OK.

It is not, by the way, false to say that employee deductions are subtracted from wages and that employer deductions are subtracted from profits, that is true both de facto and de jure.

It is false to say that reducing employer taxes increases employee wages, that isn’t how the world works. It just increases profits and reduces the amount the government spends on things such as public transport, cycling infrastructure, roads, railways, hospitals, schools, social care, those sorts of things.

If you’re self employed, you may well look at the entirety of the money coming in and consider it potential wages, want to pay all of that to yourself, but deduct any costs you are obliged to and in that sense there’s no real difference between a cost and a salary reduction, but that’s because you’re self employed, it’s really not how most employers work.

Usually, employers have zero desire to give all the money to the employees or to maximise wages, in fact, probably a majority of large employers prefer to minimise wages.