The Conservative Party

[Chris in London]

VAT is a regressive tax.
It hits the poorest much harder than the richest.
See:

Why Britain needs a progressive VAT

Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.

demos.co.uk

You can compensate for that by reducing income taxes whilst simultaneously increasing VAT.

 

[inbetween]

Best bit about the NI trick is that he’s putting up employer contributions. So, we will give the NHS some cash but, for everyone they employ, we will increase the contribution they pay back to the government by 13%. More duplicitous lies from the government that has taken lying to a never before seen level...

This is why NI isn't fit for purpose. At the end of the day the money will be absorbed into the NHS but only a proportion will actually be made available to it. Meanwhile though 5 million people became asset millionaires last year yet the amount we tax property at a time of record property prices is virtually nil.

As we increase taxes, the other thing to tackle is the continued reckless spending of the government. Let's not pretend that these problems are caused by low taxation, what we should be asking is why has the tax burden never been greater at a time when we get so little back.

The waste in the public sector and in the government itself is just absolutely astonishing. It is summed up by the test and trace system which does not prevent COVID infections yet is apparently costing us an insane £37bn.

 

[lazerblue]

It's not the youngsters fault that those who dined out on the boom era have pissed it up the wall.

What boom era, must have passed me by in Clayton, and yes I did work all my working life, boom era pfff

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

We did but you can’t blame us, it was fun!

We can, we do and we will.

 

[BlueHammer85]

I’m woeful at Maths but you’re looking at about £40 a month I think on £50k a year.

The cost of my FOC season ticket.

f*ck a duck

 

[crazyg]

It should affect all tax paying pensioners.

Oddly once you get the state pension they deduct that from your tax free allowance and issue you a new tax code.

Gov.uk says:

When you stop paying​

If you’re employed, you stop paying Class 1 National Insurance when you reach the State Pension age.

The thresholds for when you start to pay tax and NIC have always been different, NIC being the lower figure. Currently, you pay PAYE tax on ANY income/earnings of £12500pa. This include any pensions you may have. The totals are lumped together, and anything over the £12500 are subject to PAYE tax. State pensions are paid gross, so the tax is taken off your other earnings. The tax code reflects this by taking off the value of the state pension from your £12500 allowance, the balance being your code number (with the last digit removed). Tax is then applied to your main source source of income.
As mentioned above, NIC does not apply to people over the state pension age - unless those rules were changed yesterday (I haven't checked). Currently, if you earn at or more than £184 per week, you start paying NIC (unless you're a state pensioner). If you earn £183.99 per week, you don't pay it.

Hope this helps. (I was a former PAYE/NIC Auditor / Compliance Officer in the Revenue for over 20 years)

 

[Octavian]

f*ck a duck

Don’t take that as Gospel.

But I’ve calculated £41.66 to be precise.

Anyone else had a go at working it out?

 

[shemnel]

i think a lot of people are concentrating on the extra 1.25% points on NI in their pay packet (as is their right), but i think the conversation now has to centre on the equalisation of rates in care homes - that is private and council paying users in care homes (private pay more). If the council pay more to equalise rates, using this NI hike, then more money is going into care home coffers. Then it becomes an issue of will the care homes use that to better social care and the jobs within, or increase profit margins.... i seriously hope this isnt further appropriation of public money and something good can come from this.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

Do people really think that all that money will be spent within the NHS?? This is what will happen.

Our local hospital - Pilgrim Hospital, Boston - is too small for the number of people in the area(it has not been enlarged for over 20 years) they have closed the A &E on Skegness and Grantham, moved some children’s services 30 miles away to Lincoln, it is short of space, doctors, nurses and general staff. Consequently they will give money to private hospitals to help reduce the backlog. I suspect that this will happen in just about every hospital in the country.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Do people really think that all that money will be spent within the NHS?? This is what will happen.

