| Product: |
UK taxation |
| Date: |
19/05/01 (258 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: See oppinion
Disadvantages: see opinion
We all realise that taxation in one form or another is a necessity to enable our society to function. There are numerous things that any government has to spend money on to keep the country running and to try and make sure that we can carry on our lives in a decent and organised manner. The problem is always how much should we pay, who should pay it and what should it be spent on.
All governments take income tax and national insurance from your wage packet and top up this amount with a variety of taxes on spending, saving, and ownership of certain items. After having had a percentage stopped from your wages you then go on to pay, Value added tax on most articles that you buy and on top of that a revenue tax on those items that the government see fit to use, to collect even more money, e.g. Tobacco alcohol petrol etc. If you decide to try not to spend all of your income and save some to help you when you retire, any interest earned on this money is also taxed. In effect government now seems to have a policy of if it moves tax it, and if it doesn’t tax it.
There are of course certain functions that the government are responsible for that are not really contentious when it comes to taxation, one of the foremost of these is the National health service, apart from a few people that have ideas about private insurance, the majority of the country want to see an efficient well run health service that is free to all those who are unlucky enough to need to use it. The only argument from most people would be is the money being spent wisely and efficiently? Another uncontentious issue is education. We all realise that our schools and universities are so important to the future of our country that we are happy to see our money being spent in this way but again only as long as it is not being wasted on tiers of administration and is helping to educate the children of this country to the best achievable standards. The same goes for Law and order and the def
ence of the country. I realise that perhaps defence is a little more contentious but anybody who remembers the last war will know how close we came due to the defence cuts prior to the outbreak of war. People believed then that it would not happen again and when it did we were totally unprepared, a fact that cost a lot of unnecessary lives.
After having had approximately 30% stopped from an average wage packet in tax we then go on to pay 17.5% V.A.T. on most articles that we buy, as this is not shown on the bill in most cases it tends to go unnoticed by most people. We then pay excise duty on a host of other items as well as the vat. We are then taxed again by our local council for them to provide the services that we use. We pay again for our water and sewers and drainage.
So are we paying enough to get the services that we would all like to see? It is patently obvious that the health service is on the point of collapse. Our schools are crying out for more teachers, the police force is undermanned and unable to do its job properly, local services such as libraries and public toilets are being closed due to lack of funds, public transport is under funded and in decline, our roads are full of pot holes and cracks. Crime is rising, children are leaving school without being able to read and write properly and without a basic knowledge of maths our inner cities are becoming run down and infested by criminals and drug pushers and yet our level of taxation rises year upon year without any real benefit to show from it.
So why when we are a much wealthier society and are paying so much more into the government’s coffers are our services in such a bad condition. I do not believe that this is because we are not paying enough taxes; I believe that it is due to what successive governments have chosen to waste it on. We have more and more red tape, we have more and more people involved in tiers of administration all creating unnecessary work to
justify their existence. More and more money is being spent each year on the welfare state. We are paying for single parents to live rent free with five or six children from five or six different fathers in council accommodation where they do not have to pay council tax, they receive child benefit and handouts from the state that would be impossible to earn if they went out to work. We pay dole money to people who do not wish to work. We allow criminals who have stolen or conned people out of their money to retain their assets even though the property that they have taken has not been recovered. More and more of our taxes are being spent on handouts instead of being spent on helping people to help themselves. If somebody cannot find work and is receiving money from the government why should he not do some community work in exchange for it? Why should he not be retrained to enable him to get work? Why should a father of a child be allowed to disappear and let the state pay for its upkeep? With DNA testing it would be easy to determine who is responsible for a child.
All of the money that is being handed out to irresponsible or idle people, who think that the world owes them a living, and all of the money that is being spent on our judicial system, which then allows criminals to retain their assets, is stripping our essential services from its rightful funding. The amount of fraud that takes place within the welfare state is also denying genuine people from getting the treatment or help that they need. We all know cases where somebody is working cash in hand and then signing on, not only is this person not paying tax but also is claiming benefit on top. We all know of cases where a single mother is receiving benefit and housing but is secretly living with her boyfriend who is either working or also claiming benefit. These people contribute nothing to the system and take everything they can.
It’s about time that fraud was dealt with, the unnec
essary administration done away with and the red tape got rid of perhaps then we would see a better return for our money. If then the system still needed more funds then I am sure that opinion would be different with regard to paying more taxes but until then I think we all pay enough as it is.
