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Keir Starmer's time is up

in the interests of moving things along
Fucking hell. Pisses me off.

Married people benefit from the married tax allowance.

Single people don't benefit from a single person's tax allowance. Even though married couples get to split their other utilities bills and living costs between two people.

Single people don't get to go halfsies on their electricity or gas or water bills, etc. If you're a single person and you need a new boiler or sofa or to fix the roof or whatever, you don't get to go halfsies. Life as a single person is way more expensive than life as half of a couple.

As it stands, a single person gets only a 25 per cent council tax discount, so a single person still pays more than each half of a married couple.

If anything, single people should be receiving more of a discount,
 
Fucking hell. Pisses me off.

Married people benefit from the married tax allowance.

Single people don't benefit from a single person's tax allowance. Even though married couples get to split their other utilities bills and living costs between two people.

Single people don't get to go halfsies on their electricity or gas or water bills, etc. If you're a single person and you need a new boiler or sofa or to fix the roof or whatever, you don't get to go halfsies. Life as a single person is way more expensive than life as half of a couple.

As it stands, a single person gets only a 25 per cent council tax discount, so a single person still pays more than each half of a married couple.

If anything, single people should be receiving more of a discount,
Yep, a working single person with no children, is subsidising married families with children, which considering a married family with children will use more publicly funded services is a bit shit.
But it's all about economic growth in the capitalist world and the profit that brings flows forever upwards, can't have growth without a growing supply of drones so you will be rewarded for providing some to the matrix
 
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Fucking hell. Pisses me off.

Married people benefit from the married tax allowance.

Single people don't benefit from a single person's tax allowance. Even though married couples get to split their other utilities bills and living costs between two people.

Single people don't get to go halfsies on their electricity or gas or water bills, etc. If you're a single person and you need a new boiler or sofa or to fix the roof or whatever, you don't get to go halfsies. Life as a single person is way more expensive than life as half of a couple.

As it stands, a single person gets only a 25 per cent council tax discount, so a single person still pays more than each half of a married couple.

If anything, single people should be receiving more of a discount,
The married person’s tax allowance is only really relevant to couples with a single income. Your comparison above is of a double income for two people to a single income for one person. But the allowance is irrelevant to that comparison, because it wouldn’t apply. You need to compare a single income for two people to a single income for one person. In that case, the single person would have the advantage because of the progressive nature of tax, even before you also account for the extra living costs of the couple.
 
The married person’s tax allowance is only really relevant to couples with a single income. Your comparison above is of a double income for two people to a single income for one person. But the allowance is irrelevant to that comparison, because it wouldn’t apply. You need to compare a single income for two people to a single income for one person. In that case, the single person would have the advantage because of the progressive nature of tax, even before you also account for the extra living costs of the couple.
Not quite.

To get marriage allowance you need one person in the couple to be a basic rate tax payer and the other to not earn enough to pay tax.

So if person 1 earns 40k and person 2 earns 10k they can benefit from marriage allowance, as the 10k earnings would typically be below the threshold for paying tax given a typical tax code of 1257L
 
Not quite.

To get marriage allowance you need one person in the couple to be a basic rate tax payer and the other to not earn enough to pay tax.

So if person 1 earns 40k and person 2 earns 10k they can benefit from marriage allowance, as the 10k earnings would typically be below the threshold for paying tax given a typical tax code of 1257L
Close enough to what I was saying — I was simplifying to make it clear to understand. Your nuance doesn’t change the point at all.
 
Starmer wants to kill of the oldies to balance the books, he is a fucking tory cunt in a not at all convincing disguise

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that an additional 100,000 pensioners will be pushed into poverty by the cut to the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Starmer says this shows that he’s making ‘tough choices’. It doesn’t. It shows that he’s a horrible cunt.
 
If both people in a couple have an income they cannot be a single income couple :)
The point, though, is that it is misleading to, eg, look at two people earning 20k each versus one person earning 20k alone. Because the two people won’t get the married couple allowance anyway. That’s the salient point. The married couple allowance isn’t something that double-income couples will get at all. Even in your example, 10k is WELL below minimum wage for a full time income, so it still isn’t “double-income” in the manner implied. It’s one income plus just over 40% of a minimum wage second income.

