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Comment by ricardobayes | Hacker News Reader

I just don't know why that is, every piece of that puzzle I have met, was really efficient and generally doing a good job. Spain is now trying to fix this and pensions by doubling self-employed tax. UK should probably follow suit, UK self-employed tax is ridiculously low. 20% on profits until 50k pounds won't cover a functioning healthcare system (or pensions for that matter).

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What on earth? UK selfemployment tax is far more aggressive than this and the tax authorities have been on an aggressive campaign against selfemployed people for many years, leading loads of people - including me - to give up selfemployment and end up paying LESS tax as a result.I miss selfemployment! but it doesn't bring enough benefits to justify being reamed AND demonised.

And fuck the NHS. Smash the shit out of it. We'll all die exactly the same number of times without it, but be healthier and happier on the way.

I disagree with the threshold you mention. 50k£/year isn't exactly "rich", and even less so given the current conditions with regards to inflation, housing prices being through the roof, etc.

Governments shouldn't be providing anyone with pensions in the first place. Instead they should make defined contribution plans like IRA and 401(k) available to everyone.

In the UK id you are self employed you still need to pay National Insurance which is as far as I know used for funding healthcare.

It's not reserved for anything and hasn't been for ages.

Total tax on someone in the UK earning the median full-tike salary of ~£32K is actually only ~15%

… no it isn’t?

Someone with the default tax code would take home £ 25,539.52 which means they pay 20.2% in tax. It’s quite low by many countries standards but certainly not 15%.

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