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A counter proposal

The tax office has been “strongly encouraging” employers to justify the Government’s controversial National Insurance increase to workers, in a move derided as “propaganda” by business owners and “meddling” by a former senior civil servant.

HM Revenue & Customs has contacted businesses multiple times telling them to promote the manifesto-breaking tax increase as “for the NHS”. In an email to employers, the tax agency said employers should include a message to employees “affected” by higher taxes on all payslips in the coming tax year.

The email said: “The message should read: ‘1.25pc uplift in NICs funds NHS, health and social care’.” The instruction also featured in bulletins sent to employers last month and has been poorly received, with many business owners and lobby groups lambasting the request as “government propaganda”.

Let’s insist – jeez, it’s so long since I had a paycheque from anyone, rather than presented an invoice, that I don’t know if this happens already or not – that all pay stubs show gross wages. Before everything. Then they show employers’ NI, employees’ NI, income tax etc.

With a percentage calculation at the end. Just for fun, of the marginal tax rate. For the average worker that’s going to be a marginal tax rate of 40% or more. Would nicely bring home that we’re not a low tax nation, eh?

20 thoughts on “A counter proposal”

  1. As you note payslips have to show gross pay less all deductions (Tax, NI, pension, Union Dues etc). Ours also show employers NI and pension contributions. But… payslips are all delivered by email nowadays and people don’t open them (I’ve asked) and just see the net as “same as last month” and ignore it all.

    What would be more in your face would be if all the hidden taxes (VAT being the most egregious) were highlighted and then allocated – 90% for NHS, 10% defence, police and everything else, 25% for diversity wibble, 15% eco-freak policies etc (yes I know its more than 100% but we have a deficit)

    Even better – abolish VAT and all the other indirect taxes, pay people gross and then make them submit a payment every month for ‘government services’. No payment, no access to GP, no bins collected, no school for the kids etc etc and a man turning up with a court order after 30 days and nicking your tele.

    That would focus the minds of the many.

  2. Oh and add a line “your share of the national debt” with a repayment calculation and APR.

    That’d be fun.

  3. Hong Kong used to, I think, have such a system. Tax was paid twice a year, in cash. Cash, go to office with wallet/briefcase. Imposed a certain downwards pressure on tax rates.

    Now, whether it’s true or not I doubt – but it’s a lovely thought all the same.

  4. Bloke in Cornwall

    You can see a breakdown of how your tax is spent on the HMRC site – can’t remember the URL now mind…

    It obviously doesn’t cover VAT / Fuel Duty etc but it is based on your PAYE / Self assessment

  5. It would be interesting if fuel receipts at filling-stations showed the same breakdown… “Duty”, “VAT on Duty” etc… Might give a bit of backbone to those not over-keen on the “those bastard motorists are costing the country a fortune” lobby.

  6. Bonus time is coming soon for me. That’s always a reminder of tax levels. We are very much told our gross bonus and it’s very much not what we get paid.

  7. I would abolish PAYE. Let everyone, not just the self-employed, feel the pain of writing a cheque to the cunts.

    As said above with payslips going unread, the most pernicious aspect of PAYE is that no-one misses what they never see.

  8. Here in the US, national elections are on the first Tuesday in November. I always thought that national tax day should be Halloween instead of April 15th. This would concentrate the mind better when voting and be more appropriate.

  9. I’m not sure that telling people what they pay for this and that is such a good idea, as for many people it’s only a fraction of what the state pays per person. It would be better to add the line:

    “This is only X% of what the state pays out for your NHS cover, unemployment cover, etc, and therefore you are not paying your way for yourself, let alone for you and all your dependants.”

    As for benefits, why not tell them how much they would need to earn to get those benefits if they paid income tax and NI as an employed person?

  10. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    Does HK even have income tax? The government got most of its revenue from owning almost all of the land, and charging a form of ground rent on the buildings on the land it owned.

    I don’t think that’s a particularly great way to do it, just, I think, how it was (is?) done.

  11. Hong Kong used to, I think, have such a system. Tax was paid twice a year, in cash.

    No, HK does not have an income tax – it has a salaries tax which means on those poor sods who work for a living pay tax. OK, it’s only 15% but “unearned income” is tax free.
    No longer is it paid twice a year, but (in principle) once.

  12. “It would be interesting if fuel receipts at filling-stations showed the same breakdown”

    It would likewise be interesting if power companies gave more detail of why the standing charges on electricity bills have shot up far more than the cost of power itself. They should admit this is actually to pay for the cables bringing unreliable wind energy from sites which are being developed further and further from population centres, and also the typically £10m being spent EVERY DAY on “Balancing” to keep the creaking grid from falling over. If those costs were placed on the shoulders of renewable energy providers, and we were given the choice of buying conventional rather than subsidy supported “Green” energy, people might see through the bullshit…

  13. “The message should read: ‘1.25pc uplift in NICs funds NHS, health and social care’.”

    So not an increase at all. How could you be so foolishly misguided to think it was?
    Unutterable cunts.

  14. Number three of the ‘Three Golden Rules of Tax’* is that they should be as invisible as possible, hence why everything is lumped together wherever possible.

    Dave Ward @12.33. Exactly, show the cost of these green scams on everyones’ energy bills and then let them decide if they really want Net Zero.

    * James Hannam.

  15. Singapore – Annual tax return for everyone – 1 simple excel sheet (and I mean 1 sheet, not a massive workbook) – clear statement of how much is owed. Paid in one go. Well paid people get money taken out regularly though. Most pay very little tax though.

  16. “Oh and add a line “your share of the national debt” with a repayment calculation and APR.”

    I once signed a new baby card at work with ‘Welcome to the world. You owe HMG £50,000″.

    Onthe OP. if the Governement is aksing for this message to be included in payroll systems NOW, just weeks before the new tax is imposed, well I think I can see why the Gov has so many IT disasters.

    Specification–>Design–>Implement–>Test–>Test–>Test–>Go Live.
    Unknown concept, it seems.

    Much quicker to:
    Implement–>Go Live–>Blame the user–>Lock up the victims–>’Lessons will (not)be learned’, where’s my knighthood then?

  17. Tim the Coder,

    Thanks to the High Income Child Benefit Charge, you can send a new baby card with “Welcome to a higher marginal tax rate”. Parents earning £50k-£60k pay the following marginal tax rates (income tax plus employees’ NI):

    0 children – 42%
    1 child —— 53% marginal tax
    2 children – 61% marginal tax
    3 children – 68%
    4 children – 76%

    The tax office will send you a letter reminding you to pay it, though they won’t congratulate you.

  18. Dave Ward
    March 2, 2022 at 12:33 pm

    A pleasure to see someone agrees with me about green energy.

  19. Hong Kong’s equivalent of income tax is paid once a year and there is no PAYE, so everyone completes a tax return and then pays the whole year’s tax directly. However, in contrast to the UK, the tax is capped at a maximum of 15% of income, so it’s a lot less. (Going by the table in Wikipedia, the tax is below the cap up to HKD 900,000 which is about GBP 87,000). I don’t know if you can go to an office with a suitcase of cash to pay it, but I doubt many people do!

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