Plans for over-40s to pay more tax

https://www.theguardian.com/society...ise-taxes-for-over-40s-to-pay-for-social-care

This is the stand out bit to me;

Under the plan over-40s would have to pay more in tax or national insurance, or be compelled to insure themselves against hefty bills for care when they are older.

 

Cant comment on how it works in the other countries, but I am nearly 50, have worked all my adult life, in that time I can count on one hand I have had to visit the Doctors let alone anything more serious, so surely everything I have paid upto my 40th would more than contribute towards higher costs as I get older?

 

I had that exact thought!

When it mentions that Japan’s over 40s pay more, do they already pay something similar to our NI?

 

They should stick a few percentage points on the highest earners, but this is the Tories we're talking about...

 

I think in Germany there is a ring fenced percentage of their income tax or NI that goes into a Social Care fund , it’s not a separate tax as such . My objection is that A fair proportion of a forced insurance or a separate tax for over 40’s will just go to dividends for private health care firms and not on actually providing services . If they go down the insurance route it’s good bye NHS

 

They'd still only be paying 1.5% though. On that basis you're advocating for one flat income tax bracket. People who earn more are better able to pay a higher percentage.

 

That’s always the case though but we still have a higher rate tax band rather than flat across the board.

 

Nice of them to pull this out of the bag in the very year that millennials start turning 40!

 

Anybody surprised?

The vast majority of 40 year olds will have young kids and probably only be a third of their way into a (very expensive) mortgage going by the fact that most people don’t get on the property ladder until they are 30 and take a 30 year repayment term.

 

I actually think it should be everyone if it is ring fenced and guaranteed to go on social care, there’s plenty of young disabled people. I still think higher tax rate earners should pay more, we are at a very small rate compared to historical rates I believe.

 

Once again, and I posted on this a couple of months back (edit: quoted below), they're talking about taxing income rather than capital. Income tax and NI rises are part of the solution but plenty of people who can afford to contribute more are largely missed by schemes such as this. I'm 50 now, I've been retired for 6 years and from a quick scan it seems that under this scheme I wouldn't pay an extra penny, at least not until my state pension kicks in when I'm 67/68. That's not right. They need to go after capital as well.

 

The main danger I can see is that they seem to be implying that people can opt out. The richest will of course do this and without their tax contributions this scheme can only fail. I also worry if the poor would be allowed to opt out as many would do so to save the few quid now and then be absolutely screwed when they need the help.

 

Maybe just tax Amazon correctly.

 

I've added a quote from my previous post above. Other countries have banded wealth tax. It's not popular but I believe it's fair. The bands actually start quite high. I also think we need to cut ISA allowances, for example.

Double or even triple taxation isn't new. I paid tax and NI on my salary that I paid from retained profit on which I'd already paid corporation tax. If I have to pay a bit of wealth tax on that too, so be it.

 

The tories love the public’s money to be ring fenced because they decide how high the fence is, and you can bet it won’t be high enough to stop them plundering it as soon as they can!