That is the endless loop that, if a politician could fix, would ensure him/her the Prime Ministers job for a long time.

1. You earn less than the notational "living wage".
2. You are below the Income Tax threshold and pay miniscule amounts of NIS
3. You are entitled to tax credits to top up your income.
3. Your nett take from the Benefits Agency exceeds your nett contribution, but you are working, you are one of the good guys and not a scrounger.
4. Repeat for decades.

Meantime the employer benefits from cheap labour which only stays because the benefits system allow them to be housed and fed and the employee continues to be a nett draw-down on the tax take for decades.

At least it keeps some civil servants in a job I suppose.

I think that you're conflating things.

It would be factually correct that some people, in the UK, today, feel that fairness and equality are "forced" on them. The B&B business where the owner doesn't like gays.

They want to be able to run a business where they can refuse to serve customers on the basis of an individual belief about an entire group.

As Jerry has pointed out in the past, this is no different from the 'no blacks or dogs' signs of a few decades ago.

Change to something fairer and more equal was forced on people by law.

What sort of percentage of the population today would really think that being able to post such signs again would be acceptable?

The point is that we can – in the UK – occasions of greater fairness and equality being created by, one might say, legal "force". And the majority accept it and move on – move forward.

An idea of equality/fairness is not the sole preserve of the USSR or the Eastern Bloc.

Indeed, if this country (and others) had not made many other moves forward, and changes to law etc over the centuries, where do you think we would be today?



Those doing the foodbank work at the point of handing it out don't just give it to anyone who walks through the doors. Much of the increase in foodbank use is down to falling wages (and hours – underemployment, in other words) combined with the rising cost of living.

Huge numbers of those using foodbanks are in work.

On those living on the streets, this has been rising for years. It's been shown over the years to include many ex-service personnel who can find it very difficult to fit back into civilian life. There is also a long-term issue of not enough safe, residential care for people with mental illnesses.

Only this morning I spotted a story about numbers of children locked in police cells for exactly the same reason. rlStoryrl.



A number of points here, but I'll stick with just two

Well, I'm not going to have a go at your ethics – I never have

It would be part of what I'd ideally do, although in terms of day-to-day work, sub-editing is probably one of my favourite aspects – I like the geekiness of solving layout puzzles, for instance, and doing (some of) the photography that I do.



And again, I'd say that much of what we take for granted today had to be worked for in the past and would have been resented by some at the time.

Equally, to reiterate

I'm not entirely sure I'm getting what you mean here, but if I do ...

To clarify, most people with a child will receive child benefit.

Otherwise, this seems to be returning to the issue of a situation where (some) businesses are happy for the taxpayer to pay subsidise them. That – and the cost of living in general and housing in particular.

Just to take this one a little further (and again, it's been discussed before).

We have a shortage of housing, which is a factor in further driving up the costs of housing to what some people are suggesting is dangerous in terms of yet another bubble, and what others certainly see as unsustainable.

If you were to embark on a massive council house building/refurbishment programme you could, in the slightly longer term, deal with the housing shortage. It would also mean that many people would no longer need housing benefit or possibly even other in-work benefits, because their own pay might stretch further.

In the process, you'd create jobs in order to build or refurbish those homes, therefore taking at least some people out of unemployment (or underemployment) and thus cutting benefit costs. Indeed, if they're paid a decent wage, they then start paying tax and NI. They also have money to spend in local economies – at the pub, watching RL, at the cinema or the local restaurant. We know where that goes – more job creation etc. And all that is good for the national economy.

To repeater[/i society is possible and, even at the most pragmatic level, since it would benefit the majority of individuals and the country as a whole, would seem to be a worthwhile and sensible aim.

The situation we have at the moment, on the other hand, is unsustainable. Endlessly rising housing costs at the same time that many jobs are continuing to be cut – it's not just new jobs that have limited or zero-contract hours, but many existing jobs are being reduced.

That's one of the factors that is hampering local economies and the national one.

Nobody on here has yet proved this mythical government supporting big business - is the amount paid to supplement incomes of the lower paid higher or lower than the sum of NI, Corporation tax, Tax on Dividends combined? If its lower then the myth that government supports big business is just that a myth.

Off the top of my head.

Taxes on the business profits are irrelevant to the argument on direct taxation on wages, you may as well argue that a busy business pays more tax on fuel for their deliveries, more VAT on the supplies of paperwork they generate etc, its peripheral but not relevant.

If you want to see what Working Tax Credits and Child Tax Credits for working people can amount to then here's a link rlhttp://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/payments-entitlement/entitlement/how-worked-out.htmrl these are maximum figures of course and dependant on qualifying circumstances but as you can see they are not small amounts and frankly they shouldn't be because they were designed to make it preferable for the unemployed to find SOME work rather than NO work, designed to make it more profitable to get off the unemployed register than to remain on it.

I'm sure you'll understand from those figures what the potential level of subsidy to employment is for an employer, it may not happen in your business sector but I do know for a fact that in the world of low minimum hours contracts in the hotel industry its normal for an employee to state at the time of job application that they are "only looking for 16 hours" or 20 hours, or whatever the tax break figure is that year and it suits both employer and employee for there is a big drop-off in credits when you work above the specified figure.

