Do you have a legal right to your gross income?
If I issue an invoice to – say – The Telegraph and they don;t pay me then I can use the legal system to make them pay me. The full amount, not the amount minus whatever tax might be owed upon it by me. Given that I have a legal right to sue for my gross income then and therefore, yes, I have a legal right to my gross income.
In this morning’s video, I note that people like to claim they have a gross income out of which their tax is paid. But is that gross income ever really theirs when it comes with the legal obligation to pay tax attached to it, meaning that the tax owed always belongs to the government? And what does that do to the idea of taxpayer money?
That means that’s all complete toos.
Well in fairness to him, although the idea is complete bollocks he has always believed everything, including the taxpayer themself is the property of the state, so the notion that all your money belongs to the state is a logical progression from that. You are dealing with someone who is the embodiment of pure evil in human form – are we surprised when he comes out with an endorsement of slavery?
I don’t invoice the company I work for to get my wage. Tax is paid straight to the Government and I never see a penny of it
He’s still a tit though. Gross income is mine because I recieve it by contract for work done. The Government just nicks it before I get to see it. It’s still ‘taxpayers money’. The Government don’t come to my work and cover my shift for a bit
Yes, because the taxpayer has earned the money, and created value in so doing.
Part of our gross income goes on a Netflix subscription, paid via direct debit. Is that money really ours?
I wonder how long the Starmbahnfuhrer (formerly known as Sir Kneel) has been reading Spud? He seems to be imbued with the same loathing of humanity…
As VP says – this is entirely consistent with his thinking that all your income belongs to the state and the state (preferably directed by the all wise potato of Ely) will give you little bits back for your needs as ordained by lord potato.
Yep he’s a tit. Gross income is what’s contracted with your employer. What you get is that minus what the government nicks. This is a very variable amount. It can be zero if you are fortunate enough to be able to put income above your personal allowance into a pension fund etc.
PAYE is of course theft.
Tax is theft too,
It doesnt matter where the money comes from as long as tax is paid, so yes the Gross Income belongs to the earner.
And ad Will Hay once said in a film “Anyway, that is not what I earn, that is what I declare.”
Try collecting the amount net of tax, then not paying the government the tax. When they come and say “Where’s our money”, say “Well, that company I sued for has your tax. Get it from them.”
See what happens.
“And what does that do to the idea of taxpayer money?” Bugger all. It’s just semantic bollocks.
If you don’t, then what, exactly, is the government taxing? The potential transfer of hypothetical wealth? Or, for that matter, vice-versa?
Looked at from the other direction, when a tradesman/tradesperson does work for me, I don’t deduct Income Tax or National Insurance and pay him/it the balance.
I’ve been hearing El Spuddo on Jeremy Vine’s programme driving home just now. What a motormouth, and an offensive one too! “You don’t know anything about tax” to the actual tax expert on there. It was the usual crap from him – govt can borrow without limit with impunity, “The Rich” can well afford the extra tax, the NHS needs vastly more funding, etc.
I guess Vine has him on because his whole programme is designed as on-air conflict.
Tractor Gent
I stand by my comments on his evil nature and you make a very good point about how personally obnoxious he comes across as. I have. often volunteered to assist in prisons with a charity working with offenders to help them write CVs, work on interview techniques for getting employment once they have served their sentences, and I have never encountered a prisoner who is as offensive as Murphy appears to be, both in print and when a guest on the radio. He truly is an abominable human being – sadly the editor here feels that to wish for him to get his just desserts is ‘inappropriate in the current atmosphere’
Moron. But what can you expect? Of course you must have a legal right to your gross income. It is you who is being taxed on it, not your employer. So you can’t be taxed on something you don’t own. If it wasn’t yours, the taxman would be taxing someone else. Possession is binary. A thing can’t be in two places at once.
It’s simple to work it out from the other direction.
Let’s say you got to the end the month & your employer is about to transfer your wages. You say to your employer, “s’OK I’m being generous this month. I don’t want it, you can keep it.” You’re employer would not owe the taxman your PAYE because your wages are still on their books as their money.
All your money are belong to us.
I guess Vine has him on because his whole programme is designed as on-air conflict.
That’s the case for all BBC phone-ins (and, I imagine, everyone else’s, too). Yonks ago I was on Any Answers and the deputy assistant producer who put me online told me they were looking for a good argument.
Tax is not owed, it is taken with the threat of violence. The government behaves in the same way as any other organised criminal gang other than it runs the legal system so gives itself legitimacy. So, no, I do not owe it one penny piece. It is stolen from me so that they can piss it up the wall on whatever insane project is flavour of the month.
Ottokring
Tax is theft too
Not true, unless you are an anarcho-capitalist. A state is required to do and regulate things that cannot be provided economically by the free(er) market; and the state must be funded by tax. So what is at issue here is what the state should do and regulate, ie its size. Some expenditure may be (un)necessary; but at least some tax is not theft.
The late libertarian philosopher, Robert Nozick, argued that taxation was theft. Interestingly, his argument, as the late Roger Scruton observed, is the mirror image of Marx’s argument that capitalists steal the surplus value produced by the workers…
Tax is definitely not theft.
It’s robbery, because it’s done with the threat of violence. (Yes, imprisonment counts as violence.)
