Thank you for the clarification, but it's probably instructive that that was the error I made - and I imagine most people will make the same error, i.e. almost half the population are welfare spongers (as similar election campaigning in Britain and Ireland liked to call them).
And of course, amongst those not paying income tax are wealthy individuals and corporations taking advantage of the perfectly legal provisions for tax avoidance (apparently a different thing to tax evasion, which is illegal, the distinction having been brought to public notice by a recent case involving an English comedian who was outed as a tax avoider due to one of these schemes).
My father was in receipt both of a contributory (that is, he had paid social insurance contributions from his income during his working life) national pension and an occupational pension from his job. Social insurance payments were not, at the time, taxable, but they do count as income for reckoning tax. So he paid income tax out of his job pension for both his job pension and state pension. It's absurd to intimate that all people in receipt of state payments don't pay income tax, and that's why I can't understand how a politician made such an error that lets his opponent off the hook for any blame (doesn't have to be real blame, in campaigns it's all about what you can make stick) plus insulted so many voters.
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Date: 2012-09-23 03:52 pm (UTC)And of course, amongst those not paying income tax are wealthy individuals and corporations taking advantage of the perfectly legal provisions for tax avoidance (apparently a different thing to tax evasion, which is illegal, the distinction having been brought to public notice by a recent case involving an English comedian who was outed as a tax avoider due to one of these schemes).
My father was in receipt both of a contributory (that is, he had paid social insurance contributions from his income during his working life) national pension and an occupational pension from his job. Social insurance payments were not, at the time, taxable, but they do count as income for reckoning tax. So he paid income tax out of his job pension for both his job pension and state pension. It's absurd to intimate that all people in receipt of state payments don't pay income tax, and that's why I can't understand how a politician made such an error that lets his opponent off the hook for any blame (doesn't have to be real blame, in campaigns it's all about what you can make stick) plus insulted so many voters.