It also suits the government of the day of course for two people splitting 32 hours a week between them is the main measure of their policy success, no-one ever asks "Ah but how much do you pay out in tax subsidies", more "look at the employment figures dropping, we must be successful"

Some really interesting points much of I actually agree with - I think you are misunderstanding me or being deliberately obtuse. The point about equality is people don't like it forced upon them, they don't want the opportunity to succeed and reap the rewards of that success taken away because of an ideology that doesn't allow it. That is a world away from 'No whites served here' as we had in Bradford during the last petrol tankers dispute.

My idea of fairness/equality is access to opportunity - in this country there are very limited barriers to starting your own business. Anyone from any walk of life can do it they just need the drive and persistence to see it through. What I struggle with is the envy to those who take the plunge and risk it all from those without the balls.

Housing is an interesting one - I think we all agree there is a need for more housing, the question that needs answering, is the lack of housing a reflection of the inability of potential buyer to access the funds to complete the purchase?

Gary - if your are saying government is supporting big business and thus enabling them to pay less wages then you should be able to produce the data that qualifies that. As yet nobody has shown the amount paid to subsidise the low wages of the people they employ is less than the contribution to the pool made by business, through employers NI - a tax on employing people, corporation tax - a tax on the success of a business and tax on dividends - another tax on the success of a business. I am not talking about VAT, fuel duty etc.

My point has always been remove the employers NI on low pay and pay it directly to the worker i.e. increase the minimum wage by 14% therefore cutting out the need to collect and redistribute the tax. That seems logical and efficient to me but I suspect that would be a loss to the treasury?

As I posted earlier if this is so obvious the data must be there - I suspect it isn't the case just a scare tactic from the left.

None of the above prove the point your raising that big companies can pay lower wages because the government pick up the difference?

What the above shows is government trying to encourage inward investment and job creation/maintenance.

Two pointsExpenditure would be 2.7% higher if there were no NMW and 5.5% lower if the NMW were set at £5 per hour. The scale of spending is particularly sensitive for groups not eligible for the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC)" [my emphasis, but it's all relevant]

rlFull reportrl.

Mind, one of the pledges from late last year to deal with in-work benefits was to say that some people aren't working enough hours. Because obviously we know that underemployment doesn't exist and people can simply work the hours that they need/want.

We must in this agree to disagree - the figures must not justify your position or you would have produced them. I cannot say you are wrong as I cannot produce figures to the contrary. It could be in a company such as Morrisons that the total tax take in the categories I suggested is greater than the benefits their staff receive in which case Morrisons are supporting society as a whole. Asda may be the opposite but in the round until somebody can prove otherwise we must accept your point to be unproven?

The main problem is the complexity of the tax credit system itself, I posted a link to the HMRC advisory page on tax credits but they are very careful on there to state that those figures are the maximum that any family could expect to receive, there is no chart that I can link you to and say "A person on 20 hours at NMW will draw £xxx in tax credits" because it simply doesn't work like that.

To apply for tax credits, working or child and for both you have to be in employment, you have a document which from memory was a dozen pages long (I drew some of my entitlement down in the year of my wifes unemployment, she was entitled to child tax credits, I was entitled to working tax credits), and ultimately its the job of an assessor to declare what your prize will be, I say that because having spoken to them on at least half a dozen occasions during our application I was convinced that none of them knew how the system worked and I was given totally different answers to the same questions on at least two occasions.

Ultimately they then overpaid me and 12 months later asked for some of it back, not because I'd gone and earned too much but because one of the boxes on the form was ticked wrong after I filled it in following their telephone advice however the reward for that year before they asked for it all back was greater than my tax contribution that year - having contributed for forty previous years without ever claiming a penny I didn't feel too guilty but I've been put off ever having to deal with the incompetent barstards again - even got my MP on the case and he involved a senior civil servant, ultimately it was their word against mine - tw*ts.

So, are we subsidising employers who choose to employ people on low hours and at NMW by then topping up their pay with tax credits which are in effect a misnomer because they aren't a credit against tax that an individual has paid but simply a top-up payment to discourage them from thinking that it would be more beneficial not to work at all - I think we are subsidising employers who deliberately employ non-skilled staff in this manner but if you need evidence then I'll let you go through the claim process because I for one don't want to have another go on that merry-go-round.

It's mainly that such specific figures are extremely hard to get hold of via the internet, although there is a huge amount of stuff on individual companies and the living wage, which is what I've essentially picked up on in my previous post.

But I think that there's a validity to pointing back to that blog post of mine, from a couple of years ago, that I linked to on an earlier post.

How much more help could big business want, than being invited onto public health committees and then, just two or three months later, effectively being given free advertising in the guise of public health information, paid for by the taxpayer?

Please will you desist with the straw man argument about company taxation versus in-work benefits.

None of us, not one single person that I know of, has ever sat down and costed out what he puts in against what he takes out. It's a stupid and fulite argument.

Companies pay tax at the prevailing rates. That is a given, apart from those who choose to offshore or employ aggressive tax avoidance schemes. Many of these companies employ people who have to rely on in-work benefits in order to subsist. The companies who benefit from their employees receiving in-work benefits are being subsidised through general taxation. i.e. some of the tax that you or I pay, along with the corporation tax and employers' NI that companies pay, is going towards in-work benefits. If you can't see that in-work benefits are a direct subsidy from the taxpayer to employers and landlords then I really do wonder about your method of thinking

It is primarily a subsidy to the employees concerned.