Fairness!

My dictionary relates this about the word "Fairness"

 "the quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable"

It is a word bandied about by the present coalition government especially in relation to tax issues. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has apparently expressed surprise at how much or how little the top payers of income tax pay. This fills me with incredulity quite frankly. The man in control of our finances? surprised? Really? With his background? I think not. I think he is well aware of how much or how little and always has been. I am not a financial expert but I am aware of the ways one can offset tax payments. Charitable donations, professional expenses etc.

I have to admit I started this article with many preconceptions about how a government and particularly this government raised taxes. I shouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good story but according to information from the Guardian Newspaper I have had a lot of them turned on their head. Income tax and national insurance are by far the biggest individual contributors to government income although all the other sources listed Business rates, Corporation tax, VAT, fuel duty, council tax combine to outweigh them. Another statistic is that the top 5% of earners in this country pay 47 % of the tax. 

Perhaps we should wring them for a little more as they seem to be doing pretty well on it.

The main drive of this article, when I started, was to be on a couple of points. I am concerned about about the attitude towards pay in the manufacturing sector, in fact I am concerned about the whole attitude towards workers in manufacturing in this country in general. I am also concerned about the regional pay variation and a plan hatched by the coalition to look into regionally varying public sector pay by region. I admit to an interest as I am a public sector worker who benefits from the current system. More later.

However, as I tried to build a case that I could argue, the one overriding inequality that I came across was the difference between pay between the sexes. By the time women are in their 30's they are on average across the UK only earning 77% of their male counterparts of the same age. However by the time they are in their mid forties the gap has widened to 58%. 

These are HMRC's own figures. Now you might have argued that these differences may have been due in part to women on the whole shouldering the burden of child care and there may be something of that however this is just a survey of those paying tax! This doesn't include homemakers who are not working.  

I have to admit I was quite shocked. I know a lot of women do "enjoy" a hiatus to their professional development during child bearing years but this is way over an above that. The survey does not mention how much is due to the amount of part time work this group of people do so I suspect this may be also a part of the problem but it is a deficit that starts in their twenties and follows them throughout their lives not just bits of it. 

Food for thought indeed.