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Who should pay for social care ?

Jim Audiomisc said:
WRT source of 'money', I'd use general taxiation, but actually *apply* this to tax dodgers of the many kinds that currently vampire off the rest of us and who dodge tax, offshore, use tricks like LLP's, etc, etc.
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I agree, but be in no doubt that the likes of Nissan, Amazon and all the other huge global employers are here in a low-tax capacity because both main parties want the jobs they bring. We will never know just how much tax revenue the government is actually paying say Nissan to stay here, but I guarantee it is more than just letting them off their tax. There will be huge development grants etc too. Labour are just as bad due to the union block vote etc; jobs will always trump fairness, openness and accountability. Pork barrels and backhanders all round! It is, as ever, the small businesses and small independents that get screwed. FWIW I bet we get screwed here too, e.g. our NI will go up too despite our having no statutory minimum wage, no holidays, no sick-pay, no pension beyond the basic state etc. We just get to subsidise those who do!
 
One problem is they seem to be under the illusion that they need foreign investment to do anything. That might be true for say Mali or Senegal using the corrupt CFR-Franc, but not the UK. Having a foreign company set up operations in the UK is fine, the idea that if they don't the country will go to ruin is drivel. It's all very muddled. And so yes, they do end up granting these pirates tax-relief. Which is exceptionally idiotic as it means the govt spends into them (as it does, directly and tax relief which is also a form of spending) and can't recoup it.

However... Why do people keep writing 'tax revenue' and positing it as a source of public spending, when even both the BoE and the US Federal Reserve have been clear that it indeed is not a source of any central government spending?

Tax is not the source of government spending.
 
The Tories are devouring themselves in public over this. Caught in the trap of their manifesto no tax rise pledge and Johnson’s need to be loved as bountiful daddy. They’ve trotted out two contradictory opinions from their own benches onto Newsnight- one calling for private insurance and the other calling for tax hikes. The great news is they’re “willing to reach out to other parties to solve this with them”.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Note that recent Governments have cut back the staff and resources of the Revenue people, etc. If they were better funded and resourced they'd find it possible to chase the blatent failures of the wealthy to confirm to *existing* laws like those on 'beneficial ownership'. Hard to get Tax from my "Mr M, Mouse" when he seems to be on a small island far from the UK...
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Most countries have rules about foreign ownership of property. In Malaysia foreigners can only own strata titles ie a slice of air in a tower block, no actual land.
I would argue that a better choice these days is that the ownership of land should be restricted to tax residents rather than on citizenship
 
ks.234 said:
Surely the first step in an equitable society would be to stop gifting billions of tax payer money to cronies of the political parties and plugging holes such as tax havens
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As was said by Labour back in 2000 when they first muted social care reform ?
 
misterdog said:
We cant afford that.
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If I’ve read @Le Baron ’s excellent posts correctly, yes we can.

But the question of who should pay is, I believe, the wrong question. The question is not who or how to pay, but how Care should be reformed.

One of the problems in the NHS is bed blocking because older patients have nowhere to go. Care needs to be integrated into Health, it needs to be part of the NHS, it needs to work as a cohesive whole….from cradle to grave!

Who pays then becomes irrelevant because the answer is the same people who pay now
 
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The 1% NI increase is popular with the electorate; 2% not so much, according to C4. Similar move to Blair then.

I already pay for adult social care and have done so for a few years. Suddenly appeared on my council tax bill.
 
ks.234 said:
If I’ve read @Le Baron ’s excellent posts correctly, yes we can.
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Yes, one doesn't have to subscribe to every tenet of Modern Monetary Theory to appreciate this. Keynes understood this in the 1940s. In 'How much does Finance Matter', a BBC broadcast from 1942, he wrote:

"Anything we can actually do, we can afford."

We only need to be mindful of the pace with which we try to do things, he said: "neither so slow as to cause unemployment nor so rapid as to cause inflation."

The whole broadcast is excellent, and available to read here.
 
