EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

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There are other oddities/bands too.

Between £60k and £70k, and have one child, it's effectively 50% thanks to the limits on Child Benefit. The more children you have the higher the effective tax rate.

This is the so-called "squeezed middle" although, as that graph and the ONS figures show, you're already at the 93rd percentile to be earning £60k so it's far from the "middle".

(I'm not complaining about it, I'd be happy to pay more tax than I do and even more than I would do under Labour's proposals.)

Thanks - that's pretty much it, I quite like it. Shove those figures down peoples throats every single time tax is mentioned.
"Do you earn £80k? In which case we're going to charge you £5 a year extra. However, we're expecting most of our specnding to be funded by 1,000 people in this country who don't pay their way.

I agree.
I just wonder if changing the narrative a little would help too. Currently high earners are somewhat vilified, changing to recognising the positive contribution they can make may also (maybe being overly optimistic) more willing to contribute than avoid.

How did a man with such a fundamental lack of understanding regarding tax and statistics get himself a job earning £80k?

I have some sympathy for not paying tax, because some of it gets pissed away on Trident (special relationship with the USA eh?), wars, Brexit leaflets... tax increases may be better selleable if they come with more oversight by us minions and clear improvements, as in, you pay X more and we aim to have Y fewer homeless people, or suchlike.

Meanwhile, I always got told mortage/rent etc. should not be more than 1/3rd your after tax income. Which means that realistically very few people can buy a house these days.

So you then end up having to borrow more, which maybe you should not do, but banks will give the mortgage anyway.

Wow, it is even worse than I thought! :(

18-35K is the 25-75 percentile, I thought it was 20-45 must have looked at old data...

and London has high wages but very high rents.

Wages aren’t that high and rents are way more.

NHS payscales are easily accessible to anyone.

Junior doctors [i.e. anyone below Consultant] have the following basic salaries:
Year 1 post-grad [FY1] £27k
Year 2 [FY2] £32k
Years 3&4 [CT1&CT2] £38k
Years 5+ [ST3 onwards] £48k
There are allowances on top of these for on-call frequency, weekend frequency, and pay premia for hard-to-fill specialities, so in practice most will earn more. There's also a London pay premium.

Also his doctors being on over 100k

On the current payscale a basic salary of >£100k doesn't start until completing 14 years as a Consultant, which would be age 46 assuming they starting uni at 18, completed training without any career breaks, and completed a 5 year specialty training.

If you're only doing NHS work...

The question on everyones lips.

Dissapointing Richard Burgon got rattled and didn't double down and stand by the statistics. Should have been quite easy to put that guy on his arse, on air.

As above tax is hard to understand and you are only likely to make the effort to understand it if it’s causing you particular stress.

But it’s unlikely he’d be doing office / clerical .Possibly high personal risk work like oil or something that pays by the amount of jobs you do, ie plumbing / gas etc.

Willing to bet a big chunk of junior to mid devs are equally blinded to be fair. You understand what you need to. Fair, they aren’t earning 80k but by measures they will be intelligent.

Oh and value is contextual.

As above tax is hard to understand and you are only likely to make the effort to understand it if it’s causing you particular stress.

I agree that it gets complicated when you take into account child benefits and all other extra things. But come on, in its base form, UK PAYE tax is pretty straightforward. Or am I missing something here?

Or am I missing something here?

Yeah - it’s deeply boring to most people. And there is a lot of well paying work that doesn’t require people who can or do understand it.

It's not true that "no one can buy a house anywhere". People own those houses that are worth a tonne - that's just capital, not income, wealth.

I'm not saying people earning 80k are struggling or refuting the point about higher tax. But to say that housing costs are a separate issue to wealth and redistributive taxes is not true. It's all part of the picture about who we should view as wealthy and how we should ask for a fair share from them.

I'll never understand how people are not interested in the factors that make up their monthly pay even when they're so easy to research, and really not that hard to understand either... I mean I don't exactly find taxes riveting either, but when it directly impacts me, I do make the effort to google it for a minute.

Choose your own adventure time:
You earn 25K per year
How do you pay for a deposit?
What house can you afford?
Where is it?
Where is your job?
What are your costs to travel to work?

Yeah, I understand. Just being a bit of a dickhead.

Numeracy in this country is shocking though and that man is an example. Our school system let him down.

Millions more have below-functional numeracy skills—an estimated 8 million adults and nearly a quarter of the working age population. That means they have numeracy skills below the Entry Level 3 measure, or in other words their skills are equivalent to the level of what's expected of nine year olds.

Thanks, do I need to say yet again that I don't disagree with raising tax above 80k? I'm well aware that things are really tough for lots of people (I've been there myself and have worked in jobs for far less than that).

But just repeating that lots of people have it worse, although true, isn't engaging with either (a) why even people with large incomes feel they are struggling so don't vote for more tax, or (b) deal with the fact that there is a huge disparity between income and wealth (and how both are taxed).

No. I got your point. I was just trying to draw something out when you said "It's not true that "no one can buy a house anywhere""

It's true for a lot of people who are apparently doing alright by the "25k a year" metric. They can't buy a house.

I get you're not against raising taxes on 80k+

I'm guessing people on 80k+ feel squeezed could be because as the prophet Biggie said, "more money more problems"

It's because a lot of people on 80k do feel squeezed by car and mortgage payments, but don't understand they have a choice to live like that and people on 20k dont have that choice.

Some people can tighten their belts but don't want to,they can't comprehend that some people don't even have belts.

I'm guessing people on 80k+ feel squeezed could be because as the prophet Biggie said, "more money more problems"

I think it's more accurately housing crisis = mo problems.

I'm in no way defending those who plead poverty while earning £80k a year. But break it down:

£80k a year = £54k after tax a year. About £4k a month.

Average house price in London, just north of half a million. Assuming you can find a £50k deposit, your mortgage will be £4500 a month - £500 more than your wages.

£80k is a significant amount of money but it's not enough to pay the mortgage on an average house in London.

When being in the top 5% of earners means you can't even get the top 50% of houses there's something wrong. Our housing crisis has bent everything out of shape.

Think your mortgage figure is a bit OTT (I'd say more like 2k ish for that mortgage) but the basic point is right - that the correlation between income and housing is completely screwed, and given that's most people's single largest expense and / or asset, that has a huge impact on wealth and inequality.

The fact we don't tax wealth much or at all is part of the reason you can have people who are in the top few % for income who don't feel flush (and conversely why you can have some low earners in terms of income who, by virtue of housing wealth, are minted).

Neither situation is particularly healthy for an attitude and economy that wants to incentivise work, IMO

I understand the housing costs in London, I'm lucky enough to be in a partnership that can afford to pay for a house in London (you cunt, you absolute cunt damo).

I was trying to pick up on this point:
"It's not true that "no one can buy a house anywhere""

Which suggests anyone can buy a house anywhere. This is patently untrue for many reasons - deposit, loans, mortgages, availability of work that allows you to secure these things, transport time etc and so on.

Anyway. I get why people feel squeezed. I really do. I also get that housing market is fucked. I also get the intense concentration of high paying (and rewarding for professional development) work tends to be clustered around the capital. And that this is a very good reason for actively pushing organisations to other parts of the country.

Think your mortgage figure is a bit OTT (I'd say more like 2k ish for that mortgage)

I relied on https://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2//mortgages/repayment-calculator - it reckons £3900 a month for a £563k mortgage. But not claiming expertise at all, I'm nowhere near those heady heights.