Baldric said:
It's all rather sad, the majority of Labour voters belong to the lower tax paying groups who are no longer represented by the Labour Party, but you can't tell them that, they won't accept it.
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Lower tax paying groups?
20% PAYE
11% NI conts *
20% VAT
x% fuel duty
y% booze and cigs duty
z% Council Tax (separate debate re that being flat rate/not)
So, the low waged pay 51% plus a variable amount on top.
I think all most socialists want to see is parity: the rich experiencing the same levels of constriction on lifestyle that they experience.
There is a large sector of the population who do have 'discretionary spending' power but they like fun and don't like being stingy to their friends, so they genuinely struggle to accumulate savings.
The more well off can afford to have a large(r) circle of friends, throw some seriously good parties, booze themselves silly (if they want) and still have money left over to squirrel away into savings AND build a pension fund (tax breaks as incentives to do so), to ensure a very comfortable retirement.
In short, once above a certain comfort level (you can only eat/drink so much), the upper half of a high earner's income is mostly discretionary spend and can be deployed into things which generate further wealth but which do not attract VAT in the way most of the things low earners buy do.
All concepts of progessive taxation formulae revolve around lifestyle issues of this sort.
Rather than hike the top rate, we should really be scrapping tax relief on certain investment areas, such as mortgages for anything beyond the second home (which would torpedo buy-to-let empires but that's another story*) or whatever is required to encourage more investment in industry, especially start-ups from which the next Apple-like money-spinner may emerge.
* I may be unintentionally implying that all property-empire types are receiving state assistance, which makes them welfare kings/queens, of a sort. Sorry for any offence so caused.