cos you worry too much?

Nah. I hardly ever worry about anything at all. I'm only worried about this one because it's a very real risk. Brown's taxed everybloodything else.

I thought it was no so much a "tax on everything", more of a "remove the tax exemption off everything".

You've already paid tax on the initial investment, and probably pay tax on the income receieved, so how can it be taxed further ? Unlike other savings schemes which offer tax breaks on either the investment or the return.

Can you give an example ?

> You've already paid tax on the initial investment, and probably pay tax on the income receieved, so how can it be taxed further ?

Do you really mean to imply that the same money can only be taxed once? I wish it were so, and I believe that that should be a principle of a decent tax policy, but no government has ever shown any interest in such reasonable thoughts.


> I thought it was no so much a "tax on everything", more of a "remove the tax exemption off everything".

You think there's a difference? The whole concept of tax exemption is defined by the government. When the Chancellor moves an item from a tax-free status to a taxed status, he is introducing a further tax. Saying that he's removing a tax exemption is just playing with words.

Besides, he hasn't just been removing exemptions. He's made some very large increases. The big example is national "insurance": he's told us all that our state pensions will be worthless when we retire and that we should therefore take out private pensions; he's increased the NI contribution that pays for this worthless pension; now they're talking about making it compulsory for workers to take out private pensions and saying that the government will set up a pension scheme and force anyone who doesn't have a private pension to "invest" in that. Now, that's obviously just a brand new bunch of taxes dressed up in some fancy bullshit about pensions.

There was a letter in yesterday's Herald responding to the suggestion that worried glaswegians should embark on a fund-raising exercise to buy the Western a new CAT scanner. The wag proposed that we give the fund a catchy name - "income tax", or "national insurance".

You think there's a difference?

Perhaps not, but then it's a half-empty, half-full argument. If you take the broad view that _everything_ is taxed, or liable to tax, then claiming something should not be taxed is a different strategy.

Tax breaks are used to encourage investment in certain areas, typical monetarist policy used extensively by Thatcher et al, they can have good results, an example is the tax exempt status on charitable donations.

I don't have a problem with tax, however, I believe tax should be fair and universal, I subscribe to the "flat tax" policy which can eliminate huge saving in bureaucracy, check out RKS's VeritasParty.com website for some facts (this isn't a plug for them, just an example).

Tax and tax breaks are fine if well defined, where it falls down is when tax breaks occur where they shouldn't, i.e. "loopholes", and the government ignores it. Corporation Tax is an issue, the 1997 Labour Manifesto claimed they would stamp out Personal and Corporation Tax loopholes to close the borrowing gap, that never occurred.

It doesn't bother me that Brown faffs around with tax and tax exempt, but I do get smegging annoyed when I see a newspaper opine and criticise the government when they are owned by an proprietor who consistantly fails to meet his tax obligations.

> I do get smegging annoyed when I see a newspaper opine and criticise the government when they are owned by an proprietor who consistantly fails to meet his tax obligations.

Hear, hear.

Here's an example of how just such as scheme gets caught by our Gordie.

I cashed in a share option. THEN (not before), they told me it was an "unapproved" option. This isn't anything shady, it's just there are different sorts, this was sort "B" instead of sort "A".

Being unapproved, the whole sum payable (the WHOLE sum, not just the gain) was paid via payroll, thus attracting Income Tax at 40%.

Because the GAIN was not enough to pay that tax bill, the company sold MORE of my shares (without asking me) until the tax bill could be met.

Because the GAIN was now bigger than I'd calculated, I ended up paying Capital Gains Tax on the gain - despite having already paid income tax on the whole sum.

So on part of my (purely notional) gain, I paid tax at 80%. It took me six months even to understand what had happened, and of course a year to pay off the extra tax.

Apparently this was all perfectly legal and correct.

You are quite right to be concerned.

I'm beginning to become convinced that the only way you should truly invest for retirement is just doing it up front without any special tax-exempt wrappers. It simplifies the BS and you know the money is yours after paying the capital gains/interest income tax on it.

If things keep heading in the direction they've been heading, who is to say that money put away in an ISA or a pension won't be taxed retroactively?

Jamesg01 - you're quite right.

Believe NOTHING the state tells you, assume they will break ALL their promises, you will get NOTHING from them whatever you pay in to whatever scheme.

Pay your taxes, save your own cash, if possible in gold, and tell no-one.

Well, you might as well take advantage of the tax breaks as and when they are available: if you only save after-tax, fair-and-square-yours income and gains, you're trading potential gains for certainty. The guv'ment might take away the benefits, but they might not. You won't lose more than you would have if you hadn't tried the tax wrapper. Don't count on the government keeping its promises, but don't prevent yourself from benefiting in the (possibly unlikely) event that it does.