Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[HVC]

Fair point that it varies country to country, and obviously I'm not familiar with the uks schemes. But on the plus side if you tax at death you're in for a boon in the next few decades

[Sheilbh]

Yes.

Although there's other interesting (to me ) shifts that I don't know how will play out. For example everyone knows fuel duty is in structural decline with the energy transition and move to EVs. And everyone probably knows the solution from a revenue perspective is probably road pricing. No-one in politics wants to admit that.

[HVC]

No one will sign on for road tax or new tolls. People will riot . Most don't even realize a chunk of their gas price is tied to government taxes. Politicians being politicians they'll probably just transfer fuel taxes to electricity taxes. Less efficient, but less blowback.

[Sheilbh]

Oh they're absolutely aware in the UK. I think petrol's about £1.30 per litre here and over 50p of that is tax.

Technically it's meant to be on an escalator that just keeps increasing but it's so politically unpopular at this rate that I think that's been frozen for about 20 years now.

[Josquius]

To fix road taxing there'd need to be a change in attitudes, which is always a difficult thing to pull.

It will be expensive but rather than just relying on the stick we would have to use the carrot more and make owning a car far more optional than it is today.
If cars are shifted away from being a necessity in most of the country to a luxury people may look kinder on increasing taxation there.

I wonder whether doing things on more of a regional level could be helpful here. You pay extra taxes on car ownership if you live in an area with good transport. Start it soft enough that you're only pissing off a handful in London and promise to tie it directly to further improvement in the area.
Quebec does similar I recall.

Certainly the way we tax the roads at the moment is completely unsustainable. It would cost the entire yearly roads budget just to get the roads of one county in a decent state.

On Swiss wealth tax. The other day I learned how Swiss mortgages work. It's bizare. Basically the amount you borrow is split in two with 67% of the value of the house in a seperate amount that most people never being pay back as due to the way taxes are set up you're better off with this debt vs the tax you need to pay on the value of the house on the rental market.

[Tamas]

I don't know about the middle not paying enough. It takes a lot of money to stay in the middle, I feel. Sure we could pay more and slid down closer to the bottom but is thst really the only option when the overwhelming majority of wealth is not in our hands but those who appear impossible to be taxed? (a line perpetuated since the nobles deemed too noble and important to be taxed).

As a quick example me and my wife are earning very decently, but if we had two kids instead of one, sending them both to a nursery would pretty much eliminate our ability to save, so a noticeable increase of our tax burden in that scenario would mean a cut back in our (comfortable but pretty far from lavish) living standards.

[Tamas]

a line perpetuated since the nobles deemed too noble and important to be taxed.

OK so having this thought has just made me one more notch an economic leftist. I mean the realisation that my peasant ancestors 500 years ago were listening to the same "there is no way to tax the rich" BS like I am doing now. Well, idk about England but in Hungary "can't tax the nobility" continued well into the 19th century.

[HVC]

Reminds me of the old joke: "the best way to ensure you're successful in modern day England is to have an ancestor that was a close personal friend of William the conqueror"

[Sheilbh]

I don't know about the middle not paying enough. It takes a lot of money to stay in the middle, I feel. Sure we could pay more and slid down closer to the bottom but is thst really the only option when the overwhelming majority of wealth is not in our hands but those who appear impossible to be taxed? (a line perpetuated since the nobles deemed too noble and important to be taxed).

As a quick example me and my wife are earning very decently, but if we had two kids instead of one, sending them both to a nursery would pretty much eliminate our ability to save, so a noticeable increase of our tax burden in that scenario would mean a cut back in our (comfortable but pretty far from lavish) living standards.

I wouldn't say impossible.

On wealth in general - we already tax property, capital gains and inheritance. I think all of those regimes are flawed at the minute and would benefit from serious reform (even there, though, I think there are trade offs). Also taxing wealth that is held during someone's life would make us an international outlier (no other country in the OECD does both). I see some in Labour are talking about exit taxes which means they get part of the issue which is that we in the West have spent the last 50 years basically making it easier for capital to flow freely around the world - I think you need to start reversing that to meaningfully tax wealth. In my view that is the direction of travel anyway - I think we're moving into a world of more trade restrictions, tariffs, undermining of international institutions underpinning free trade - and I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing something similar with capital controls, at which point we can tax wealth all we want (but beware the gnomes of Zurich).

Honestly the big "wealth" that we should look at taxing is arguably pensions where our tax regime on pensions are very generous. But there's trade offs there too and it's not taxing billionaires.

The bigger point is that the overall policy impact of the last 14 years is that we have a smaller tax base because people were "lifted" out of the tax system and we are more reliant on taxes from the highest earners. They also added lots of new taxes and made existing ones a lot more complex. Overwhelmingly this is because of Osborne's time as Chancellor - the 2010-15 changes are really big while 2015-24 are relatively minor. At the same time benefits have been cut (especially impacting the poorest and those with children) and, similarly, the state has been asked to do more with less spending. I think it's why we have the paradox of the highest level of spending and taxation since the war, with the lowest level of taxation for an average worker since the war - and not much bang for our buck on that spending.

