Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,897
Surely if you receive unearned money from the government it is a benefit even if it is not called one, I would not have thought it counted as tax relief.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Of course it is a benefit Alexander. Its a payment paid out to people from money borrowed by the government, A debt we are all paying for through the nose. It is the government that is stealing hard earned money.
Tom - you are struggling with that argument. An economy based on government hand-outs is doomed to fail.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Nope, you have to be working to receive working tax credit, Jan. It is earned money.
It is called a working credit, hence it's not an allowance or a benefit.
For example, a pension credit is also part of a pension, not a benefit.
Most pensions come from the State Treasury, so a pension credit is merely a top-up on a smaller pension that is below a minimum amount.
Unfortunately, Barry does not look at the technical wording of payments, and for him, a housing benefit, a job-seekers allowance, a working tax credit (for workers) and a state salary to civil servants are all one and the same: money taken from the "real working people" and given to "the others".
But chief executives of a share company robbing the company by deciding their own wages and bonuses, taking shares from the Company and generally increasing their own remuneration beyond sanity, and thereby rubbing the national economy dry, are "jolly good fellows".
Of-course, they "pay more tax".
If I helped myself to £5 million a year from a share company, I'd also pay 50% tax on it, and claim I "paid more tax".
The reality is, they are lifting the money from a share company by appropriating the dividends (that should have gone to the share-holders) and then paying tax with the Company's money (not their money).
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,897
Ok Alexander you might not call it a benefit but my daughter who received it until her son went to uni used to think of it as a benefit, quibbling over terminology does not change the fact that any handout from the government is, as I said previously, a benefit of some kind.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Jan, I assume your daughter was working.
Barry wants to take away an income that millions of working people receive.
May I suggest we examine the word "to benefit"?
Who benefits from low wages?? To take away the working tax credit would mean that either employers paid more money to people on a low income, or to workers doing part time, or a few million quit and sign on.
Immediately a few million people from the East of Europe would march in and go for the vacant jobs.
There would be another surge in rent, owing to increased population, we'd have hundreds of thousands of more children not speaking two words of English in the classrooms, and the NHS would have a couple of million more patients earning peanuts and not paying more than peanuts on their minimum wage in tax, but receiving all the services available in our social system.
Rather than squibbling over wording, Jan, it'd be wiser to question the sanity of Barry's economics.
To our great fortune we have democratic elections, otherwise we'd have great trouble if Barry got his way.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Ah, any handout from the Government is a benefit, you said, Jan.
Yes, right, such as the bailout of the banks in 2008. The bankers got out well on it, their bonuses just keep rolling in notwithstanding top salaries (£300,000+ a year?). Add £1 million in bonus. But hey, chief execs are now on an average of £4.8 million a year.
Ah no, let's not call THAT handout from the Government a "benefit" (or was it not the State who paid?): after all it was a bailout, and the culprits just carry on rubbing us off with their absurd incomes.
So yes, and add to that the "handouts" from EU subsidies (we pay the EU £50 a year and get about half of it back), a part of which goes in subsidies to the aristocratic estate owners with their mansions and stables, house of Windsor et al).
Fact is, some people work for their money, others do ...all for it, and get thousands times more on benefits than a working person does once all income on wages and credits is added up (and spent with tuppence left to show for it).
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
One more thing, Jan, Barry will say it was all "Gordon Brown". You are free to believe it. It's just all b shine!
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
A handout is a handout - whatever you want to call it Alexander and, yes - this expensive inefficient and complex benefit was introduced by Brown. Nobody works to get it, they work to get a wage.
Far better to just cut income tax. More incentive to work, simple and does not cost a fortune to administer.
Question the sanity of MY economics - that from someone who knows jack**** about the economy and would destroy it with crazy ideas.
Guest 705- Registered: 23 Sep 2010
- Posts: 661
Well I couldn't believe my ears- Mr Osbourne announcing to the nation that it would take much longer than originally predicted to defeat the deficit.
What a Dynamite surprise! Now just who would have thought it!? ..and such a sincere look of incredulity on Mr Osbourne's face
Never give up...
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
Richard
yer can you believe your politicians
Alexander
Without doubt whatever these credits, a lot of people have been helped by the credits, many able to help to get into work
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
#69,as predicted by us pleabs.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Exactly, Keith, without these working credits the retail economy would collapse overnight, the job centres would not be able to cope with masses signing on, the whole economy would fall.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Tax credits are certainly a benefit, but to whom?
-Do these payments help people get into work and off the unemployment register?
-Do these payments allow employers to pay less than a living wage?
In the first instance, people may well be afforded the opportunity to gain much from going out and 'being useful', but the Politician also gains much from the consequent fall in unemployment figures.
In the second instance, undoubtedly employment costs are kept down and consequently profits rise.
Why is it that a view can be taken that to make working viable what is needed is increased public expenditure and not a far higher minimum wage? Or...lower living costs;rent, fuel, food and transport?
Obviously it is simply easier to blame the direct recipient and unthinkable to tackle the innate avarice of employers, utility companies and landlords.
The rich live off the poor, and are able to blame the poor themselves for this only because Politics is left to Politicians and not accepted as owned, operated and controlled by the enfranchised Citizenry by that same Citizenry.
Taxation, just as with payment to the EU can be looked at in terms of the headline figures, but tax as with EU subsidy so much of what is paid is given back.
Unless, of course, you just wish the poor away...but then who would be to blame?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Keith Sansum1- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
soz but many have been helped by tax credits
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
may be so kieth,but how many cock ups has there been.ie;over payments/under payments the list gos on.
Keith Sansum1- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
thats correct but they have helped
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Tom is right in saying prices such as rent and transport should be reduced, and I'd add house prices to that too;
of-course employers should pay more on minimum wage, but there should always be a working tax credit for such cases where the income is obviously too low. Many working part-time get working tax credit, such as, for example, mothers, who really could not work full time.
But I am convinced Barry does not think through some of his economic policy statements, and doesn't realise what utter catastrophe could come out of impulsive decisions made without proper contemplation.
Were working tax credits and housing benefits to go, our Country WOULD fall overnight, make no mistake of this!
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Alexander - our economy is suffering to a large extent because of excessive benefits that reduce the will to work and cost a fortune piling up the deficit. They are also a contributing factor that is holding down wages and locking people into low incomes.
People need to stand on their two feet and get on with their lives without depending on the government all the time.
These benefits must be reduced by freezing them and the tax credits phased out to get a better and more sustainable economy.
You need to learn about the forces that shape the economy and how it works. Have you read the economic books I recommended to you?
If you had you would be better informed and be able to take part in such conversations intelligently, well if you actually were to take any notice of them that is.
Keith Sansum1- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
The benefits system is one that everyone would agree needs reform, but the tax credits is one that have helped a vast amount of people
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS