, a second row of seats and alloy wheels? If you are a plumber probably not, a taxi driver then definitely but what if you are a builder who has 3 labourers? I am skeptical of land taxes because when it was conceived in the 1800's USA land was through basis of all wealth. You farmed it or mined it or did some thing that needed space or it's proximity. But now alot of our economy is unteathered from land. Google probably owns less UK land than lidl yet has orders of magnitude more revenue and profit. How does a land tax capture JK Rowlings value and income? I have wondered about inflation as a tax. Government issues currency and the purpose of tax is to drain off that currency so we don't have hyper inflation If the government didn't tax anything and the money entering the economy was larger than the goods and services in that economy we get inflation. So taxes draw off that extra money. Inflation is basically the thing that adjusts the fiat money to the real economy. And it's bad because it destroys savings and makes you stealth poorer. But what if you drew the extra money away as a very small % of transactions- basically a card fee. As there is a link between volume of transactions and GDP the two would scale together. It would be like every £ issued is slowly wearing away with each "use" (transaction). Ironically not a million miles from steamy teas suggestion 🤣.... Though the (I think) critical difference would be the "tax" would be on every single transaction and being very small (I don't (now what level it would need to be to work and if that level would{d be so high as to stop it working). This would make cash (which doesn't "wear out") very attractive. But maybe it could work as a digital only currency. People are very comfortable now with bit coin and the like that has never had a physical existence.

Are you proposing *only* to tax wage payments to individuals? Ok if I work for a shop and they pay me £1,000 a month I pay £400 of that to HMRC What if I form a company that provides my labour to another company? Is that taxed? That company pays me a wage of £1 a month and I pay 40p to HMRC. The company provides a house, car, clothes and food for me for free.

Right So I've just had some rewiring done. Electrician charged me £800 and provided wire, consumer unit, sockets etc. total value around £500 I pay him £800 and he has to pay £500 to his wholesaler and £320 to HMRC (40% tax). He has now lost £20 for his day's work. If I were to buy the parts directly for £500 and give them to him and he charge me £300 he'd only have to pay £60 in tax and make £240. every single trade would become labour only. Every shop would have to mark up all goods by at least 40% even if they were simply a warehouse/wholesaler. Every single step in a chain will add 40% to the price so a lump of brass for £10 become £14 when it is sold to the machinist, he has to sell that £20 just to break even to the cabinet maker. He in turn has to price that part at £28 to the kitchen show room. They then have to charge that at £40 to the kitchen fitter who charges his client £56 for that brass handle. And that assumes nobody charges anything for their time and overheads that's just the material cost moving through the chain!

Ok so you're suggesting VAT/sales tax on every single business with ability no exemptions? This is fine - I believe the French have no threshold and vat exemptions are much less common in Europe anyway. But then you get into discussions about what exactly is a business? How does sole trading work? How do you capture the guy doing an odd job for a neighbour and getting paid to cover materials? Do I have to charge vat on selling my CDs on eBay? Vat on selling your car privately? Vat when you sell your house? The reporting requirements around vat are pretty onerous already - is applying that t{ every single transaction between every single individual really the way to reduce complication and administrative burdens? I'm just saying that simple taxes never stay simple. Every single time you will need to make some sort of exemption or rule to stop your tax having undesirable effects. And those are where the loopholes come in.

Sorry I don't follow? Are you (or the op) saying there should one tax (let's say income tax) at a flat rate and no vat, no sales tax, capital gains tax, no IHT just individual income or that there should be multiple taxes but each one has exactly the same rate eg income tax is 20%, vat is 20%, capital gains tax is 20% and so on?

And what's considered an individual's income!

We can have a simple regime. Every single tax starts simple - then it becomes complicated over time as loop holes are closed and unfair effects are mitigated. VAT is a conceptually simple tax 20% for everything would be simple. But what about food? Kids clothes, books, tampons etc. Do we charge vat on every single business, even someone selling half a dozen bobble hats the knitted as a hobby , or do we have a threshold where you don't have to bother? You end up with high court decisions on whether a Jaffa cake is a biscuit or a cake and small businesses turning down work to avoid a step change in tax as the become vat liable.

It is a not unreasonable situation and one that would bankrupt someone if income were taxed instead of profits.

You're missing the point. It illustrates why taxing income at a flat rate and not allowing any expenses won't work. There is a reason we tax profits after expenses and not income.

60% of Britons support "net zero" to a greater or lesser degree Vs 25% who oppose it. That's a pretty big majority The interesting thing is the majority of people who oppose it think their view is the majority of the public's view rather than realising they are a minority. About 3/4 of the 25% who oppose net zero,so a bit under 20% of the public think their view is the majority view. Which explains a lot of the confidently wrong takes we see online.