Where are you going to stop though - I don't use public transport, should I not pay the portion of my income tax that subsidises the buses and railways ?

My children have left school now, should I stop paying for other kids education ?

I don't drink alcohol, should I deduct that part of my tax that goes towards providing police officers to pick up drunks and for hospitals to treat durnks or while we're at it I've never smoked in my life, thats another bit of tax I don't have to pay towards the NHS...

And the big one - I've been paying for someone elses pensions for the last 40 years of my working life, I should get a refund for that and only pay pension provision income tax when I retire, by which time I won't be earning so won't have to pay income tax.

See how your idea won't work ?

it would be impossible to regulate small things such as Alcohol, smoking, transport (you would technically be counted as a problem of congestion so i would still expect to be charged for transport). Even if your not a regular smoker/drinker who's to say you won't do it occasionally? Even tho the amount of tax payable on such items should cover any future costs.

And yes you have paid your way why should you expect to pay for some one else's child?

as i said the pension idea it is impossible to predict your future circumstances so i would still expect to pay your part for that and if you don't need a state pension then at least you had a safety net.

We do this anyway, in a number of ways. As you mention yourself, through taxes, but also through road laws (which regulate how fast you can drive, for instance) and through rules on things like contraband tobacco and alcohol, which are enforced by trading standards and which can protect not only your health but your pocket (some of the stuff they find and confiscate are not just dangerous, but they also work to stop landlords watering drinks or replacing brand names with inferior – and cheaper – products while charging you the same). That's all regulation.

Indeed, if regulatory powers and resources had not been diminished in recent years, the horse meat fiasco might not have happened or might have been detected earlier.



Partly because someone else has paid in so that you have been able to benefit on health, education etc.

So basically its the idea that part of your UK tax bill (do you pay UK tax ?) goes to educate someone else's child that you don't like ?

The only thing you're missing here is that educating children is beneficial to all of us, childless or not, because an educated workforce is a valuable workforce and a valuable workforce paying lots of tax is going to support me in my dotage soon.

Thats why I'm happy now to pay for someone else's child to be educated especially as mine went through the system unbilled (and during that time I would have been one of the ones asked to contribute, maybe not now, but those were the good times).

It's rather like large companies saying they shouldn't pay corporation tax but then moaning about lack of publicly funded infra-structure. If they legitimately don't pay corporation tax here despite making large profits here then they should pay for their own infra-structure!

The way to deal with the likes of Amazon is two-fold:

1. Make them pay "business rates" based on a percentage of turnover (already being talked about) as they have an unfair advantage over high street retailers due to market distortions caused by tax and they are not as socially useful; AND
2. Given the millions of delivery journey's that they generate (bad for the environment, clogging up our roads, etc) add a levy of at least £1 per delivery onto them - to help offset their detrimental activity.

And people who smoke/ drink pay for that from the tax added into it.

And if your paying your own private health insurance and for private schooling how has anybody else contributed to me or any future children i may have?

No i don't pay taxes in the UK as i don't live there any more but before that yes i did. And why should what i earn provide for some else family? Guess what i don't have children at the moment, i would like to but i can't afford them. And come of it anybody who has been to public school know majority of those children don't bother to use the education they receive.

I agree you should pay for what affects that you cause. Thats not what i was saying at all, if you have children you should expect to pay for them and not have things provide for you.

It seems that you're now agreeing that it is not "impossible to regulate small things such as Alcohol, smoking, transport". That seems to contradict your previous comment.



You simply need to make sure that, for instance, not one of your nurses or doctors has in any way benefited from state education, say. Or that the private ambulance that drove you to your private hospital didn't go down any public roads paid for by the taxpayer. Or that the road in question wasn't designed by an engineer who was educated in a state school.

Or that your child's teacher was not educated in a state school or saved from certain death by an NHS doctor.

That sort of thing.

Who paid for your education?

my parents. As i will for my children eventually.

Well clearly you live in a country of your choice where such things don't matter, good luck to you and I hope that one day you can "afford" to have children and can afford to educate them in the country that you live in.

I too thought the way that you think, its what made me vote for Thatcher's regime change in the 1970s and 80s, the idea that I could control my own destiny and maybe pay a bit less tax and yes, her regime made those things possible.