Our local hospital - Pilgrim Hospital, Boston - is too small for the number of people in the area(it has not been enlarged for over 20 years) they have closed the A &E on Skegness and Grantham, moved some children’s services 30 miles away to Lincoln, it is short of space, doctors, nurses and general staff. Consequently they will give money to private hospitals to help reduce the backlog. I suspect that this will happen in just about every hospital in the country.

The private hospitals primarily staffed by NHS doctors, working evenings and weekends? If they did that in the NHS, they would need to use the private sector. Hardly any of them have an ITU, so guess where you’re going if you get into difficulty on their operating table? They don’t have a responsibility to train staff, but they derive the same income as the NHS hospital for doing the same work. I say the ‘same work’ but, of course, it is nothing like the same work. The price for the operation is the same but the costs are very different. The price is an average (some patients take a lot less resource than others due to a variety of factors, like frailty, complexity of other problems, difficulty of procedure, likely need for ITU and the like. So the price is an average with the ‘easy patients’ subsidising the difficult patients. Which patients fo you think go to the private hospitals? That means that subsidy doesn’t happen and the NHS ends up with the expensive patients and all the easy ones go to the private sector. It’s a brilliant scam….

Of course, the private sector, just like the private care homes, all make ‘losses’ and all all headquartered in off shore tax havens, meaning that they pay not a penny back to the government in tax. It’s an absolute scandal although it’s nothing new, sadly.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Gov.uk says:

When you stop paying​

If you’re employed, you stop paying Class 1 National Insurance when you reach the State Pension age.

The thresholds for when you start to pay tax and NIC have always been different, NIC being the lower figure. Currently, you pay PAYE tax on ANY income/earnings of £12500pa. This include any pensions you may have. The totals are lumped together, and anything over the £12500 are subject to PAYE tax. State pensions are paid gross, so the tax is taken off your other earnings. The tax code reflects this by taking off the value of the state pension from your £12500 allowance, the balance being your code number (with the last digit removed). Tax is then applied to your main source source of income.
As mentioned above, NIC does not apply to people over the state pension age - unless those rules were changed yesterday (I haven't checked). Currently, if you earn at or more than £184 per week, you start paying NIC (unless you're a state pensioner). If you earn £183.99 per week, you don't pay it.

Hope this helps. (I was a former PAYE/NIC Auditor / Compliance Officer in the Revenue for over 20 years)

I know all that.
Furthermore any pensioner does not pay NI.
I retired early in my early 50s. Stopped paying NI immediately on my company pension.
In fact I had to make voluntary NI payments to make sure I got the full state pension when I reached 65.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

i think a lot of people are concentrating on the extra 1.25% points on NI in their pay packet (as is their right), but i think the conversation now has to centre on the equalisation of rates in care homes - that is private and council paying users in care homes (private pay more). If the council pay more to equalise rates, using this NI hike, then more money is going into care home coffers. Then it becomes an issue of will the care homes use that to better social care and the jobs within, or increase profit margins.... i seriously hope this isnt further appropriation of public money and something good can come from this.

Unless a lot more local authority care homes or cheap private care homes are built this solves nothing.
The govt will not make up the difference to private care home rates and private care homes will, like now, just not take LA funded patients.

 

[stonerblue]

Do people really think that all that money will be spent within the NHS?? This is what will happen.

Our local hospital - Pilgrim Hospital, Boston - is too small for the number of people in the area(it has not been enlarged for over 20 years) they have closed the A &E on Skegness and Grantham, moved some children’s services 30 miles away to Lincoln, it is short of space, doctors, nurses and general staff. Consequently they will give money to private hospitals to help reduce the backlog. I suspect that this will happen in just about every hospital in the country.

Blame it on immigrants..

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Do people really think that all that money will be spent within the NHS?? This is what will happen.

