Assume every tax rate except for the “personal allowance” was increased by 1% to fund free train travel.
Would you be in favour of this?
I’ve not done the math for this (though did look up some stats for a Scotland specific post, and it seems to be feasible: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/44818305). So for the UK it may require a lower or higher increase (and to be fair my Scotland “calculations” were very rough and likely entirely wrong). This is more just a question about whether people would be in favour of something like this in general.
im not from uk so peanut gallery here. On the one side I would love something like this in my city. Paying to ingress is a significant delay in both ingress and egress to the station and if it was free such that you could just have open access it would be really handy. The other side to me is when things are free like this you have the problem of bad behavior. Its kinda good to have a capacity to get your privileges suspended for bad behavior. If you do that though you will still need the pass and gate type of thing which eliminates that ingess/egress thing I started with. I also have to say that where I am from the public transit is subsidized such that its a good value and the real value is in free transfers so once you pay at the start you don’t pay more as you go bus to train to bus and that is really powerful. We have both exterior and interior bike racks at stations and the interior ones are nice in that someone who wants to steal your bike has to pay to get on and more importantly its hard to run off because of the ingress/egress limitations. So anyway I appreciate anyone who listened to this peanut.
Can someone do the maths and see if the average train commuter would spend more or save more on a living wage at 9-5/5 work schedule?
Yup. I’m cool with paying more tax for better services.
The tax raise should be graduated, not flat. It should be something like 0 percent on the lowest earners, .02 percent on the middle earners, and .2 percent on the highest earners
Absolutely.
I would of course. But even with trains and public transport being as expensive as it is it still over crowded and you will rarely get a seat for commuter routes. If it’s free that’s going to get even worse. Unless they put more trains on which will cost more which the 1% probably won’t cover
No. Trains go from nowhere near where I live to nowhere near where I want to go, except in rare circumstances like if I stay in London for a few days. I did go through a phase of being dependent on (non-London) trains and hated every minute.
So for me it’d be yet more tax with no benefit.
If the UK government proposed to increase tax ON THE 1% and make trains free then of course I’d be in favour.
The rest of us are paying our share already and not seeing the benefit of it.
If they raised CGT to be the same rate as Income Tax, that would achieve it.
Yes, definitely. I think it would do wonders for the economy by making jobs more accessible.
BUT there could be a claimable annual tax refund if your sole residence is more than X miles from a train station, or if you can show you’ve not used a train that year. Something like that.
Do I get a tax exemption for road construction if I don’t drive a car? It’s good for society, do it. We don’t need every tax to have a bunch of bureaucracy piled on top of it making it less efficient. Rising tides raise all ships.
By not having a car you don’t pay road tax, fuel tax, or have to pay for an MOT each year.
I think bureaucracy for small tax exemptions is a good thing, like the rebate you can apply for if you have to wear a uniform.
First off, no chance those taxes cover all roads, the general population tax is subsidizing. That also doesn’t consider the environmental impact that’s being socialized. And the safety impact. And how roads are given priority over people almost every time. Cars are insanely subsidized by society - but that’s not my point. These types of programs are more efficient without a bunch of means testing and related bureaucracy. If something is for the public good we should be willing to socialize the cost. You today, me tomorrow.
Are you only referring to the national rail network, or also local services like tube/metro/etc?
If it’s all inclusive, yes, absolutely.
I hadn’t thought about tube/metro etc. but honestly, I would want this for all public transit including buses. Just depends on how much we’d have to raise to fund it all.
I wouldn’t go for “free”, that would lead to a lot of abuse of it. We only have so much capacity right now. A 90%+ discount on current prices, definitely.
I rarely use the trains right now, mostly down to costs. It’s so much cheaper to drive.
Totally. Especially if the rich can’t get around it.
Do I get a magical garauntee that it would happen? Because otherwise no given the state of governance; they would absoloutely raise taxes then talk about making trains free until everyones forgotten and then maybe make trains cheaper for a specific age group for a while with that reduction being completely eaten by ticket price rises within 2 years.
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