So you are to be told where your tax goes?

SimonAH

The government has announced that each of us will receive a 'statement' as to where the tax deducted from our paycheque goes, X to wellfare, Y for national debt, Z for the armed forces etc.

Am I the only one who regards this with complete and utter cynicism? C'mon, surely it all goes in a large pot marked 'Government income' along with revenue from VAT, corporate taxation, road fund etc.

Announcing what comes out of the income tax pool is surely meaningless as they can put any figures against it they like? (For example making a high proportion of it Welfare to garner support for cuts). It's like my announcing that I spend none of my December earnings on beer at all (because I allocated my beer budget to my February paycheque).

Or am I butt backward on this?

Incidentally, the bill for benefits alone is only slightly less than the total raised in income tax annually in the UK. Doubt that will be the message though :-D

mudcow007

and...how much is it going to cost to run these "statements" aswell?

will that be shown on the statements?

rick_chasey

I totally don't understand the point of this.

This information is already available if you want it?

daviesee

SimonAH wrote:

TIncidentally, the bill for benefits alone is only slightly less than the total raised in income tax annually in the UK. Doubt that will be the message though :-D

As that information would supply support for planned benefits cuts, it could well be the main part of the message.

daviesee

Rick Chasey wrote:

I totally don't understand the point of this.

This information is already available if you want it?

The average person will not seek it out. The Government wants it rammed down our throats to support their cuts.

asprilla

If they tell me exactly where my tax is going then I won't need the Daily Mail to feed my paranoia anymore.....Hurrah.

rubertoe

I believe that i already know where my tax goes... to the woman who lives below me that doesnt work and has a child to support.

Maybe the govt should just let me sponser her directly so that i cut out the middle man and save loads of money by not having to pay for HMRC staff, Benefits Staff, Accounting staff etc

jamesco

One possible reason for doing this is that people tend to be ignorant about the government services they personally use. When asked, they massively underestimate how much they depend on them. Showing what we get for our taxes is a Good Thing, IMHO.

Anonymous

surely you just show on the statement what you want to show? as per simonAH - it goes into 'income' then gets spent.

They can just say
'we spend ALL of income tax on benefits, see, we need to cut it"
'we spend ALL of income on roads, see, we need to privatise it'
"we spend ALL of income on NHS, see, we need to privatise it"

sounds like rubbish

TheStone

I like it. Shouldn't cost much as they send about 4 account statements anything up to 12 tax codes a year already!

The problem is that income tax is just part of the costs. Even if they include both sides of national insurance (which they won't), it's still less than half.

It's obviously to make the cuts more popular, but I do think transparency is a good thing. Give people the information. This already happens to an extent with council tax.

CiB

I know where my tax goes. It pays my wife's (teacher) salary. We could save a huge amount of administration costs if we cut out the collection & moving around part of the process and let me just give it straight to her, on the last Friday of the month.

Simple rule. If you're married to someone paid out of the public purse, you can opt out of the tax system. Easy. Leave it to us to sort out how much I pay her and how much is held back for vital necessities (made of carbon & various alloys).

SmellTheGlove

Remember this is 2012 and that HMRC is a world-class organisation.
If this is to be believable then it should be available in real time. Who's going to be convinced by anything less?
Only properly thought-through gimmickry will win me over.

mrc1

CiB wrote:

I know where my tax goes. It pays my wife's (teacher) salary. We could save a huge amount of administration costs if we cut out the collection & moving around part of the process and let me just give it straight to her, on the last Friday of the month.

Simple rule. If you're married to someone paid out of the public purse, you can opt out of the tax system. Easy. Leave it to us to sort out how much I pay her and how much is held back for vital necessities (made of carbon & various alloys).

Sounds like you pay a lot of tax, or you are planning to give her a pay cut

CiB

mrc1 wrote:

CiB wrote:

I know where my tax goes. It pays my wife's (teacher) salary. We could save a huge amount of administration costs if we cut out the collection & moving around part of the process and let me just give it straight to her, on the last Friday of the month.

Simple rule. If you're married to someone paid out of the public purse, you can opt out of the tax system. Easy. Leave it to us to sort out how much I pay her and how much is held back for vital necessities (made of carbon & various alloys).

Sounds like you pay a lot of tax, or you are planning to give her a pay cut

Yes. And yes.

meanredspider

We will, at least, be able to tell abusive car drivers EXACTLY how much road tax we are paying

rake

will they include how much tax goes to cover tax avoidance.

rolf_f

mudcow007 wrote:

and...how much is it going to cost to run these "statements" aswell?

will that be shown on the statements?

Why should it cost anything more than a piece of paper? All it is is the total of your tax and some mulptipliers to break it down into the component parts. What I can't work out is why they need two years to implement it.......

And, on the bright side, maybe car drivers might start to understand where the road costs are paid from.

notsoblue

Rolf F wrote:

And, on the bright side, maybe car drivers might start to understand where the road costs are paid from.

Mikey2

Im guessing this will be a leaflet that tells you X% goes on NHS, welfare, defence etc etc.. Which probably exists already somewhere. They will just stuff one in your yearly tax notice thingy.

Its not gonna be you paid £XXXX in tax, of which £X went to NHS etc??

rick_chasey

Mikey2 wrote:

Im guessing this will be a leaflet that tells you X% goes on NHS, welfare, defence etc etc.. Which probably exists already somewhere. They will just stuff one in your yearly tax notice thingy.

Its not gonna be you paid £XXXX in tax, of which £X went to NHS etc??

They do the conversion for you.

So if you pay £20k in tax, and 10% of all tax goes to say, defence, they'll say "you paid £2k for defence".