GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
One love affair is already over:
My love-in with Labour is already over after two months – here’s why
My love-in with Labour is already over after two months – here’s why
Keir Starmer's time is up
- Thread starter agricola
- Start date
Lurdan
old wave
I defer to nobody in my distaste for Trevor Phillips (or as I like to think of him 'that useless cunt'). But credit where it's due for this top trolling masterclass
There’s a man in the wings Starmer should call - Times (archived)
There’s a man in the wings Starmer should call - Times (archived)
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
taperoo2k
Well-Known Member
Nah. He just needs to listen to Angela Rayner, who seems to have a better grasp of what
the real world is like than Reeves or Starmer do.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
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,
_Russ_
Never not Knowingly Misunderstood
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
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.
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
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.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
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.
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
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.If both people in a couple have an income they cannot be a single income couple
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.
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?
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.
Being single has a lot going for it, but £10k a year seems too high a price for the privilege | Emma John
People who live alone spend almost twice as much per person as those in couples, research has revealed
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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.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.
Being single has a lot going for it, but £10k a year seems too high a price for the privilege | Emma John
People who live alone spend almost twice as much per person as those in couples, research has revealedwww.theguardian.com
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?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Some top-notch pedantry here, and not all of it from the usual suspects 
newme
Giant in Pastyland now
Seems like it should be 50% really.
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.
PTK
Paul Kegan
What is the argument in favour of abolishing the single person discount? 8 million households await the answer with interest.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
gosub
~#
Council bankruptcy tracker: authorities under increasing financial strain
Six local authorities have declared bankruptcy since 2021. Spotlight looks at the financial situation at English councils.
www.newstatesman.com
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
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.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That's not an argument in favour of making single people pay proportionately more.Council bankruptcy tracker: authorities under increasing financial strain
Six local authorities have declared bankruptcy since 2021. Spotlight looks at the financial situation at English councils.
PTK
Paul Kegan
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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