If the UK government proposed to increase tax by 1% and make trains free would you be in favour?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨PonderingPotato@discuss.tchncs.de⁩ to ⁨unitedkingdom@feddit.uk⁩

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: 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.

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CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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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NKBTN@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - NKBTN@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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NickwithaC@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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- NKBTN@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If they raised CGT to be the same rate as Income Tax, that would achieve it.
  
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Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Are you only referring to the national rail network, or also local services like tube/metro/etc?

If it’s all inclusive, yes, absolutely.

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- PonderingPotato@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  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.
  
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LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Yes. Absolutely. I would happily pay more tax for this. 1% is a very tiny amount.

The trains in this country are shockingly abysmal and they cost an arm and a leg, despite being the absolute basic requirement for a functional modern economy.

As someone only on basic rate of tax and fairly low income struggling to make ends meet, I would still happily pay taxes for this, both in addition and especially instead of the BBC for it to spew far right hatred or endless consultantocracies and other assorted privatized money funnels like what’s become of the NHS (especially GPs), alongside council, DWP and TV loicence enforcement goons with their endless investigations, cutting triple lock, winter fuel allowance and other ways boomers drain the economy.

I think there are better ways though - like taxing the top 1%, much higher carbon/road/infrastructure taxes on car people (only fair because of their increased personal pollution, infrastructure use, space occupation and damage to the environment and people).

Even this 1% tax doesn’t need to be flat, it can be scaled with income brackets, with each step being 2%, as long as the math checks out.

Even moreso - Land value tax, and shifting council tax to property owners instead of tenants/residents and second home tax and property for investment tax, ramping it up to as high as it’ll go to fund property buybacks for councils, then charging rents without profit margins baked in to make trains more affordable.

But if it’s what it takes to get anything done in the current political climate dominated by the far-right, tributes to some random pro-gun grifter influencer being shot in another country flooded with guns and Sir seat warmer in chief as PM cowtowing to the demands of flagashaggers, Farage and his oligarch sponsors and various dodgy American govcorp and MIC-adjacent glowing lobby groups then that would have to be it.

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oeuf@slrpnk.net ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Totally. Especially if the rich can’t get around it.

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jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
No, there are other priorities. I want to see reform.of teh railways for sure, including renationalisation and a proper long term plan. HS2 should have been completed but not it’s too far beyond the scrapping to resurrect. But there are still lines that need electrifying and Northern Power House Rail makes economic sense.

I think renationalisation and increased subsidy for the railways is good but not free - people who use the railways should be paying to support it more than other tax payers, and international visitors also use the railways and should be contributing.

If we had a 1% tax rise it’d quickly disappear as we have a national deficit including a large amount of interest going to pay for the national debt.

Rather than income tax rises (which hit ypunger working people more than any other group) I want to see asset taxes that actually hit wealthy people, including the wealthier asset rich elderly who want to pass on their money to their children rather than pay for the expensive services they use (like the NHS). So I’d favour a property tax (that would also encourage people to downsize to houses they need instead of sitting in big family homes), and taxes on shares and other assets. It doesn’t have to be punitive, just fair.

Instead younger working people are subsiding the elderly in this country - the elderly are the wealthiest group, who got all the benefits of free university, free Healthcare, cheap housing etc which the younger generation have it tough, paid for university, pay exorbitant prices for rent or home buying. The wealthy elderly hide behind the sympathy people show for the poorer elderly; people who won’t be hit by an asset tax as they are asset poor and deserve to be subsidised and supported.

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portnull@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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

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zerakith@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I am for free public transport from taxation there are some important caveats that would need to be worked out though:

We currently have low capacity relative to latent deamnd capacity (mostly at peak times) and at the moment that is managed through fares. We would need a system that manages demand in another way.

Our transport system is in large need of upfront investment to stop the current managed decline so you’d want a way of making sure that making it free doesn’t mean the government is now more limited

Its also worth noting that its unlikely to be a direct swap in of current revenues with additionally required taxes as there are projects that are very costly that could be redirected and any successful mode shift away from cars would also carry a net positive economic effect on the whole treasury.

Potentially in the short term what could help is a ‘sunk-cost’ ticket similar to the bahnpass where you still pay but do so yearly and get access to any trip anywhere. It makes it more competitive with cars which have massive sunk cost effects which make every trip seem cheaper.
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Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yup. I’m cool with paying more tax for better services.

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Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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?

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hellfire103@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Absolutely.

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Codpiece@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I never use trains, so no.

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cynar@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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Beacon@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
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.

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