Government Appointed Thieves

This is a post by a guy called Eric The Red over at TPUC. I thought it was worth posting here.



Check it out:


HOW MUCH TAX DO YOU REALLY PAY?

This is quite long but please bear with it, its worth reading, I’m sometimes stating the obvious but when you see it laid out like this you are in for a shock!

Figures based on a married couple (no children) I’ve been quite frugal on their living costs.

Husband earns £350.00 per week working full time.
Minus £52.90 income tax
Minus £28.00 National insurance (a tax)
Leaves £269.10 Take home pay.

Wife earns £134.00 per week working part time.
Minus £4.40 income tax
Minus £2.60 National insurance (a tax)
Leaves £127.00 Take home pay.

£396.10 Take home pay for both in total.

Transport
Both travel to work by own cars, both travel 110 miles per week each.
Fuel for both cars at 35 mpg is 6.3 gallons at £5.00 per gallon, total £31.50, 75% of this is tax which is £23.62
So £7.88 is actual value of fuel used. 10% of this is profit (78p) so the petrol stations end of year accounts will pay about 12% tax on this which is 8p.
The crude oil to make the petrol will also have been subject to import taxes at 20%, so at £56.00 per 40 gallon drum ($85.00) £11.20 is paid in tax, so that’s another 28p per gallon in tax from the value of the fuel purchased, 6,3 gallons x 28p is £1.76.

2 x annual car tax per week is £4.23 (£110.oo per car pa)

2 x insurance policies at £11.53 per week for both (£300.00 per policy pa)
(the government says you must have this, tax is also paid on the companies profits)

2 x mots at £45.00 each pa is £1.73 per week, you must have an mot by law and a large percentage of the fee goes to the government (not shown)
The 17.5% vat is 16p per week.

So, without servicing and parts, both cars cost £48.99 per week to run, £29.85 of this is tax, £13.10 is for things the government says you have to have (and is also taxed), and only £6.04 is the actual goods you bought (fuel), and that includes the petrol stations and makers profit (and they pay tax on that too)!

Total car costs = £48.99 per week from £396.10 is….
£347.11

housing services
Council tax per week £25.00 (£1300.00 pa)

Water rates £8.46 (£440.00 pa, water is a necessity of life, we have to have it, how can a private company own all the water in the UK?
The water company is taxed on its profits and also pays vat.

Electricity per week £30.76, at 5% vat is £1.53 vat (£1600.00 pa)
We need this to cook our food and heat our homes in winter; you could say its another necessity of life). The electricity company is taxed on its profits and also pays vat.

TV licence £2.80 (£145.50 pa) (another tax!)

I won’t include a telephone in the equation, as it’s a choice to have one or not
(but they pay vat too and there taxed as well)

So, we have now spent £67.02 on bills we pay.
£29.33 of this is more tax, the remaining £37.69 is what actually pays for the services that we need so we can drink, cook, and keep warm, and bare in mind that the service providers are taxed on their profits and pay vat too, so I wonder how much more of the £37.69 will go on yet more tax?
Gone are the days of collecting free water from a well or free firewood from the forests.

We now have £280.09 left from the two wages.

Housing costs
Rent at £80.76 per week (£350.00 per month), again somewhere to live is a necessity of life so you don’t have much choice but to pay rent (or buy).
The landlord will be taxed on the income he gets from the house you rent and vat on the repairs etc that he needs to carry out, so theres more tax!

So after paying for the roof over your head you now have £199.33 left from the two wages.

Food
They spend £70.00 per week on food, 17.5% of this goes on vat so that’s £12.25, that leaves £57.75 of actual food purchased, but with food stuffs the supermarkets work on a mark up of at least double what they pay so only £28.87 is actual foodstuff, the other half is their profit (after all costs) which will be taxed and a small percentage will go on council rates as well.
The actual £28.87 worth of goods you just bought will also include the makers profit margin of between 50 to 100% and this will be taxed too, then there was the transport costs (road tax and fuel tax) and they pay rates too.

The ingredients used to make the actual goods are also transported, so there’s more tax, and some of it might have come from overseas, so there’s more import tax to pay! And of course the handlers profits on the products too and they pay tax.

So £199.33 less the £70.00 spent on food leaves £129.33

Lets say one smokes 10 cigarettes per day at £5.67 a pack of 20 (£19.84 per week), 77% of this is tax so that’s £4.82 per 20, so thats £2.97 for the actual cigs per week and £16.87 in tax per week. (remember the £2.97 will include the shops profit and that will be taxed too!)
 
They like a couple of bottles of wine at the weekend lets say £6.00 a bottle so that’s £12.00, about 50% of this is tax so that’s £6.00 a week on wine tax.
The remaining £6.00 spent on the actual wine itself includes the shops 50 to 100% profit margin and that will also be taxed! (and import tax etc)

£129.33 less £31.84 spent on cigarettes/wine leaves £97.49

So out of their earnings of £484.00 they have spent £386.00 on the cost of living, £182.20 of this was nothing but tax! The remaining £203.80 has also been subject to many other taxes that are far too numerous and complicated for me to work out, also at least half of this £203.80 is pure profit for greedy supermarkets and big businesses working on 100% plus profit margins (what ever happened to a decent profit margin of 15 to 20% that we used to have in the old days?).
So after over the top profit margins and the others hidden taxes it can be shown that the actual goods/services that they got was only really about £75.00 worth (but probably much less than this).

Obviously they still have £97.49 left to spend, but that is subject to 17.5% so that’s £17.06 more tax that they will pay (vat is increasing to 20% in January), much less than half of the £80.43 that’s left will pay for actual goods, more than half will be profit margins and hidden taxes.

Of their £484.00 total weekly income they paid…..
£199.26 in (easy to work out) taxes.
About £174.00 in hidden taxes and greedy profit margins.
So you see all they really got was about £110.00 worth of goods!!!

If the above could be recalculated using actual known profit margins and knowledge of EVERY TAX the goods were subjected too I think you would find they got well below £75.00 worth of goods!

More than 90% of income tax is paid to banks in debt repayment!
The VAT we pay is basically all handed over to the European Union!
National insurance funds our pensions and national health service which is full of inefficiencies and thousands of useless quangos costing billions!
Fuel tax and car tax is supposed to fund road maintenance, our governments regularly pay £1000.00 for a £100.00 repair!
 
Among other things council tax pays for our schools, have you ever seen how much the “approved only” suppliers charge for books etc? £1.00 for a pencil instead of about 5p!

So now you can see how we are all ripped off and just slaves working for the tax man, just think how better off we would all be if we all stood up and said…..
“Stuff the banks! Pull out of the EU! Sack the quangos! No more blank cheques for roadworks! Allow schools to buy from the pound shops! And no more greedy profit margins!”

Food for thought?

Or is it enough to get you saying "No"?

You know where I stand.

CR.