My view is that really the focus needs to be on, in large part, unwinding that legacy - so simplifying the system (including the existing taxes on wealth), with a broader more sustainable (and less flighty) tax base. I also think there is a social and political purpose to it. I think if you want a social democracy then everyone should, as a point of politics, be paying in and taking out - I'm not sure a social democracy paid for by someone else/some narrow band of society works.

OK so having this thought has just made me one more notch an economic leftist. I mean the realisation that my peasant ancestors 500 years ago were listening to the same "there is no way to tax the rich" BS like I am doing now. Well, idk about England but in Hungary "can't tax the nobility" continued well into the 19th century.

The nobility were always taxed in England - obviously it wasn't exactly progressive taxation But it wasn't like France, say. I think the divergence happens at around the same time during the Hundred Years War. In England a nexus emerges around parliament of taxation, voting and enforcement/collection of taxation (so for many taxes the people paying and collecting and voting for taxes are the same). It's how parliament emerges as such a powerful institution. I think France had the same thing at a local level but those institutions are disempowered (in part to better enable France, nationally, to fight of English attacks) and France has a dreadful run of mad or child monarchs with noble regents who gradually exclude themselves from tax.

It's one of the ways I think France and England kind of make each other.

Reminds me of the old joke: "the best way to ensure you're successful in modern day England is to have an ancestor that was a close personal friend of William the conqueror"

That joke was by the Duke of Westminster - then, I think Britain's richest man (his family own huge swathes of central London). A journalist asked if he had any advice for entrepreneurs and he said "have an ancestor who was good friends with William the Conqueror."

But there was research in 2011 that found that people with Norman surnames are still richer than the population as a whole, on average by 10%. Norman yoke and all that - but also invading a place and seizing its property for the invaders has a very long term impact.

[Tamas]

Aren't pensions already taxed? When it will come to take my private pot and do something with it, they'll take like 25% off. PLUS whatever monthly payments I'll be getting out of it will be income-taxed. That's gonna' be a low enough living standard for the few months I'll be alive past retirement, thankyouverymuch.

[Gups]

Aren't pensions already taxed? When it will come to take my private pot and do something with it, they'll take like 25% off. PLUS whatever monthly payments I'll be getting out of it will be income-taxed. That's gonna' be a low enough living standard for the few months I'll be alive past retirement, thankyouverymuch.

I think you have misunderstood. It's the opposite - you can take 25% of your pension tax free (either as a lump sum or by drawing down gradually). The rest of it is counted as taxable income in each tax year you draw it down.

[Grey Fox]

To fix road taxing there'd need to be a change in attitudes, which is always a difficult thing to pull.

It will be expensive but rather than just relying on the stick we would have to use the carrot more and make owning a car far more optional than it is today.
If cars are shifted away from being a necessity in most of the country to a luxury people may look kinder on increasing taxation there.

I wonder whether doing things on more of a regional level could be helpful here. You pay extra taxes on car ownership if you live in an area with good transport. Start it soft enough that you're only pissing off a handful in London and promise to tie it directly to further improvement in the area.
Quebec does similar I recall.

Certainly the way we tax the roads at the moment is completely unsustainable. It would cost the entire yearly roads budget just to get the roads of one county in a decent state.

On Swiss wealth tax. The other day I learned how Swiss mortgages work. It's bizare. Basically the amount you borrow is split in two with 67% of the value of the house in a seperate amount that most people never being pay back as due to the way taxes are set up you're better off with this debt vs the tax you need to pay on the value of the house on the rental market.

We do. I've never seen it frame that way. It's an interesting pov.

Our tax also just almost doubled to
150$/year/per car from 59$.

[Tamas]

Aren't pensions already taxed? When it will come to take my private pot and do something with it, they'll take like 25% off. PLUS whatever monthly payments I'll be getting out of it will be income-taxed. That's gonna' be a low enough living standard for the few months I'll be alive past retirement, thankyouverymuch.

I think you have misunderstood. It's the opposite - you can take 25% of your pension tax free (either as a lump sum or by drawing down gradually). The rest of it is counted as taxable income in each tax year you draw it down.

Ah, my bad. I just remembered that nomber and being disappointed when reading up on this a while ago

[Sheilbh]

FFS

Homelessness minister threw out her tenants - then increased rent by £700 a month

Rushanara Ali, who has spoken out against 'unreasonable rent increases', relisted her four-bedroom townhouse in east London for £4,000 a month

https://inews.co.uk/news/homelessness-minister-threw-out-tenants-increased-rent-3846449

[Tonitrus]

Maybe I am jaded by how things work here, but looking at the facts in the article...the hyperbolic language ("threw out" etc.) put aside:

- intent to put up for sale/and is currently up for sale
- 4 months notice that lease will not be renewed...pretty generous I think
- the new tenants are presumably on that rolling/month-to-month lease and aware that it could be sold at any time

The critiques (shady property manager, notable lease hike) are fair...but also don't apply to the ex-tenant.