In the future companies should pay their tax....

[RenewableCandy]

I get your point, but I was thinking of businesses, and property prices, rather than individual people.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

[quote="stevecook172001Narrowing the appalling wealth gap between the richest and poorest in York wouldn't go amiss either. It's a funny old place is York RC. The ridiculous level of income of a small percentage of the York population drags the average income up and so we don't attract any urban deprivation money from central government unlike places like Rotherham and yet we have a huge number of people in this city getting by on earning the bare minimum wage. All of which wouldn't matter that much except for the astronomical level of rents and house prices.[/quote]

I think that's the same all over. The poor trapped in the South East, surrounded by affluence, are no less poor.

[kenneal - lagger]

But then why just target corporate profits?

I wasn't suggesting just targeting corporate profits. I was suggesting a way to ensure that ALL retailers pay an amount of tax on their profits.

This tax is just a way of transferring money from the rich to the Govt so that they can buy the votes of the poor.

If the rich are paying such low wages while making large profits the only way that people can get a living wage is by the government intervening. Retailers paying the minimum wage, for instance, and basing this wage on what people are paid in the far east is hypocritical. Retailers face no competition from the Far East so wouldn't lose any trade by paying a fairer wage. If retailers are going to pay huge salaries to their managers and low wages to every one else, with the government making up the difference from minimum wage to living wage, there is a very good case for the minimum wage to be raised to a living wage and being kept there.

We keep hearing about the huge cash pile that our businesses are siting on and that they are looking for something to do with it. Well let them invest it in their workforces. If their workforces had some money to spend they might spend it in their employers' stores. At the very least it would get the economy going again. Large amounts of money siting on deposit lead to stagnation as we are seeing at the moment. The government would reduce the welfare bill immediately, which should be attractive to them.

So why not widen corporation tax to be an annual tax on all assets and bank accounts? Then those people sitting in very valuable houses will be given a prompt to sell and we might discourage constant improvement works.

Progressive and fair from where I stand.

The LibDems have suggested an equivalent to that in the form of a mansion tax which was rejected as it would do precisely what you have said and encourage people to move into smaller houses when they don't need the space any more. I do not like the contrast in the arguments for the bedroom tax and that against the mansion tax.

I know that the taxpayer is paying for the welfare payments for the extra bedroom but we are also paying for the lack of a mansion tax, or rather our children are. It is they who will pick up the bill for the increasing government debt as a result of the deficit we now have.

[RenewableCandy]

Spare bedrooms can save lives! the least-well-off people have more than their fair share of the various upsets and disasters that can befall a family: the lass (or lad!) fleeing an abusive partner, the son or daughter coming back to parents' home after redundancy, the kid starting a new "clean" life after falling into drugs, the parent who develops the condition needing "round-the-clock care", the kid who joins the forces. Or who takes some ordinary job that's far away, but only temporary.

It's ridiculous.

[biffvernon]

But didn't they say in the case of the kid who joins the forces they would be exempt. Of course if the kid goes off to be a nurse or does VSO or summat useful they don't count.

It's ridiculous.

And did you see this: http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.ph ... droom-tax/

Here is Labour frontbencher Helen Goodman confirming that her party supports the ‘Bedroom Tax’. The charge, a deduction from benefits for anyone who lives in social housing and who has ‘spare’ bedrooms – such as because children don’t share a room – has been widely condemned as unjust.
Yet the Labour party has now clarified that it is, in fact, in favour of the controversial measure. The party states one exception: those people who have not been offered a smaller house. The shadow minister failed to rule out the families of disabled children who need a spare room for their carers, the parents of soldiers who have gone overseas, or single parents whose children’s time is split between their parents.
Presumably this means that the Labour party is in fact in favour of attacking all of the hardest effected groups we have all learnt about in recent weeks.

[JohnB]

Spare bedrooms can save lives!

But only lives of people who aren't in "hard working familes", so don't matter. They need to aspire to get off their arses and become rich.

[featherstick]

But then why just target corporate profits?

This tax is just a way of transferring money from the rich to the Govt so that they can pay for essential public services such as healthcare, education, social care, binmen and crime prevention.

So why not widen corporation tax to be an annual tax on all assets and bank accounts? Then those people sitting in very valuable houses will be given a prompt to sell and we might discourage constant improvement works.

Progressive and fair from where I stand.

Fixed that for you.