Le Baron said:
However... Why do people keep writing 'tax revenue' and positing it as a source of public spending, when even both the BoE and the US Federal Reserve have been clear that it indeed is not a source of any central government spending?

Tax is not the source of government spending.
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I think the main reason for tax is that it is a way we have of redistributing wealth, and thus also resources. It also helps to combat the tendency of wealth to allow the wealthy to dominate the lives of the rest of us. Having a 'progressive' tax system is also a sign of a country that is run for the sake of the people in general, not just for the wealthy chumocracy.
 
laughingboy said:
Yes, one doesn't have to subscribe to every tenet of Modern Monetary Theory to appreciate this. Keynes understood this in the 1940s. In 'How much does Finance Matter', a BBC broadcast from 1942, he wrote:

"Anything we can actually do, we can afford."

We only need to be mindful of the pace with which we try to do things, he said: "neither so slow as to cause unemployment nor so rapid as to cause inflation."

The whole broadcast is excellent, and available to read here.
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It is a shame that Galbraith's TV series of Reith Lectures hasn't been repeated as decent-quality TV broadcasts. I've only been able to find (almost all of) them on YT in lousy picture quality.

Maybe the BBC should invite Steve Keen to do some. :)
 
To me, one of the icebergs here is the way UK Governments have treated The Revenue and Customs - as an *organisation*. They have systematically been cut back in terms of resources, staff, etc. Yet repeated studies have shown that they would bring in *more* recovery and redistribution than the cost of expanding their capability. That in turn means more revenue to keep the 'balance the books' people happy as more is given towards health care, etc, in the process employing more people to do useful things and helping avoid aggrivated harms and losses. etc.

This would, of course - ahem - mean more wealth found and recovered from those who dodge. Particularly if Government also actually *did* close the loopholes they keep promising to close... but somehow never do.

Result, tax rates might not need raising, and might even be reduced - for most of us. A wonderfull way for BloJo and his chums to 'honour all their promises'.

Alas, I suspect it isn't going to happen soon...
 
It would also be interesting to see if we could have a law that mandated that anyone selling/running a scheme that might be regarded as being 'to reduce the tax paid' would have to declare its details to the revenue *before* using it, and get permission that it was legal. Then to have to tell who was using it, the sums involved, etc.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
 
laughingboy said:
Yes, one doesn't have to subscribe to every tenet of Modern Monetary Theory to appreciate this. Keynes understood this in the 1940s. In 'How much does Finance Matter', a BBC broadcast from 1942, he wrote:

"Anything we can actually do, we can afford."

We only need to be mindful of the pace with which we try to do things, he said: "neither so slow as to cause unemployment nor so rapid as to cause inflation."

The whole broadcast is excellent, and available to read here.
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When I try that with my light no-scripting browser I get a webpage that offers a broken link to the actual pdf. I'll try wget.
 
filled in a social work referral today , it said if you have monetary assets of 23250 in the bank etc then you have to pay the full cost of care ! problem comes when they need care and refuse to pay !! what do you do ? :eek:
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
It would also be interesting to see if we could have a law that mandated that anyone selling/running a scheme that might be regarded as being 'to reduce the tax paid' would have to declare its details to the revenue *before* using it, and get permission that it was legal. Then to have to tell who was using it, the sums involved, etc.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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I am pretty sure that HMRC already have powers to scrutinise such schemes.
 
As far as I recall the time period the Social Work will look back at using your assets to pay for long term care is not just the date when you transferred your assets to your children or someone else but it also starts from the first time you received any type of assistance from Social Care.

An example being you might decide to buy some Homecare a few years before the 7 year date that you transferred your assets, this in some cases would make the time period the Social Work would start their use of your assets 7 years plus the years/months you used the Social Work services before that.

I know in my mothers case they looked back 12 years not 7 years, this was because she had hired a local service to have one hour of private home cleaning a week about 9 years before she needed to go into care.

One thing is for sure, they will look into every area of your finances, I know, I knew the people involved with the asset searches.

However things might have or might change, for the better I hope, but I won't hold my breath on that.
 
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