It was only with the benefit of years more experience in life that I realised that no person can be independent, it will never be possible for you to "afford" children if you sit down and spreadsheet them, nor will you ever earn enough money to educate them, nor will you ever earn enough money to provide independent healthcare for you and your family and finally, even after doing all of that, you will never have enough money left to invest in a pension to provide for yourself entirely at the end of your working life.

That is a reality check.

So have i stopped paying council tax and has this private hospital stopped paying road tax for its ambulances? Am i saying that you just stop paying taxes? No. What i am saying is you should have tax breaks if you provide for your self with Private educations and health insurance. Its not like i am saying i should pay for road maintenance, police force and fire brigade. These NHS doctors you speak of will pay the system back there selves not people who don't depend on that system.

Main Reason i love Dubai, I work and get paid and its up to me how i spend that money. If i don't have medical insurances and i break my leg In ski Dubai i will be facing a very big medical bill. If i decided i want children I then pay for the Health insurance and Schooling fees why should i expect another parent to pay for my kids? If i want a pension when i grow old i have to provide it my self. If i don't provide for my self here i can't live here.

That is my sole aim at the moment to set my self up so i can provide for my future family. I wish i could afford all of this right away with out the hard work but i can't and i really wished i was going to watch Wigan in Sydney but right now saving for my upcoming marriage is more important.

But in reality you can as have my parents for my brother. He was practically born here and studied all his life here he is now off to uni this summer but they have payed for absolutely everything for him, from health care, dental and education. I know Unfortunately not everybody has the same circumstances and people do need help and support and those are the people who will still pay tax for that system and in turn it will help others after them.

Im not saying people shouldn't pay tax at all but what i am saying is the people who also provide for them selves and don't depend on the NHS and public schools should receive some kind of benefit from it. Everybody has different opinions of course thats just mine. I have see two complete opposite sides of the system from living in wigan and now Dubai and i much prefer the one i am in right now, even if it means i can't have what i want right now.

I suspect that its worked for you and your parents because you are both able to earn significantly more than what is considered to be the average wage here in the UK (£26,664 - 2013, ONS) because even on that average times two full time earners in the family you'd be well short of the proposal to charge for education at £80,000.

The reality is that anyone earning an average wage in the UK (and there are many on less than £12k), you will not earn sufficient to pay for health insurance or education, or to put anything aside for a pension.

National Insurance is what it suggests, it the insurance scheme that (originally) pays for your healthcare and pension and none of us should ever lose sight of that fact - we are in effect already doing what you suggest and have been since 1948.

And they were educated privately, were they, and only by other teachers who were educated privately, etc etc etc?

Since you're not in the UK ...

Do you know what local taxes pay for and what national taxes pay for? In the UK, that is.



Yes. You want to be rewarded for being better off than other people.



More than one poster here has explained this to you.

Right now i earn nowhere near enough to pay for a child so i am working towards it and in 3 years hopefully i will be able to afford it. I believe my brothers education for high school (most expensive years) was around 27,000 pounds so i know not everybody could afford that (like me) and they are the people who will not receive the tax breaks but in effect they are paying for the children's education but at a subsidize rate. Personally i think its a fair system people pay for what they can afford.

same with the national insurance i am not saying people who have health insurance shouldn't pay it because nobody knows what the future has in hold for them but for the time you have health insurance you should pay a lower rate as you don't take from that system.

I guess my way of looking at is purchasing i guess. I wouldn't buy a house with somebody and pay 100k whilst they only pay 50k but we receive 50% equity each.

You'll find that in the UK even if you have private health insurance (and few pay for it themselves as it is ridiculously high, my last quote was £99 per month just to cover myself), then you will still use the NHS facilities if you are ill.

For instance you will still be assigned to an NHS GP who will be your first port of call if you are ill, if required he will then refer you and its at that point that you can choose your private provider.

For instance, if you are hit by a bus this afternoon then no private provider will send a paramedic or ambulance to scrape you out from under its wheels for they don't exist, its not a profitable service for them to provide - the NHS would attend to you and only when you are well enough would you be moved to your private provider.

