While having a conversation last night TAX was mentioned and it got me thinking, when we went into recession tax went from 17.5% to 20% ( for those not in 40% bracket), was there ever a time when it would revert or did the government shaft us (again) forever ?
You are right Conan that was VAT , but I think in my time , income tax has been as high as 33% in the late seventies & has gradually been reduced to 20% , that is base rate , I"m not sure bout the higher rates , I"ve never paid them !
The threshold before paying tax seems to increase every year under a T**y government so we keep seeing a small increase in our net. This will happen again from April 2019. I would rather do without and see this money invested in public services. On the flip side, I work in the public sector and the pay rise they have offered us is....................0.0%.
This is what jars with me. There are very very few people I know who are getting anything like the 3.3% annual wage growth we're supposedly experiencing at present. If that's relatively true in lower and middle earning roles, there has to be some serious increases in the top earners, but many of the big earners in businesses I work with, pay rounds are being frozen or delayed to understand what the future landscape looks like. There are many more redundancies and natural unreplaced attrition than there is recruitment pushes. But that's just what i'm seeing in a 100-150 companies loosely.
Its never in the working mans favour , in the late seventies when I had a young family , income tax was around 33 % & my mortgage payments were at 10 % . I sympathise with you in the public sector , I have also worked in that group & unfortunately its a group which have regularly had the short straw .
Well its not me I havent had a pay rise in 4 years and am not getting one this year - whats the 3.3% based on is an average salary increase across the board - in which case some people get automatic rises with promotions etc the minium wage went up a bit etc or is it year on year for the same job
I'm highly sceptical about official statistics because they are sampled and can miss huge parts of the economy. I know the chambers of commerce tried surveying its members periodically, but the measures were dreadful and highly skewed, not to mention biased and subjective. The job data, I fundamentally don't buy, but the pay data, yes, it's just not what I'm sensing.
In terms of the public sector I think nurses and possibly teachers were offered 2.5% which is the highest. My mate works for the CPS and theirs is still with the Union (as is ours). I am not aware of anyone in either sector who has been offered anything like 3.3% without actually being promoted or getting a new job.
There are some advantages of being in the public sector, but workloads and pay rises are not two of them!
I own a small business and I am fairly certain that our turnover will go down next year - i’ll be expected to give my staff a pay rise because but that will have to come with a pay cut for me. Just saying.
Don’t forget the downgrading of pensions. Pensions and job security are 2 main reasons why I left the private sector for the public sector. That went well didn’t it. Oh, and I took a drop in salary as well.