Why it’s not worth working hard in Tory Britain

30 comments

1. [removed]

2. It’s this sort of thing that makes me feel so sorry for the plight of the well-paid Torygraph reader … oh, hang on, no it doesn’t. Fuck ’em.

3. Correct. If you are being taxed to death, what is the point of working hard?

   The entire economy is set up for the asset class.

4. Suprisingly balanced, for once. It’s under the tories they “stealth taxed” by leaving the bands unchanged for years while claiming to be the party of low tax – and the article does point this out.

   The stuff about parents gaming their income to be below £100k to avoid a triple whammy of penalties is a big issue and I see it a lot in my workplace. Whether you care about it as being an “issue” for the people in question it can certainly be an issue for the UK economy and overall productivity etc.

5. The Telegraph attacking the Tories? Now I have seen everything!

6. I love the way the torygraph talks about modest earners being taxed as though their rich – in the context of the effective tax rates over #125,000, omg!

7. Oh no, now the Tories are targeting the Telegraph’s demographic.

8. You’re worse off working hard in every way unless you also have exceptional luck.

   No wonder pur productivity is fucked

   I’ve doubled my salary over the last 5 years by just doing fuck all and then jumping ship as soon as I get. Better paid job interview

9. Which wont be any different under Labour. Both main parties are 2 cheeks of the same backside when it comes to fundamentals. We really need to get off this tribalism kick and implement some major electoral reform in the UK. Reform to a PR system with more direct democracy in the way of referendums on key decisions.

10. Ah yes, only those on over £100k are hard workers, those under are just shirkers.

11. This is absolute nonsense. The problem in the UK isn’t the rate of taxation, it’s the atrociously low base pay. I’m in the US and am earning double what I’d be earning in the UK, before even considering taxes. I’d gladly return and face the marginally higher taxes in the UK (which, whilst far from perfect, has vastly better public infrastructure and services than the US) if the base pay wasn’t so shockingly bad to start with.

12. We should be taxing assets more than salaries and targeting non productive parts of the economy. It’s no fair that someone born out of a different vagina than you has a family where their assets allow them to not have to work a day in their life whilst the rest of us scrimp by. The UK is a rich country where is all the money going?

13. You’ll work harder in a Labour Britain ..Tax and Spend

14. If they are going to include loan repayments they should probably include losing childcare benefits too.

    Higher pay doesn’t mean working harder, you just need more marketable skills.

    There’s higher wage inequality because of progressive taxation.

15. Countries can tax us, the real thing what we need to question is what are we getting in return? Is our tax money really going to be of use to us by any means. Lot of things needs to be fixed currently and it’s always a challenge. Health, safety, public places, education, social support and the list goes on.

16. Apparently everyone needs to be in full time work to contribute to society and that’s way more than the tax free threshold.
    This equates to 38-40 hours.
    Yet if this person despite working all their lives in an honest way on nmw wants to bring their spouse from abroad they are told they have to earn around 16k more than nmw so they are not a burden on the taxpayer. In many Northern areas for unskilled people who were probably born into poverty this is a big ask.
    This shows what’s wrong with this country that people are blocked from moving on in life.

    Meanwhile Braverman the hate preacher lives with her parents and claims £25k for the second home allowance in one fell swoop.
    Would be nice if all our workplaces allowed that

17. This has to be bs? I don’t earn half of that and my take home isn’t too far off. Who the hell pays 60% flat income tax.

18. This article makes a fatal assumption – that a high salary means you work hard, implying if you earn a low salary you do not.

    I’ve also run £128k through a tax calculator and he should be taking home far more than 29p in the £. What they obfuscate is that he is choosing to put £28k of it into a pension to avoid the highest income tax bracket.

    So all in all, this article is bullshit.

19. People have a go at Starmer for cozying up to the big press, but if even these cunts are printing things like this, it’s working 

20. Oh look, the Torygraph associating £100,000+ salary with “working hard.”

21. Yes my 60k income tax & NI liability to pay for entirely broken public services that I inevitably end up going private for definitely puts me off staying.

22. The Tories are the party of the already-wealthy, not those trying to earn their financial security. There is no party for the aspirational class.

23. You realise that while yes your taxed more on money over 100k but everything below that is taxed on a lower bracket. So you would still end up on more money overall. Its the most fair system so far. The only other option would be a flat tax rate across all pay and I guarantee everyone would end up worse off. The people on lower income would struggle massively as the tax would need to be very high. It would only benefit the very elite high earners.

24. I wish they would scrap the personal allowance phase-out and just add more marginal tax rates to step up taxes that way but keep it progressive. It’s actively stupid to have the 60% trap.

25. In my council ward, the number of people in Full Time work is roughly equivalent to the national average. However, the number of kids living in poverty is just shy of double the national average.

    Why would people bother to work if it’s not even enough to look after their kids?

    The biggest thing the next government could do to get people off benefits is to legislate to massively increase the quality of jobs.

26. We have too many complete imbeciles running the UK government who don’t understand basic things like “incentives”

    Too many of the UK are rewarded for claiming benefits instead.

27. Since when are middle income earners earning over 100k? Top 5 percent earn 87k or above in the UK. I’ll just get my tiny violin out.

28. There’s a kind of person obsessed with this bizarre “hard work is it’s own reward” logic. It isn’t. Your a schmuck. If I’m not going to get compensated reasonably (ala, enough to live n shit) then no, it is a con.

29. Extremely well-off young man fears being taxed. What a story, Mark

30. We live it Ireland and the system worked brilliantly for us. The government helped us with family payments when the children were born, the wife got on a course and got a job. She was offered a contract, first at 3 months, then 6. She started a degree in social care with an emphasis on special needs. After 5 years she has went from earning nothing to earning 58,000 euro a year managing two disability services. Ironically we are no better off then when I was working in a bookie and she was looking after the kids. We lost our medical card, our GP visit card, our rent allowance and this month she paid 1500 euro in tax. College cost us 8 thousand euro (her employer paid half). We probably would have been better off just having a holiday with that money. Between us we earn a hundred grand a year. We rent and own nothing.