We can quibble about the specifics of individual cases, but the point remains that it is misleading to say that two people are twice as better off as one person in one breath, while talking about the married person’s allowance in the next breath. Those two things are apples and oranges.
 
I'm still not sure why there is a financial advantage to being married to begin with.
Social engineering. Those in power like the married family unit because it is useful for reproducing labour. Given this, you might instead question why you’d bother having a benefit that is too small to act as an incentive. Surely, you’d either get rid of it entirely or increase it to the point that it is meaningful?
 
The married person’s tax allowance is only really relevant to couples with a single income. Your comparison above is of a double income for two people to a single income for one person. But the allowance is irrelevant to that comparison, because it wouldn’t apply. You need to compare a single income for two people to a single income for one person. In that case, the single person would have the advantage because of the progressive nature of tax, even before you also account for the extra living costs of the couple.

Why are you assuming a single income? That's not realistic.

Extra living costs, taking food for example. 2 people can take advantage more of special offers on fresh food.
Assuming an equal division of labour, this can make bulk cooking more economic.
More water and energy are used, sure.
It's possible more heating is used, if one party is in whilst the other out. However, arguably offset as both are sharing the bill and likely to both be home when heating is used more than not.

Don't know about the marital tax allowance but Ann's general point stands. i.e it's not really fair to charge single people the same council tax as a household of more than one adult.

There was a report / article fairly recently saying single life is generally more expensive than for a couple. LMGI.

e2a this one will probably do.
 
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Not looked into the specifics since we didn't get married. Quick Google said we would get maybe £252 in tax savings, didnt look further. Which isn't far off the winter fuel allowance amount that seems to be at least some help.
 
How much more council tax would I have to pay to keep the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners? I'd probably be OK with that.
 
Why are you assuming a single income? That's not realistic.

Extra living costs, taking food for example. 2 people can take advantage more of special offers on fresh food.
Assuming an equal division of labour, this can make bulk cooking more economic.
More water and energy are used, sure.
It's possible more heating is used, if one party is in whilst the other out. However, arguably offset as both are sharing the bill and likely to both be home when heating is used more than not.

Don't know about the marital tax allowance but Ann's general point stands. i.e it's not really fair to charge single people the same council tax as a household of more than one adult.

There was a report / article fairly recently saying single life is generally more expensive than for a couple. LMGI.

e2a this one will probably do.
I’m not talking about the council tax reduction for single people. I’m talking about the married person’s allowance, which is a transfer of a small part of the income tax allowance from one partner who is not earning enough to use the allowance to another partner who is. By definition, it can only be transferred if one of the partners is not earning anything close to full time minimum wage.
 
I’m not talking about the council tax reduction for single people. I’m talking about the married person’s allowance, which is a transfer of a small part of the income tax allowance from one partner who is not earning enough to use the allowance to another partner who is. By definition, it can only be transferred if one of the partners is not earning anything close to full time minimum wage.

OK, I didn't pay much attention to that part of the original post as didn't know how it worked. Thought you were quibbling with the general point though. Do you think removing the 25% CT discount for single people would be fair?
 
OK, I didn't pay much attention to that part of the original post as didn't know how it worked. Thought you were quibbling with the general point though. Do you think removing the 25% CT discount for single people would be fair?
Seems like it should be 50% really.
 
OK, I didn't pay much attention to that part of the original post as didn't know how it worked. Thought you were quibbling with the general point though. Do you think removing the 25% CT discount for single people would be fair?
I honestly don’t really have a view on that. I can see arguments both ways. I agree that on the surface, it seems fair to include a discount.
 
What is the argument in favour of abolishing the single person discount? 8 million households await the answer with interest.
If I offer it, I’ll then be asked to defend it. Which I’m not interested in doing because, like I say, I don’t really have a view either way.
 
I can give an argument against it. Council tax pays for council services. These services, such as libraries, policing, street cleaning, etc, are generally consumed on a per capita basis, not a per household basis. A person living on their own is overpaying for these services if they are paying the same as two or more people living together.
 
If I offer it, I’ll then be asked to defend it. Which I’m not interested in doing because, like I say, I don’t really have a view either way.
So you don't care either way if the poorest people are made poorer? (I know that all the people affected would not be the poorest but certainly the poorest people would be made poorer by the abolition of the single person discount, given that 100% council tax relief for most jobless householders was abolished a decade ago).
 
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