Mick Gray
Summary:
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Last comments:
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- 02/08/01 Sorry I noticed a statistic lower down that single parents account for 17% of all fraud, errors account for 4.5%, can anyone advise me who accounts for the remaining 78.5%.
Sue |
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- 02/08/01 Very well written op that has clearly caused considerable heated debate.
You are generalised about single mothers, very few of whom actually have 4 or 5 kids.
I was a single mother for many years who returned to work 5 weeks after giving birth to salvage both my pride and sanity. After NI, tax and childcare costs I was left with less than the state benefit handouts. Had I have not lived with my parents I could not have survived. I had the support to work through University and obtain qualifications that enabled me to get a job that paid sufficiently to allow me to buy my own home and put my daughter in private school, amazingly two parent families were the anomaly, NOT SINGLE PARENTS - even though there is no state support for private primary education.
Many single mothers, through no fault of their own do not have the earning capacity to provide them with sufficient income to survive. Your claims of paying £1,000/month for a 4 bed semi - which I do not disbelieve, would necessitate an annual income of over £50k, you claim flats are even more expensive. I recently undertook a salary analysis to find out what I would need to obtain the same standard of living in London as I have locally, it was just under £70K per annum, yet I know for a fact that there are few jobs in the City at Senior Departmental manager level paying that sort of money, yet alone I would be fortunate to be able to afford a 4 bedroom semi.
Salaries in the London area have not kept pace with the standard of living and accommodation, and maybe this goes some way towards explaining why people think the world owes them a living. I do not condone this, but I certainly understand it.
I have seen kids brought up on benefits, and the standard of living is in most cases poor to the point of desperation for the honest people out there, not something I would wish on my own worst enemy. Having said this where love and proper parental care exists, their children have had better manners, acheived academically and had far less materialistic attitudes than their wealthier counterparts.
Ma ny of these people would love a job, but simply cannot afford to work, they cannot afford the basics of secure childcare, and do not have the luxury of supportive families. When I was at University, a large proportion of my class were single parents, working to make something of their lives, often holding down part-time jobs as well as their studies to survive. I often put in a 50 hour week working in addition to studying for my degree. Nowadays I do the same whilst studying for my Masters.
Whilst I am not denying that the single parents you talk about do exist, they are not in the majority, the remainder are simply caught in a terrible poverty trap over which they have no control, some just want their right to stay at home until the children go to school, if they were part of a partnership, no-one would bat an eyelid.
I have lived and worked throughout the UK, and because of my situation have a lot of contact with single mothers, I also have a lot of friends who have done the right thing, got their degrees, got married, had children, got divorced, and amazingly many of them are now in a worse position than I am.
I am now in a partnership, where both earn good money, but I am the main breadwinner, yet this also shocks and amazes people - will we ever get anything right?
Sue |
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- 27/06/01 SO it is abuse of the system? You are aware of perpetuating problems, and women who are single mothers often drift from man to man through insecurity, not so they can swindle the system.
"bu t by the 50s we had moved on from there we had a society with moral values"
No there wasnt. There has never been a time when we have had 'moral values'. Never will there be a time either. People have different veiws.
"We have an explosian of teenage pregnancy"
OK, so its fine for a middle aged woman to have a child then? AGE DOESNT MATTER IF THE MOTHER LOVES THE CHILD.
"Vio lent crime is on the increase"
That is what the media reports currently, it is not actually rising.
"we are inundated with drug addicts and pushers"
As was Ancient Egypt.
"We have Sex and violence shoved down our throats at every oportunity"
Only if you choose to watch it, they are far from new things anyway.
"if this is not a breakdown of society I dont know what is."
It is not a breakdown because society was never in a wonderful position to be broken down from. The idea that things were better in the past is a myth.
"Engi neering in this country is in decline because the study of engineering is in decline. If we could design and build as well as other nations it would not be."
So? People don't want to study it? The reason enginerring jobs have been lost in this country is because Goverment laws make it cheaper for a company to close in this country than in another, possibly loss making country - M&S were taken to court and forced to re-open in France, companies waltz out of here.
And quite frankly, engineering is living in the past. We need to look to the future, ie, technological jobs, reasearch and finding ways so enginering is needed less, come opne day, we wont have the materials for it. |
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