Or as a final for instance if you are in the situation that a friend of mine was and you discover that unfortunately you have a brain tumour then you would be referred to the top practitioner in the city who works in one of our NHS hospitals and when you mention that you have BUPA cover he will inform you that he has a clinic at BUPA once a week and that he can either see you now or you can wait until Friday and he'll see you there - my friend chose to see him there and then, as you would if you had a brain tumour.

Truth is that on many occasions the private health providers leach off the NHS.

Yeah you are right about the Private health and like i said the more i think about it the more I think you should have to make a contribution but you should also be rewarded if you take out private health insurance or work for a company that will provide it. The last time i remember going to the doctors in the uk was for the simple reason of being referred to the private hospital. Im not saying all my opinions are bulletproof or even thought out to be put in practice because i know they never will be, but my own self beliefs are you shouldn't rely on others if you can provide it for yourself.

My father lived in Spain for a while and at that time (not sure now) they had a two tier system, the state provision was very basic hospital facilities and his Spanish friends assured him that no-one in employment would ever use them, they all had insurance - he had cause to use the private clinic towards the end of his life and paid for it himself and found it to be on par with the private facilities here.

I think the UK has the balance correct where our state provisions are often (despite what politicians tell you) world leaders in their field and the private insurers will often use NHS facilities simply because the private hospitals will offer better hotel facilities but often not better medical care, indeed as in my example, its often NHS consultants operating one day a week in the private hospitals - a friend of mine who is an anesthetist does the same.

That is only possible of course by ALL of us contributing and not opting out.

Well that won't work.

I think all education spending represents 12% of UK government expenditure. Therefore 12% of the tax you pay would go toward this spending. Is 12% of your income tax enough to fund a private education?

I earn a high salary and 12% of the tax I pay [iin a year[/i would not come close to funding a term let alone a year of private schooling.

And of course if I was given this rather small sum of money as a tax rebate to put toward school fees it would mean less in the pot for those who would have to rely on state education, which is the vast majority.

That is the good thing about progressive taxation. It makes money available to provide services such as education the wider population could not afford that we all benefit from. In this case an educated population.

If you want your contribution back I suggest you work out just how much that would be and then consider if receiving that small amount of money would be a morally acceptable position to take given the impact this would have if we all took that money out of the pot.

Will you be telling us next you want the proportion of tax you pay to the NHS back because so far in your life you have not needed the services of a heart surgeon for example and don't see why you should pay anything towards the cost of those who do?

Before starting work in the nursery school my wife was a temp at the Nuffield hospital in Chester. On more than one occasion while she was there people in for surgery such as wisdom teeth being removed ended up being carted off in an NHS ambulance to the Countess of Chester NHS hospital when complications developed.

They simply do not have the facilities to treat the more chronic conditions or to deal with complications arising. Why anyone would actually go there in the first place when this can happen is beyond me.

They just don't have the workload is the answer.

They don't have the workload because no-one buys private health insurance unless its provided by their employer, and the days when that was considered a "perk" are long gone.

So with diminishing patients they don't make the investment in equipment or staff (because they have to make a profit and investment is profit that is diverted) and the staff that they do provide are often NHS consultants on their day off.

They do hotel services very good though.

I'm with you, I can't imagine why I'd ever want to take Aviva up on their monthly offer to me.

just an incident that happened with a cousin of mine, He had two in ingrown toe nails whilst waiting for the operation to have them removed (3months originally) they became infected no matter what he did he couldn't stop it from happening. So he got moved up the waiting list whilst not being able to work all in the mean time because he had serious troubles with walking. Two weeks before he is due the op he had a check up and they found he was a carrier of MRSA so it was another 2months before he could have the operation, so all in all 6months of not working earning less money than if he was still working in the end they had to send him to a private hospital (i think somewhere in runshaw) because the toes had become septic and he was very close to losing his 2 big toes because of the NHS. So yeah i will stick to private health care.

Also Davo o i never mentioned the taxes will cover the expense of private school but it will help with the tuition fees for the parents that wish to send there children to private schools. If not wanting to pay for everybody else in life makes you selfish then I'm 100 percent fully selfish but in reality I'm not because i wont make choices i can't afford.