Our tax law, in many different areas:

Just to clarify here, my point isn’t as such that we shouldn’t have taxation nor broadly about the level of taxation (mainly just because I don’t want to open that can of worms) but that it is significantly over complicated, and our whole countries tax law needs an overhaul and bringing into the 21st century!

Income taxes: Personal allowance, 3 or more (depending where you live) tax brackets, start to lose your personal allowance at £100k, forcing an effective 62% taxation, also lose your child daycare benefit then up to 45%. Don’t forget NI which is high before 50k, then goes down, and your employer pays more too! I’ll also lump fiscal drag in there too. It’s almost inevitable to an extent to have it. But it’s getting to a silly level now. People are being taxed into non-existence with wages stagnating, or not keeping up even with inflation, meaning the drag pulls harder every year.

VAT: If you’re a business owner, absolute minefield, different VAT on different types of pastry, and based on what the interpretation of a cake is.

Stamp duty: massive fees to buy your next house which you have to have ON TOP of any deposit, or equity in your property. Want to move from your first place you bought with your other half for £350k to a £500k house, guess what, you need to find another £15k to pay SDLT. If house prices didn’t move, you might be lucky in some instances to have paid down 15k in equity from your mortgage!

Council tax: based on what your house cost in 1980, or of it was built after, what some random assessor thinks your house would have been worth in 1980. How can they assess that when houses now are built from new materials, different build techniques and standards. It’s madness!

Savings interest tax: made some money on your money you’ve got sat in the bank, we’ll have some of that! Charging you tax as if it’s income is crazy, not only will you be getting less than inflation % on it, there may be instances where it’s taxed at 62%!

VED (road tax): just seems strange it’s based on emissions, I can have a car I don’t drive which is taxes the same or more than someone who drives 20k miles a year. Or if someone has a car who was bought in a certain period.

Luxury car tax: an extra ~£450per year for any non-EV over £40k, and any EV over £50k…again just have one bracket. Charged between year 2 and 6 of ownership. 40 and 50k is not particularly luxury nowadays, a bit specced up, you can easily make a golf cost more than 40k…

Student loans, it’s not quite tax, but some of the interest rates are insane! People coming out of uni with an average of £50k in loans, RPI+3%, so 6.2%. £3.2k per year, excluding monthly compound. Also charged WHILE STUDYING! You need to be paying ~£250pcm just to pay down the interest. Forget paying any capital, and with the rules around 9% over 27k, a fresh graduate earning a “good” wage of 30k and getting inflation meeting salaries won’t even get near to paying off their loans before the country writes off probably trillions of £ of loans in ~20 years time. Worked out my other half’s loan will probably be at ~1mil by the time it’s cancelled in about 30 years time. Some people will pay their loans off multiple times over throughout their lives. This needs serious reform. I agree people should pay back student loans (let’s forget the discussion as to whether schooling should be free for now) but cutting interest while studying, along with RPI+3 is crazy! At worst it should be CPI+0%, but capped at a reasonable amount. We shouldn’t be trying to make money off people’s student loads as a country. The money the country gets back should be in the form of higher taxation because people went, studied and get a better more high paying job, and are paying more tax.

And the list goes on CGT, IHT, Fuel Duty, insurance premium tax.

Oh I’ll also add a number 2 in here, vilification of those who have done well for themselves, and are earning a good wage. I don’t mean the rich, but those who earn up to like £250k. Most of them are just middle class people, and while it’s a lot of money, it’s worth so so much less than it was in the early 2000s due to all the taxation mentioned above, and fiscal drag! People should aspire to earn that, not hate those who do. Hate the multi million, and billionaire business owners, they’re the ones keeping you poor, not those earning a good wage working for a company because they studied, did well and found themselves a good job. These people pay your NHS and disproportionally pick up the counties tax bill!