Assume every tax rate except for the “personal allowance” was increased by 1% to fund free train travel. That would mean someone at the median annual income of £38k would pay about £254 extra tax per year ((38000 - 12570) * 0.01)
Would you be in favour of this?
Some numbers for context:
The government raised £17.1 billion in 2024.
The ScotRail revenue for 2024 was £351m (page 17).
So to offset the cost of tickets, the government would have to raise £351m which divided by the 2.46 million people in work would be an average cost of £140 extra per person collected per year, so I believe 1% may be able to pay for it comfortably, and even improve the service, to compensate for the extra demand on free travel.
If everyone had paid for public transport through their taxes it would be a fairly good incentive to use it. I had a travel pass through work and it was really effective at driving me away from my car and onto the train. If more people use public transport it will take people out of their cars, so traffic will improve. It would also get rid of fare evasion policing and many kids who can’t afford tickets would not interact with the legal system.
I think it would be a wonderful thing to enact and would have many benefits for both those using the public transport and those who are not. It would make the air cleaner, make the system more efficient, and would serve as a model for the world.
Imo I would rather it be more akin to the German €50 ticket. But cost £140 instead and if gave a year of public transit across the whole country. It would prevent the money going elsewhere and prevent complaints from people not near public transit
Sounds good to me. Taking at least some of the traffic off the roads would make it safer for those who do have to use them as well. Maybe a reduction in noise and light pollution too.
I would, trains are great, and encouraging people to use them more would snowball the train service into being even better. Almost all the problems with public transport (too infrequent, doesn’t serve all locations) are reduced the more demand there is for it.
As a former highlander, lol: no. Busses too though, and maybe
I think the issue is that once you’ve got the extra money there are more pressing things to spend it on. Public transport is great but hard to say no to health and education.
Then there’s the broader issue of the laffer curve where raising taxes can yield less than you’d expect because people start to re-locate by buying a bungalow in England to claim as their main residence.
Laffer curves are likely nowhere near relocation levels currently. It’s a red herring mostly that right wingers like to point to. With no evidence we close to a peak
It is hard to argue that trains trump healthcare and education though
The laffer curve is a real phenomenon. I won’t die on the hill that it would happen in this case but it’s still something to consider when raising taxes.
Agree that people making all the noise about relocating haven’t actually done it. Was a bad example! People doing things like increasing their pension contributions to avoid going over 100k and losing their tax free allowance is a more concrete example.
No bad thing to see people investing in their pensions. Pensions are the bedrock of investment in the UK economy, far more important than mortgages imo
Yeah 100% it’s just an action that might result in the tax take being lower than expected
Real phenomenon in economics! I should have stipulated that it’s as real as anything else in economics is - all of it is theoretical.
