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pja

That will be in addition to income and property taxes.

By way of example, UK taxes look like:

* ~40% income tax, first £10k untaxed.

* 20% VAT on most goods (food, books, children's clothes are untaxed, heating fuel is taxed at 5%)

* Annual property tax of around £1000 on the typical dwelling.

* 28% capital gains tax, first £10k untaxed in any 1 year. Dividends are effectively taxed as additional income.

In reality UK taxes are of course much, much more complicated than the rough outline above :)

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Worth noting that if you sell shares in your own company (e.g. your start-up is acquired) you probably won't pay 28% CGT as you will qualify for some kind of tax relief - I paid 10% CGT on the sale of our company ~12 years ago because of Taper Relief, this has apparently been replaced by Entrepreneurs' Relief:

https://www.gov.uk/entrepreneurs-relief/eligibility

> food, books, children's clothes are untaxed

Some food is untaxed. For example, cakes are untaxed but biscuits are taxed (or maybe it's the other way round). There was a court case to decide whether Jaffa Cakes were cakes or biscuits for the purposes of VAT: the court ultimately applied the principle that cakes were soft when fresh but hard when stale, while biscuits started off hard and then went soft; hence Jaffa Cakes were officially cakes.

This is exactly why the tax should be flat and other programs should counteract regressive effects. Well, it's one of the reasons.

Minor correction on income tax: 0-10K: Untaxed, 10-40K: 20%, 40K+: 40%,

No, because I'm including National Insurance (both employers and employees) under income taxes. Employers NI is 14% of headline salary, so the effective tax rate for high earners is more like 50% than 40%. Meanwhile middle income people pay 12% NI on top of their income tax and 14% employers national insurance so the real rate of tax on the cost to their employer is about 40%.

Go do the sums & you'll see. Like I said, the reality is much more complicated, but the figures I gave are roughly in the right ballpark.

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