Our local hospital - Pilgrim Hospital, Boston - is too small for the number of people in the area(it has not been enlarged for over 20 years) they have closed the A &E on Skegness and Grantham, moved some children’s services 30 miles away to Lincoln, it is short of space, doctors, nurses and general staff. Consequently they will give money to private hospitals to help reduce the backlog. I suspect that this will happen in just about every hospital in the country.

Even it survives intact (and no-one's seen the wording yet):
- it kicks in in 2023, I think, and the 3 years of fixing will be after the next election and 5+ years away
- is 12 BN/year (I think that's what it worked out at) going to be enough?
- are surgeon numbers going to be sufficient for the catching up? I think you're right that they will have to pay private hospitals with much of it.
- the care assistance was stated (to my understanding) as being after the catch-up is done, so even longer away
- there seemed a lot of woollyness - care/health would be combined but how, local authorities would be funded but who directs it, the care coverage doesn't cover accommodation/food so who know how that will play out once it hits the market.

Is trying to fix it a good idea? Absolutely, and it is an attempt and one that required swallowing pride over manifeto pledgebreaking.
Does it make sense? No-one knows yet, or whether the 86k is reasonable
Is there much trust here for the banker Chancellor and banker Health Sec to give the health side of the balance as much as the beancounting? Wouldn't think so.

At the moment, it feels like a patch being waved like a flag and trumpeted as a great step forward without knowing what it is really.

 

[crazyg]

I know all that.
Furthermore any pensioner does not pay NI.
I retired early in my early 50s. Stopped paying NI immediately on my company pension.
In fact I had to make voluntary NI payments to make sure I got the full state pension when I reached 65.

I had a strong feeling you were aware of that, but can I point out that your second line is slightly incorrect, in that it should be "any pensioner over state retirement age" does not pay NIC. A big difference.
As I said in a previous post, It wasn't until the Pensions Act of 2008 was introduced that I stopped having to sign on at the Jobcentre to keep my pension credits being paid. The new act reduced the number of qualifying years for a full state pension to 30 from 44. As I'd been in the Revenue for 35 years, I met the conditions for a full state pension and signed off. I had taken early retirement at 56, as you can only persecute people for so long before thinking "enough is enough"!

 

[Uncle Wally One Ball]

I’m woeful at Maths but you’re looking at about £40 a month I think on £50k a year.

The cost of my FOC season ticket.

Im not very pleased at this, that is a big extra chunk I could without. Galling when these big tech giants pay nothing in tax and working people do.

 

[Uncle Wally One Ball]

Also, a lot if this could have been funded nicely with the cash this lying buffoon of a man has jizzed away needlessly on his Brexit vanity project

 

[BobKowalski]

The cap on care doesn’t apply to accommodation costs, which is the bulk of the cost. Kind of like we’ll pay for your breakfast in the morning but not your hotel bed.

Will the cap really fix the social care system?

How those needing care may still end up paying more than the much-heralded £86,000 cap.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Telegraph reporting that Truss, Rees-Mogg and Frost were the only cabinet members to raise contrary opinions to the plan.
Full three-line whip in place for today (apparently there's a vote).

 

[denislawsbackheel]

I had a strong feeling you were aware of that, but can I point out that your second line is slightly incorrect, in that it should be "any pensioner over state retirement age" does not pay NIC. A big difference.
As I said in a previous post, It wasn't until the Pensions Act of 2008 was introduced that I stopped having to sign on at the Jobcentre to keep my pension credits being paid. The new act reduced the number of qualifying years for a full state pension to 30 from 44. As I'd been in the Revenue for 35 years, I met the conditions for a full state pension and signed off. I had taken early retirement at 56, as you can only persecute people for so long before thinking "enough is enough"!

As did I.
I took early retirement at 52.
I did not have NI taken at source from my pension.
At the time you needed 44 years for full state pension.
I paid voluntary NICs for a while.
When they reduced the number of years required I got my voluntary payments refunded.
My statement was true. Anyone retiring early on a private pension does not have NIC taken at source.