Originally Posted by
Gertrude the Wombat
The reason it still exists (it should have been amalgamated into income tax decades ago) is so that governments can promise not to increase "tax" and then when they put up NI they claim that because the tax called "national insurance" doesn't have the word "tax" in its name then they haven't put up "tax".
I thought the reason it had not been amalgamated into Income Tax is that we still have a basic welfare system that is based on contributions, so to do away with NI you would have to totally revamp the entire welfare system of the UK.