Originally posted by FavsIt really depends on the tablets.
Thought it would be amusing to find out what people were buying even though they know they are being ripped off by Labour.
I'll start:
1) Prescriptions. £6.50 for 14 small tablets (in my case)! It's a disgrace!
If the tablets cost the pharmacist/NHS 50p, then yes you would feel ripped off. If they cost £100 (or substantially more in some cases) then £6.50 does seem a bit of a bargain.
They're sleeping tablets, and they cost sweet FA to produce.
If my doc had prescribed me 4 or 100 of them, it would still have been £6.50 - where's the logic in that? Oh I know, I've got to subsidise everyone elses medicines......which I also already do with my income tax.....therefore - prescriptions are a stealth tax example!
Anyway - other stealth taxes............
Originally posted by shavixmirI agree that taxation on income is fair and just.
Any indirect taxation is a rip-off. It benefits the rich.
Direct taxation on income, via a progressive scale is fair and just.
I don't agree that any indirect taxation is a rip-off though.
Of course, prescription charges are a tax on the sick. They should be abolished (they arleady are in Wales). VAT on food and clothes etc, as you say, benefits the rich.
However, some indirect taxes can be re-distributive. If there were to be a tax on luxury items - yachts, certain cars, etc etc, that would be a good thing.
Usually though, when people refer to 'Labours Stealth taxes' , it is DailyMail-speak for the range of taxes on things like life assurance, cars etc, which predominantly target the middle classes.
I'm not defending Gordon Brown, just explaining where I had assumed the original post was coming from.
Originally posted by FavsIf you don't work, you don't pay income tax or pay for your perscriptions!
Thought it would be amusing to find out what people were buying even though they know they are being ripped off by Labour.
I'll start:
1) Prescriptions. £6.50 for 14 small tablets (in my case)! It's a disgrace!
In their first two terms Labour increased prescription charges by 10p a year, every year. First chance they get after winning the election, up prescription charges go by £1.60, a 1500% greater increase than in the year before the election. This despite 7 years of previous increases in direct and indirect taxes, which we had been told had been 'invested' in 'modernising' the health service. but it turns out all that means is that untold billions had been spent on computer systems that don't work, and in adding untold extra layers of bureaucracy ('creating employment' as Tony and Gordon like to refer to it.)