How much money do you need to get by? Depends how high taxes are
HOW much money do you need to get by? No, not to afford all the little luxuries of life, but how much do you need just to be able to get by? As a couple, with children that is?
British families need to earn nearly £30,000 a year just to survive, even without ‘luxuries’ like holidays and meals out, according to a survey.
The study suggests that an average family now needs £24,801.51 every year for essential expenditure such as mortgage or rent payments, utilities, insurance, food, petrol, mobile phone and landline costs, and clothing.
Given that this is a little less than household median income then it looks like we’re all doing just fine then. And given that if you earn substantially less than this you’ll be getting tops ups of some sort of benefits then perhaps we really are all doing fine.
Except for just one little problem:
And to have that amount as disposable income after tax and national insurance requires a gross income of at least £30,000.
It’s not that wages or incomes are too low: it’s that taxes are too high.
Myself I’ve been shouting about this for years: you can end up owing income tax working part time on the minimum wage. The solution would to me therefore be to simply raise the personal allowance to the same as the full time full year minimum wage.
That’s a solution that would actually work too: full time minimum wage comes out at some £12,300 a year, two adults in a household working is £24,600 and that’s close enough to the £24,800 for government work for us to have got there.
Seems simple enough really, if you want to increase the incomes of the working poor then just stop bloody taxing them.
Photo: BARNARDO’S PICTURE LIBRARY HOMELESS CHILDREN ON VICTORIAN STREETS IN 1880.
Posted: 16th, November 2012 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
