I thought we were talking about tax credits?

They do up to £100k "adjusted net income" and only then does it reduce on a £1 for £2 basis. That's why I said "high earners" and not "very high earners"

As I said a couple of posts ago, I responded to you generally in terms of illustrating ways in which big business gets treated especially well.

This is a particularly good way – and shows a subsidy from the taxpayer to corporates that is not paid directly, but is none the less a subsidy.

Are you saying tax credits should be scrapped as they have a secondary effect of "subsidising" business?

I imagine she's saying it is the duty of a profitable employer to sufficiently remunerate its staff, rather than relying on the taxpayer to subsidise their remuneration.

I wonder at yours too - where does the money come from to pay in work benefits, general taxation given the private sector is by far the largest employer it is not a huge leap of faith to suggest it is also the larger contributor to the tax income.. So far from being subsidised by the government they are actually propping up the government.

All I hear on here is government is subsidising big business - nobody has yet produced figures to support that argument that is my point. If Morrisons makes a £500m tax contribution but its employees get £300m in work benefits who is subsidising who?

This.

I have given you an extremely specific example of government subsidising big business by using public health – and the budgets involved – to advertise branded products on behalf of the corporates that it had invited to join the government's public health committee.

On in-work benefits: a number of companies are not paying the living wage to at least some of their employees (and some are, in effect, avoiding paying the minimum wage by cutting hours).

We know this to be factually the case.

We also know it to be the case that people on low incomes require in-work benefits, including but not limited to housing benefit, simply in order to live at a basic level.

If that stopped and people could not keep a roof over their heads or barely feed themselves, this would not be conducive to their performance in the work place. That's not rocket science.

So if companies that are highly successful are relying on the taxpayer to top up low wages in order that their employees can operate at a basic level, it is a subsidy.

We know that plenty of companies are not paying a living wage to their lowliest staff – if you Google every single company that I mentioned specifically in my earlier post, together with 'living wage', there is a mass of information out there about campaigns to change this.

In the meantime, companies are showing remarkable levels of reluctance to do this – that's why the campaigns have been in place for some time and are ongoing. But since the taxpayer is making up the difference, why should they treat their own employees better and potentially reduce their (massive) profits a little (even though the evidence shows that the living wage has a positive impact on productivity etc)?

Whether originally intended as a subsidy or not, that is what it is.

If Brown had thought that a goer he could have got them to by tax / compulsion. So it's either not feasible or he preferred to have mllions of people beholden to the state - effectively to his party. The party that likes poverty - look how all the areas that have voted Labour for 50 years are still the poorer areas. No coincidence.

As causal links go, that's got to be one of the daftest you've ever come up with

Why? The USA resolved to put a man on the moon within, I think, 10 years and did it in less. Look where China was even 10 years ago and compare Shanghai now with, say, Hull or Liverpool, other old ports. In other words, governments can make a difference if they want to and are committed. How much of an Empire did we build in 50 years? The bottom line must be either Labour has no resolve or intention of significantly improving the lot of its voters or it does and is hopelessly incompetent. Make your own mind up.

If you could show that there is no poverty in the US or China ...

I've made me mind up: you're an idiot

That's not the point. The point is that people on here (mentioning no names) believe that the government can engineer by virtue of setting wage rates, tax rates, etc a lack of poverty. Given that you seem to accept that, Labour purports to aim for a "fairer" society and, I have have pointed out, when people endeavour to do things with real resolve they can achieve great things rapidly surely you must agree that either Labour either do not care or are incompetent?

All points that have validity but not in this argument - the point is do companies pay in more/less in tax than their employees draw in in-employment benefits. If they do then the government is subsidising big business enabling them to pay lower wages. If not then big business is actually contributing to society as whole. I don't know but I suspect the latter to be the case.

All the other stuff is just a tactic of government to encourage businesses to succeed and thrive and employ more people.

And we have an early contender for the Most Spurious Argument of the Year! Well done!

The only spurious here is the inability of various posters to justify the claim big businesses are being propped up by the government.

As I've already pointed out to you, you are asking an impossible question for the data is not available, nor I doubt do the actual government departments involved measure or have knowledge of the numbers either.

What is not in doubt is that anyone earning the NMW for any number of hours is very definitely a qualifier for tax credits which are not as suggested a credit against your personal tax bill as the sums involved can be more than such an individuals combined NIS and Income Tax - what tax credits have become is a way for businesses to keep wage bills low whilst relying on the government to top up an employees pay packet to something like the living wage.

ie - subsidy.

To argue that a company then has to pay taxation back to the government so it all balances out in the long run is a spurious argument for they'd have to pay tax anyway, indeed without tax credits many would have to pay higher wages to attract the labour and would end up paying MORE in employer contributions so again they are saving, these principles are indisputable whether or not you can place a finger on the sums involved.


PS - one of your other points, the biggest tax contributor to the Revenue, private or public organisations ? You may have forgotten to factor in the public organisations are huge contributors to VAT as many of them are classed as an "end user", ie they are not selling on the product that they purchase and so are unable to claim back the VAT on the purchase - I have experienced at least a couple of government departments try and convince me that I should discount the VAT equivalent from their invoices as they couldn't claim it back !

If you feel tax credits subsidise business that' s down to Brown. Either deliberate of incompetent - make your mind (are you starting to see a pattern here with Labour)?

As to public bodies contributing to VAT - they are funded out of tax to start with so it,a just paper shuffling.

If it wasn't for tax credits (even though I had to pay them back) five years ago then I would be personally bankrupt now.

At the time it was the only thing keeping a lot of heads JUST above water.

They still generate the add-on value down the line, its just that they are ultimately the last add-on.

I'm the one arguing they are primarily for the benefit of individuals and no a subsidy to business!

We know you are and you're making a real bollox of it too

One of the most extraordinary things about this discussion is the apparent determination of some (and the 'argument' goes way beyond this forum) to, in effect, remove (some) individuals from society.

The 'social contract' becomes, instead of one between all elements of society, a re-arranged relationship between a (big) business and government, whereby it's not a social contract any more but a mere transaction in which any benefits that low-paid staff need to live because they're paid too little by said business are to be considered as a return on corporate taxes paid (if they are).

It's little different from those who like to claim that individual employees don't pay NI and income tax, but their employer does: again, it removes the individual from the social contract and reconfigures it as an arrangement between (big) business and government.

All of this presents big business as on some higher level of society than the individual as though society and the state should be beholden to them and do their bidding.

It's a reconstruction of society - and of democracy - and some people, who would also be calling for a small state and individuals - seem utterly taken in by it.