Is this actually workable?
Oct. 10th, 2007 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueI was thinking, that taxation and benefits is a complicated and convoluted subject.
The difficulty of balancing relaiming enough money that essential stuff can be done, and especially funding things like benefits, but at the same time allowing people to keep enough of their pay, that they can actually a) live and b) it's worth actually trying to find a well paid job.
Now. I know that any form of serious, hardcore reform of tax and benefits is fraught with pain. And y'know, unions, and people having tantrums.
Tax brackets, and tiered taxes are primarily because the differential on quality of living of a pound when you're on 5 thousand a year, is a lot lower than when you're on 50.
But what if:
Current benefits system is scrapped. Possibly even pension system too.
Henceforth, everyone with a national insurance number, gets paid a sum of money each week. Approximately the kind of sum needed for 'basic standard of living'.
Everyone is taxed, at a flat rate, on all income. No more VAT, no more capital gains, no more ... anything. Just income. Your pay, taxed once.
And that's it.
Set the taxation threshold to whatever's needed to support the system. This might actually be 30-40%. But, offsetting your tax/compensating for your 'allowance' at lower thresholds, will be this fixed sum each month.
If you're out of work for a while, you get a baseline income, which supports you. It'll encourage you back into work, because you never lose that 'free handout' - work 80 hours, and you still get 80 hours pay (less the tax of course) as well as your baseline.
Maybe implement something similar, for children, paid to parents. I wouldn't have thought necessarily the same amount though (IIRC child benefit and tax credits aren't quite the same value as unemployment benefit, but I honestly have no idea of the _actual_ value of either).
The only other taxation, should be things that have a knock on cost associated with them. Thus you might include tobacco taxation, because it presents a health risk, to subsidise the health service. Or you might up petroleum taxation, because miles driven increases wear and tear on the roads.
For those kinds of tax though, the money should go _directly_ to the place which they're notinonally earmarked for. None of this bull about how the NHS doesn't actually see the funding from increased alcohol or tobbaco taxation. (Although you might reasonable conclude that if drunken behaviour increases policing costs, as well as presenting a health service burden, revenues collected there would be split). And of course, they 're also cut if they're _not_ needed.
Now, if we leave aside the implicit difficulty in a large scale rejig of taxation and benefits systems, for what, 65million people, does this actually look remotely workable?
The difficulty of balancing relaiming enough money that essential stuff can be done, and especially funding things like benefits, but at the same time allowing people to keep enough of their pay, that they can actually a) live and b) it's worth actually trying to find a well paid job.
Now. I know that any form of serious, hardcore reform of tax and benefits is fraught with pain. And y'know, unions, and people having tantrums.
Tax brackets, and tiered taxes are primarily because the differential on quality of living of a pound when you're on 5 thousand a year, is a lot lower than when you're on 50.
But what if:
Current benefits system is scrapped. Possibly even pension system too.
Henceforth, everyone with a national insurance number, gets paid a sum of money each week. Approximately the kind of sum needed for 'basic standard of living'.
Everyone is taxed, at a flat rate, on all income. No more VAT, no more capital gains, no more ... anything. Just income. Your pay, taxed once.
And that's it.
Set the taxation threshold to whatever's needed to support the system. This might actually be 30-40%. But, offsetting your tax/compensating for your 'allowance' at lower thresholds, will be this fixed sum each month.
If you're out of work for a while, you get a baseline income, which supports you. It'll encourage you back into work, because you never lose that 'free handout' - work 80 hours, and you still get 80 hours pay (less the tax of course) as well as your baseline.
Maybe implement something similar, for children, paid to parents. I wouldn't have thought necessarily the same amount though (IIRC child benefit and tax credits aren't quite the same value as unemployment benefit, but I honestly have no idea of the _actual_ value of either).
The only other taxation, should be things that have a knock on cost associated with them. Thus you might include tobacco taxation, because it presents a health risk, to subsidise the health service. Or you might up petroleum taxation, because miles driven increases wear and tear on the roads.
For those kinds of tax though, the money should go _directly_ to the place which they're notinonally earmarked for. None of this bull about how the NHS doesn't actually see the funding from increased alcohol or tobbaco taxation. (Although you might reasonable conclude that if drunken behaviour increases policing costs, as well as presenting a health service burden, revenues collected there would be split). And of course, they 're also cut if they're _not_ needed.
Now, if we leave aside the implicit difficulty in a large scale rejig of taxation and benefits systems, for what, 65million people, does this actually look remotely workable?
