Lootman wrote:SteMiS wrote:Lootman wrote:My bigger point was that these academics express the breakdown of who pays taxes in self-serving terms. An analogy might help. Suppose you owe £1,000 to some guys. If you don't pay them back by tomorrow they are going to break your legs. Now suppose a rich man gives you £950 and a poor guy gives you the other £50.
Most people would feel much more gratitude to the guy who repaid 95% of their debt. But the academics instead say: "But look, the poor guy gave half of all he had whilst the rich guy only gave a tiny fraction. That is technically true but is not how ordinary people use words or express gratitude for generosity.
I'm not sure that's even true. Sometimes you see reports in the press about how a pensioner has sent £20 from their pension to a particular charity or a school kid has saved up £5 from their pocket money to do so. I think most people would attribute more to that than if, say, Bill Gates just donated £500 every year*.
Perhaps, but ultimately what matters to the charity or to the Exchequer is the total amount of money received, since that is what can be spent. That £500 buys a lot more than the £20 or the £5. The ultimate point of taxation is to collect the required amount and not to endlessly tinker around with who pays it to ensure some kind of optimal curve.
Tax has all sorts of other 'purposes' in our economy as well; to modify (i.e. encourage/discourage) behaviour, to manage demand, to address iniquity. You may not agree with them all. I may not agree with them all. But that's how it's used.
Lootman wrote:And that "required amount" already overwhelmingly comes from those who are well off.
Whilst it's true that the well off generally pay more tax in pound note terms I don't think it's quite as extreme as the
"the richest 2% pay over 50% of taxes"
you quoted (which relates purely to income tax). As I posted earlier (
viewtopic.php?p=418417#p418417), the percentage of income paid by the different quartiles is relatively similar. According to
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... le_2.4.pdf it is the top
25% that receive 53% of total income (before tax). So bearing in mind the similar overall percentage tax rates of the different deciles (and the fact that not all tax is personal tax) I'd say that's a better, albeit crude, view of where half the taxes come from...the top 25% not the top 2%.