Weststander
Well-known member
The Guardian now report that the failure to impact assess means:
That is idiotic.
Jesus you are a right plum sometimes Clampy, hope you never find out about pensioners Xmas bonus you’ll have a heart attack !Well, they’re out there. And they’re laughing at us.
Winter fuel payment: We spend it on holidays, say some pensioners
Some pensioners say they don't need the extra cash of up to £300 - and want better means testing.www.bbc.co.uk
It’s my opinion and I’ll live with it.Jesus you are a right plum sometimes Clampy, hope you never find out about pensioners Xmas bonus you’ll have a heart attack !
Why go back to before the Tory government, that was before there was an effective infrastructure to clamp down on money laundering and tax. The HMRC operates regardless of who is in power but they can only do what the law allows them to in chasing down perpetrators.Tax gap. Ascertained some reliable official figures.
2009/10 £35b or 7.9% of what should’ve been collected.
Now, £35.8b or 4.9%.
If 14 years of Labour rule struggled to close the gap, I wonder why it’s fraught?
But encouraging to see the % fall. I think IT enabled targeting, plus believe or not Osborne closed tax avoidance schemes through DOTAS and other legislation.
I'm not sure being disabled or over 80 means you are poor. It may do but equally you could also be well off that you don't need the WFP. The only criteria should be financial, ie deciding those that financially need it and those that don't.
My wife's 93-year-old granny is a millionaire. Why does she need an extra £300?Perhaps a compromise, to save money and to appease some of the backlash, would be to limit the universal (as opposed to those on pension credit) to an older age group - the older people get, the more heating they generally need, so perhaps make it universal for, say, the over 85s?
is odd to not reverse tax cut. still the autumn budget to come though.Maye as an alternative, rather than fiddling around with the income tax rate, just reverse the NI reductions that The Tories introduced in an attempt to bribe voters to vote or them, when they would clearly have known that they didn't have the money to fund this giveaway.
She doesn't. Where did I say she did?My wife's 93-year-old granny is a millionaire. Why does she need an extra £300?
Interesting thread. I voted yes.
However I'm, with @Thunder Bolt in general terms in that there should be no reason for a winter fuel allowance.
I would also add that if there is a winter fuel allowance it seems to make sense to means test it (I don't need it) and yet the cost of means testing will offset any savings; the individual sums involved are too small, and the numbers of people who would have to be 'looked at' is vast.
I think Labour have cocked this one up. But I am not sure how they can do anything differently. If they raise the threshold they won't save any money. If they get rid of the allowance and raise basic state pension they won't save any money and those who don't need an increase will nevertheless get an increase. They should have left this alone and focused on something that can be usefully altered.
Despite being an old lefty, I am not in favour of any benefits unless to help people who cannot earn an income owing to illness or disability. Benefits as a solution to low income and savings is wrong.
I would phase out universal benefits in line with moves to ensure wages/salaries are increased. This has to be done in tandem and it will take years.
Putting my old lefty hat back on, the UK is a great place for multinationals and entrepreneurs to make more money than they can elsewhere owing to tax breaks (for the rich), and that can't be right.
We need to 'rebalance' the damage done by the right (and I will admit Blair's excessively relaxed attitude to 'the wealthy' and their rubric is relevant here too), as evidenced most starkly from the relationship between house prices and average income. Actually allow working people the means to pay their way, and stop pretending we can turn the UK into some sort of low wage long hours Hong Kong of Europe, then finding too many are dependent on benefits that are expensive to curate.
I know you are something of a political soul. So what is your definition of wealth that should be taken from the individuals concerned by a government and redistributed?Why go back to before the Tory government, that was before there was an effective infrastructure to clamp down on money laundering and tax. The HMRC operates regardless of who is in power but they can only do what the law allows them to in chasing down perpetrators.
The reason I said not enough is being been done to close the tax gap today is because after the Panama Papers in 2016, the law was changed allowing the enablers of off shore tax havens to be prosecuted more easily and shut down amongst a range of other measures. So there is no excuse why the tax gap is still getting larger . Before 2014, there was a limit to HMRC getting data on overseas accounts but the law was also changed that year introducing cross border institutional cooperation with sharing data.
If you want to make this partisan (well at least a little dig at Labour ) , the question isn’t why Labour didn’t do enough before 2010 but why despite the changes to the law in 2014 and 2017 making the prosecution of stinking rich people squirrelling their money away in offshore accounts much easier, the Tories didn’t do more to reduce the tax gap and it in fact rose under their governance.
This all goes back to my original point on the Labour meltdown thread and that we should make fuel companies subsidise/reduce bills from the windfall tax on billions £££s profits they make from the consumer. Pensioners shouldn’t even need WFPs. Likewise, if we closed the Tax gap even by 10% with the legislation that is already there for that purpose, there would be no need to start asking people like you and I if we would be happy to pay more income tax to help the elderly stay warm in their homes.
Redistribution of wealth - The bigger picture.
My view on this is nothing to do with my politics. I support Labour, I helped get them elected and personally helped get rid of Liz Truss who did more harm to pensioners btw by knocking £425 billion off pension funds with her insanely irresponsible budget.I know you are something of a political soul. So what is your definition of wealth that should be taken from the individuals concerned by a government and redistributed?
I didn't intend it to be a loaded question. I was just curious in noting the sentence in your post 'redistribution of wealth - the bigger picture'.My view on this is nothing to do with my politics. I support Labour, I helped get them elected and personally helped get rid of Liz Truss who did more harm to pensioners btw by knocking £425 billion off pension funds with her insanely irresponsible budget.
I do wonder though why are you asking me such a heavily laden question in particular to justify a particular policy that I have not said I agree with?
Repeatedly, I have said there are fairer and more morally sound ways to redistribute wealth than end the £200 per year WFP for pensioners.
Fuel should be cheaper for everyone and the windfall tax of £10 billion the Givernment is getting from the £65 billion profits the fuel companies made last year would more than cover the cost of winter fuel payments instead of them ploughing the money back into the fuel companies as green investments.
I have also said we should use existing legislation to close the tax gap by going after offshore tax evaders as well as ending the avoidance of National Insurance Contributions by making them compulsory not voluntary.
My view on this is nothing to do with my politics. I support Labour, I helped get them elected and personally helped get rid of Liz Truss who did more harm to pensioners btw by knocking £425 billion off pension funds with her insanely irresponsible budget.
I do wonder though why are you asking me such a heavily laden question in particular to justify a particular policy that I have not said I agree with?
Repeatedly, I have said there are fairer and more morally sound ways to redistribute wealth than end the £200 per year WFP for pensioners.
Fuel should be cheaper for everyone and the windfall tax of £10 billion the Givernment is getting from the £65 billion profits the fuel companies made last year would more than cover the cost of winter fuel payments instead of them ploughing the money back into the fuel companies as green investments.
I have also said we should use existing legislation to close the tax gap by going after offshore tax evaders as well as ending the avoidance of National Insurance Contributions by making them compulsory not voluntary.
Sorry been getting constant push back every time I post because apparently my political credentials of being a Labour Party activist puts me in the firing line for those very angry about this and apparently I have to justify everything I say so I will make this my last post (after responding to @Weststander below) because its getting boring.I didn't intend it to be a loaded question. I was just curious in noting the sentence in your post 'redistribution of wealth - the bigger picture'.