How much tax do we pay on our pound?

Question

Excluding immegrants, those that do not work and the self employed, the rest of us work hard for our money.(No slight on self employed, but you will see where I am coming from)

We earn money and pay tax on it.
We put it into savings, and pay tax on it.
We withdraw it and spend it, we pay tax on it.
We use it ,throw away the rubbish, and pay tax on that as well.

Has anyone ever worked out how much our money is actually taxed and what we ever get back for it?

Yes Equalizer, I was trying to soley make the point in relation to active people on earnings....please....do not get me going on the other things!!!

Answer 1

Depends what you spend your money on. But by the time you take into account income tax, national insurance, and all the indirect taxes, VAT, fuel duty, council tax etc, I think that it is unlikely that you have more than 50% of your pay free to use.

Answer 2

I wonder how deeply you have thought about this matter. Do you really mean only the tax you pay or the tax paid by those you buy things or services from. They pay tax on any profits,etc and so on. It is not outside the bounds of possibility that 99% of money issued by the treasury eventually ends up back in their coffers.
Why did you include the self employed in your list of people not to be included in your equation. Your question comes very close to a rant.
One answer is that the government should take all our pay and throw us back some pocket money like crumbs from the masters table.

Answer 3

If you were to spend all your total income for a week or month the total tax paid overall would be 47%, this includes all the hidden stealth taxes.
You refer to immigrants, unemployed, self employed but omitted to mention the sick, disabled, retired and those people who work in the black economy.
They all have to pay VAT and retired people with a private pension as well as a state pension pay 22% in the pound tax, so there is no escape.

Answer 4

If you look into it it is frightening First you are taxed and have to pay national insurance on your salary if you earn about £30,000 pa. It will equate to about 28 - 30% of your income. depending o your tax code.Then the majority of what you buy will be liable for VAT at 17.5% that equates to 22.75% of your income.assuming you have already paid 30%.

Of you smoke, drink or drive you then pay an enormous amount of duty on those purchases. I read an article in the Times about two years ago which stated that the average wage earner who drinks,drives and smokes paid about 78 pence in the pound of his earnings to the treasury. Under Margret Thatcher that figure was 83 p.

Answer 5

AT LEAST 42p


42% was the total UK Tax Burden in 2006