I see that the Office of Tax Simplification is in favour of merging income tax and national insurance.
Renaming the con trick of NI (it most certainly is not a ring fenced insurance scheme, but is merely another tax) is all very well.
However, this recommendation will be used by politicians to raise taxes as the limits on NI will be removed, and an additonal tax of 10% will be lumped into the current rates.
Simple!
Tax does have to be taxing.
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I think the meerkat says "simples". Sorry Ken, you can put this in the pedants corner.
ReplyDeleteIf that was all they did (and we'll ignore employers' NI for the moment) it would at least stop the overall charge on employment income being regressive.
ReplyDelete(OK, so we need to ignore pension contribution deductibility and all the other reliefs and allowances that disproportionately favour the rich. Details, details.)
Anyway, I'd love to see this happen because, as you say, NI is a con. Unfortunately I just can't see it happening. They'd be far too scared of the headlines saying "chancellor to put 10p on income tax".
Stew G
Whatever they call it, the bastards are still taking it out of your wage packet. It's time the ordinary taxpaying victim realised exactly how big the rip-off is.
ReplyDeleteNever going to happen.Merging income tax and NI would give the lie to the claim that tax rates in the UK fell in the last 20 years. It would also render of unearned income and including pensions liable to much higher rates of tax. Pensioners could effectively find themselves having paid NI while they worked and again in a disguised form after they retired. I think that would only be politically acceptable if the state pension was excluded from any earnings calculations.
ReplyDeleteState pensions should be none taxable anyway. However if they did introduce this they would have to exclude them or massively increase age related allowances to compensate.
ReplyDeleteBut no politician would introduce this because to make up for the lost revenue they would have to increase the basic tax rate to 43%. Or find another way to raise the money. Income tax and NI are by far the biggest sources of income for the Gov't.