Higher taxes or higher tax revenue?

[El Cid]

What would you suggest?

 

Mr Bloomfield told HMRC that, despite his lavish lifestyle, he did not own any property or have any income. The notes of the meeting say: “Bloomfield advised that he has never paid a bill and never received a bill and when he needed money it was sent to him.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hmrc-failed-to-prosecute-british-property-mogul-who-did-not-pay-any-tax-for-20-years-10046050.html

 

To solve issues like the above, I think you would need to be an expert, or just get HMRC to do their job properly.

Make it a criminal offense not to declare your income and pay tax on it.

 

Also, where would you cut spending?

 

Make benefits reduce over time, so if people fall on hard times they get help, and they would have time to sort themselves out, before their benefits stopped. People may need help, not money.

Make pensions independent of the tax system, so what you pay in you get back.

Make someone living on benefits, get less than someone working 35 hours per week, if that is not the case now. Put the basic rate of VAT(20%) on domestic fuel.

Once we have paid off our debt, we can spend the same as we are spending today, and it looks like George Osborn has it sorted.

[unbeliever]

Mr Bloomfield told HMRC that, despite his lavish lifestyle, he did not own any property or have any income. The notes of the meeting say: “Bloomfield advised that he has never paid a bill and never received a bill and when he needed money it was sent to him.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hmrc-failed-to-prosecute-british-property-mogul-who-did-not-pay-any-tax-for-20-years-10046050.html

 

To solve issues like the above, I think you would need to be an expert, or just get HMRC to do their job properly.

Make it a criminal offense not to declare your income and pay tax on it.

 

 

 

Make benefits reduce over time, so if people fall on hard times they get help, and they would have time to sort themselves out, before their benefits stopped. People may need help, not money.

Make pensions independent of the tax system, so what you pay in you get back.

Make someone living on benefits, get less than someone working 35 hours per week, if that is not the case now. Put the basic rate of VAT(20%) on domestic fuel.

Once we have paid off our debt, we can spend the same as we are spending today, and it looks like George Osborn has it sorted.

 

I think IDS's universal credit is intended to achieve exactly what you describe in benefits.

I'm pretty sure that not declaring income is already a serious crime. Not that HMRC don't screw up.

Privatising pensions completely is a bit drastic.

[El Cid]

Privatising pensions completely is a bit drastic.

 

I would not call it privatizing pensions, paying into a pension would be compulsory, that pension company could be a friendly society such as Scottish Friendly, or Virgin Money, Aviva etc.

[DrNorm]

The argument about the optimum tax rate to maximise government revenue is surely secondary to the issue of the government maximising revenue by collecting what they're already owed.

 

"Government wants large UK firms to sign voluntary code of conduct to follow spirit and letter of law, as well as publishing annual tax strategy"

 

"Under the voluntary code of conduct, businesses would avoid structuring their transactions in artificial ways that serve only to slash their tax bills" link

 

Does anyone else find it at least a little bizarre that our government isn't tackling this issue more robustly?

 

On individual taxation, isn't it also bizarre that there are those that argue that it's pointless taxing at a higher rate because the rich will just hire accountants to avoid the tax. Now I'm sure there are complexities in tax collection that are hard to resolve, but the argument that you can't tax the rich because they won't pay anyway is one of the most bizarre that keeps cropping up ...

Edited July 28, 2015 by DrNorm

[unbeliever]

The argument about the optimum tax rate to maximise government revenue is surely secondary to the issue of the government maximising revenue by collecting what they're already owed.

 

"Government wants large UK firms to sign voluntary code of conduct to follow spirit and letter of law, as well as publishing annual tax strategy"

 

"Under the voluntary code of conduct, businesses would avoid structuring their transactions in artificial ways that serve only to slash their tax bills" link

 

Does anyone else find it at least a little bizarre that our government isn't tackling this issue more robustly?

 

On individual taxation, isn't it also bizarre that there are those that argue that it's pointless taxing at a higher rate because the rich will just hire accountants to avoid the tax. Now I'm sure there are complexities in tax collection that are hard to resolve, but the argument that you can't tax the rich because they won't pay anyway is one of the most bizarre that keeps cropping up ...

 

That's not the case I was making.

Even with a simple tax code with no loopholes, the situation would not be significantly different.

[milquetoast1]

I think we should have lower taxes, higher public spending, but get the debt down

[DrNorm]

If all other variables remain the same, then if you increase the tax rate, you increase revenue.

 

As I understand it, the point of the Laffer curve is that if you increase the tax rate other variables do change - for example the rich get smarter about hiding their income

 

---------- Post added 28-07-2015 at 20:16 ----------

 

I think we should have lower taxes, higher public spending, but get the debt down

 

the milquetoast curve?

[unbeliever]

I think we should have lower taxes, higher public spending, but get the debt down

 

Have you considered putting yourself forward for the Labour leadership?

 

---------- Post added 28-07-2015 at 20:42 ----------

 

If all other variables remain the same, then if you increase the tax rate, you increase revenue.

 

As I understand it, the point of the Laffer curve is that if you increase the tax rate other variables do change - for example the rich get smarter about hiding their income

 

No.

There are perfectly legitimate ways to lower the amount of tax you pay.

The most obvious ways would be to work fewer hours, or go work in another country, but there are others.

 

 

The CGT case is a bit more straightforward.

 

You're an investor. You have some money, say £1M. You don't need it right now so you'd like to invest it.

An opportunity arises to invest in a business. You look into it and you figure that there's 60% chance that you'd double your money and a 40% chance that you'd lose it. Sounds good.

Except that in your country the CGT rate is 50%. So if you do double your money, the state will take £500k leaving you with £500k.

So you've just risked £1M to make £500k. You figure out that if you did that 100 times, on average you'd lose £100k. So you don't do it.

If the CGT rate had been 15%, you'd have a chance to make £850k, which pushes the average up to a gain of £110k.

 

So in this case, the state by setting a high CGT rate with the intention of getting £500k from the investor rather than £150k have in fact just lost out on the £150k.

A business that could have been employing people does not get its investment and never comes into being.

An investor who could have been spending in the UK economy has either stuck his money under a mattress, or invested it in some other country where the CGT rate is lower.

 

Nobody wins. But nobody is guilty of any kind of tax avoidance that one could legislate or regulate against.

Edited July 28, 2015 by unbeliever

[DrNorm]

I take your point, I'm not anti-business*, but this is still far removed from current reality where the top rate is something like 28%.

 

There would be no need to increase the CGT rate to increase revenue if we only collected what is currently owed at the current rate.

 

The taxes avoided by the global corps is an outrage that needs addressing now.

 

* I'm pro-entrepreneur, but anti-speculator (you know all that high frequency trading in derivatives that undermines manufacturing and puts money in the pockets of the financial engineers)

[El Cid]

 

the point of the Laffer curve

 

I dont think the Laffer curve has an exact number, how tight the other tax raising powers where would affect the peak of the curve.

 

A main point being, if David Cameron told us that a 35% income tax rate was the best rate, according to Government data, no one would believe him, or any Tory.