CO
Taxation is not robbery. It is a justifiable (but not always justified in size or scale) levy on anyone who chooses to reside in the state’s claimed area of jurisdiction. It is often hugely excessive, but, in the West, it is subject to some democratic checks. Like all laws enforced by a state, there are penalties for breaking tax law – including in serious cases imprisonment, which is not in itself violence but justifiable coercion.
If you don’t like the coercion relating to tax, you are free in principle to move to a lower tax jurisdiction. But then the issue is the level of tax and not the coercion. And some kinds of state coercion (funded by tax) are a positive benefit eg on food safety or the restraint of homicidal maniacs.
Typically, tax withholding upon wage payment is mostly a convenience (not saying for whom).
Technically, tax is levied at the end of the year, so that losses may be balanced against gains. When Joe pays me a contractual debt, and then I pay my expenses in fulfilling that contract, I don’t pay tax until the tax year is over, so that I may use the expenses to lower the gain.
So, the full gross amount belongs to the payee until he figures out his tax burden after the tax year ends.
Theo
“A state is required to do and regulate things that cannot be provided economically by the free(er) market;”
No it doesn’t. It does these things because it decides to. Necessity is often way down the list. National taxes should be spent on Dreadnoughts not sex change clinics. Local taxes go on education and emptying the bins.
I did my tax return a couple of days ago and my entire income was below the tax allowance, so none of it owned by the tax man. So all my gross income belong to me.
Ah, but, some of that income is rent from my tenents, from which is deducted spending such as insurance, repairs, etc. So, does my insurance company actually own my tenants’ money and the insurer gives me the remainder?
The first £12,500 comes with NO obligation to pay tax so he’s talking bullshit
If I am paid by a foreign company or a supranational entity I am liable to UK Income tax on my income less deductible expenses but it pays me the gross amount. If I have offsetting losses then I don’t have to pay tax.
There are rules on how much tax I have to pay but it is NOT on my gross income – it is on my NET pre-tax income less various allowances – in fact I could pay *all* my net income from self-employment into a pension scheme and pay no tax at all.
If someone with a stronger stomach than mine wants to read Murphy’s blog he/she can point out that there is no obligation to pay tax on income transferred into a pension scheme.
Otto
The justification of the existence of the state is “to do and regulate things that cannot be provided economically by the free(er) market” – eg defence, legal and criminal justice, infrastructure, etc – and taxation is required to fund this. Beyond the minimal state, a majority of people may believe that the state should provide or regulate certain other things – eg healthcare, education, a national grid. But that the agents of the state engage in ‘mission creep’, or that electorates may want more state provision, does not invalidate the basic justification of the state’s existence. So all taxation is not theft.
The only reason tax is paid before you are is because you elected to not opt-out of pre-payment. In the US you can – because your gross pay is your pay and then you can pay tax later, when its due.
I mean, the don’t calculate my tax owed based on my *post-tax* income but my gross income;)
When I was in the Navy, as a single guy a married coworker tried to convince me I made more money than he did – that all his entitlements that he got for being married (housing allowance, food allowance, etc) didn’t count because he didn’t see that money as it was spent before he ever got his paycheck.
Murphy is just as clueless.
Turn it around: your gross pay – plus employer’s NI in UK – plus overheads, is your cost of employment to your employer. If tax rates go up sharply, and your employer can’t reasonably reduce your net salary (psychologically terrible) he’s going to be looking very carefully at your CoE vs actual productivity, and likely firing a bunch of people.
So, perhaps you have a material legal interest in your gross income, because forced increases in it lead to a greater chance of unemployment.
Theo. If the state provided a service & sent you an invoice for it for a prearranged cost. maybe. But not what the state does. It spends money as it sees fit & takes the money off of you with no redress. That’s about as close to robbery as you can get.
Hopper: Indeed. It’s quite simple to draw a graph that shows that once employee wages gets over (at current rates) about 85% of non-staff surplus, the organisation goes bust because of the extra costs of paying those wages.
Theo
Scruton clearly doesn’t understand Marx if that’s what he thinks
bloke in spain said:
”the state … spends money as it sees fit & takes the money off of you”
They don’t even seem to do that any more. The link between how much they spend and how much they take seems to be broken. It looks more as if they take whatever they can get, and spend whatever they like. Do we really believe any more that, if spending went down, taxes would go down too?
People like Murphy believe that taking money of people richer than them is a good thing in itself, irrespective of government spending.
BiS
If the state provided a service & sent you an invoice for it for a prearranged cost. maybe. But not what the state does. It spends money as it sees fit & takes the money off of you with no redress.
But that’s more or less what the UK state does. It sets a budget with explicit tax rates, so every taxpayer can calculate what they will pay in tax for the services provided in the current tax year. If you are not satisfied with the service, there various channels of redress. And if the service is failing, it should be privatised…
Sebalto
Scruton clearly doesn’t understand Marx if that’s what he thinks
It’s more likely that you don’t understand Nozick’s argument, which Scruton said mirrored Marx’s.
>”Theophrastus
August 28, 2024 at 9:19 pm
Can I opt out of receiving these services?
No? Then its theft-with-menaces.
A criminal gang may provide some form of arbitration service for disputes for the business owners they are extracting payment for – we still wouldn’t fail to call ‘protection schemes’ extortion
Can I opt out of receiving these services?
Yes. You can move to another jurisdiction. So it’s not theft-with-menaces, but more like a membership fee. In other news, anarchism doesn’t work.