Is there money to do what Labour wants to do?

I mean not necessarily, but unless you want to get into politics yourself, ultimately you have to take responsibility for yourself and your future.Lots of people overcome phenomenal odds to find somewhere to live that works for them and their family. A lot of people from the UK have a good education, they can speak English fluently (huge advantage generally speaking) and they’ll find it much easier than most to get a visa to many countries. If the tories were terrible (they objectively seemed to find it very difficult to govern) and you have no faith in Labour’s approach, and it’s unlikely there will be a change in the FPTP system before the next election the chances of living in a society which matches your values are pretty slim.
It’s totally valid to want a government to improve its performance and to deliver better and even to complain about it, but if you fundamentally feel aggrieved by a redistributive tax regime then this won’t be the country for you for a while. There are plenty of places that would probably suit you better. Life’s too short to not find where you belong.

I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the economy, though not necessarily because I have great faith in Labour's ability; the markets are positive which is obviously a great help, the world looks to be moving into a more settled period of higher growth post-Covid, and we're likely to benefit (possibly significantly) from political uncertainty elsewhere in the world. It should be much easier to drive economic growth than it has been, but easier of course does not mean easy and they still have to have the talent to understand and exploit opportunity. I'm at present a bit unconvinced, but hope to be proven wrong - and I'm entirely unconvinced by the Tories' economic talent so happy to settle for uncertainty tbh! My biggest worry is that they'll be driven more by ideology by intellect, the private school VAT doesn't bode well; I have a horrible feeling that if there were a choice between a policy that benefited the country but also benefited rich people, and a policy that hurt the country but also hurt rich people, they'd choose the latter.

That’s true, most small businesses I know declare absolutely everything and end up overpaying then get a rebate (but would have not realised at all that they overpaid)

@Morph22010 it won't be accurate to the nearest £1 but it's not just made up number - www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/methodological-annex#chapter-b-accuracy-and-reliability

The tax gap is just a fictious number, there is no way of actually proving it in practise, in my experience businesses and individuals not taking care can also be making errors in their returns where they overpay tax

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/publishing-details-of-deliberate-tax-defaulters-pddd/current-list-of-deliberate-tax-defaulters

All in the public domain, by the will of parliament, so no need for MNHQ to delete this post.

@AutismHelp1980 this is worth a read if you have the time https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/06/14/ourtakeeonlabourrmanifesto_2024/

Yes, because small businesses are the main cause of the tax gap.

The Labour manifesto sets out plans to raise an additional £3.2bn from specific tax policy changes (abolishing resident non-dom status, stoping the use of offshore trusts to avoid inheritance tax, taxing carried interest as income rather than CGT etc) and £5.3bn from closing the tax gap. The problem with the latter is that the main source of the tax gap isn't large corporates squirreling money into tax havens, it's individuals & small businesses not taking sufficient care / making errors in their tax returns. Not an easy thing to tackle, or a vote winner. Their plans are set out here: labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Labours-Plan-to-Close-the-Tax-Gap.pdf

More fool you then. