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Yes, I think double taxation is murky and shit. Why should anybody pay 12% of their income towards possible health and social care costs and then have to stump up a chunk of their house value at death?
Sure, there are strong a guments for inheritance tax. I agree that I can't write that off as unfair double taxation, but the dementia tax definitely is.
A person on the average UK salary could expect to pay £150,000 of national insurance between the age of 20 and 60. Not forgetting that employers pay similar into the pot. £300,000 per average earner...shouldn't that be enough?
Stonehedge-
Not when every NHS Trust has a (tory voting?) Director of Communications on £100k+.
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shouldn't that be enough?
I think the point is that it's not enough. The care system is at breaking point and needs more money. Care is expensive. Your £150k pays for 3 years if you just get old, maybe 1 or 2 if you get ill.
Those that can afford to pay should pay, one way or the other.
Everything you buy with VAT is double-taxed, as is fuel and booze and all sorts of other stuff. Is that murky and shit?
I think there should be at least 80% inheritance tax, maybe even 100%.
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A person on the average UK salary could expect to pay £150,000 of national insurance between the age of 20 and 60. Not forgetting that employers pay similar into the pot. £300,000 per average earner...shouldn't that be enough?
The problem is that all of this works on a PAYG system. There is no setting aside of your contributions. This works fine when you have a growing population and growth - more new entrants to the job market mean that the tax burden is spread amongst more people. The post WWII baby boom means that as the birth rate has shrunk, there are fewer people in the work force propping up the large elderly population. So the tax burden cannot be spread so thin, and they are all living longer so that adds to the longer term costs.
This is not news. This has been a known thing for 40 years and little has been done to mitigate it.
Horse. Bolt. Barn door.
Any solution sounds terrible and heartless. Although NI contributions paid out of retirement incomes would go some way to plugging that gap. I am sure that there are more clever solutions out there.
mespilus
Hefty
Aroogah
No it's not. Why? Because it's been doubly taxed? That makes no sense. Is any policy, however progressive, which involves something being taxed twice morally repugnant to you?
All inheritance does is further social inequality by giving people money and/or assets that they haven't earned. Fuck inheritance.