If national insurance must fund social care, at least make it fair

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

60% : If national insurance must be the vehicle, removing the current exemptions for investment income and stretching the 12% band would be fairer.
59% : At present, income between £9,568 and £50,284 incurs national insurance at 12%, with any earnings over that taxed at 2%.
58% : The government could generate almost double the £12bn it expects to raise for health and social care if the national insurance system was made fairer, according to a group of economists.
56% : Over the last 50 years, the main rate of national insurance has more than doubled from 5.75% to 12% and will increase to 13.25% once the levy takes effect next April.
54% : Analysis: the government could generate an extra $20bn by reforming national insurance to tax high earners
52% : Hannah Thompson, a research fellow at the LSE and one of the authors of the report, said that if ministers wanted to levy a fair tax on incomes, they should increase income tax.
52% : During the same period the basic rate of income tax has tumbled from 34% to 20%.
51% : The left-leaning IPPR thinktank said equalising the tax rate on capital gains with income tax "could generate
46% : As a result, the UK has come to rely less on a progressive income tax system in preference to a flat, regressive system of paying national insurance that targets those on low to middle incomes under the state pension age.
39% : This is because Boris Johnson's hike in tax applies to wages and dividends paid to shareholders, but not to income earned from investments, or to earnings from pensions.
26% : However, taxes on property and pensions are unpopular with older voters, something ministers know from a succession of polls that show national insurance is the least hated tax levied by the Treasury.

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