The Street > The Lounge
General election
carnage:
I am not saying the mansion tax is a good idea, or that the bedroom tax is wrong in principle. I'm wondering how you think 3 grand is a lot of money when poor/disabled people manage to pay 1/2 that out of their benefits.
Without the funds from a sale and often zero income how do expect people who have an extra room to be able to up sticks?
If Labour got in power and you couldn't pay the tax you'd be pissed off about being advised to move to a cheaper property but you are going to vote for a government who are forcing exactly that on poor and often disabled people.
G:
--- Quote from: LukeTom on May 01, 2015, 01:15:56 PM ---We already pay the 40% tax rate, that almost half of what you earn goes to the government about 30k. We already pay stamp duty when we sell the house, which has increased recently. I do not see what is wrong with the bedroom tax, if the government is paying for your housing, and you are living in a house which is too big for you, what is wrong with taxing you for that?
I am an average person, we brought this house 20 years ago for no where near that mark, we got lucky and the area improved and the house prices went up. This tax is forcing people out of their family homes, three grand a year is a huge amount and its unfair charging the people with large mortgages or people who have simply got lucky.
--- End quote ---
Nearly everyone pays 40% plus in tax one way or another. Sure, when you go into the higher rate tax band it is all called tax and is a bit more transparent, but you don't pay any more national insurance than someone at the top of the 20% rate. Other taxes like VAT, fuel duty, road duty (road tax), council tax etc are NOT means tested either so you pay the same whether on the minimum wage or taking home a bankers bonus of a million quid every year.
Yes there will be a very very small number of people who are in an extraordinary position of owning a now very valuable house for whom that extra £3k a year is a burden, but there is provision for those not in the higher tax bracket to postpone paying it until the house changes hands.
However you have to compare this to David (my family is loaded because we owned a lot of slaves and then got compensated by the government to let them go and then continued to benefit from their labours by re-employing them at "slave wages", ie. we are rich because of government hand outs) Cameron, thinking that everyone on any kind of benefits in this country can be squeezed by 1% (hey its only 1%) to let them keep the top rate of Tax down at 45% instead of 50%.
So yes, if you truely are in the situation you describe then I sympathise, but I still think that it will be easier for you to find £3k a year than it will for a family below the poverty line to find (another) 1%. Its almost like they are taking the piss with the whole 1% comparison...
As to London paying all the tax. I already covered that, London isnt an island, you NEED the rest of the UK to generate that cash, you think it just magically issues from Alan Sugar's rosy sphincter or something? And why stop at London? A significant portion of that tax was probably generated in a few postcodes, why not cut off tower hamlets etc too and really lord it up? Because then there wouldn't be anyone to clean your offices and empty the bins, they'd all be outside your doors with pitchforks!
The bedroom tax is ridiculous, it assumes that there is plentiful housing out there and people can simply move into a smaller place to avoid it. This is obviously ridiculous, we have a massive housing shortage and moving house is an expensive exercise at the best of times. All these measures that the tories have bought in have caused massive hardship yet saved virtually zero money. They have just resulted in the money going to private companies making an arse of the assesments instead of the actual people who used to get it!!!!
:)
G.
LukeTom:
Perhaps what you are saying is right, and perhaps if labour did not want to introduce a 'mansion' tax I would side with you and in fact I would quite like to, I do believe allot of what labour is putting forward. But like I said, no matter how much I believe, the conservatives are offering me £3k a year for the next 4 years for my vote. No amount of political idealism is going to argue with that.
Kinchy:
As long as you are ok, that's fine then
LukeTom:
Yes? Everyone votes to see themselves better off? I'm not going to vote for labour because I feel some sense of moral duty towards the country/other people, everyone who votes has themselves in mind as #1
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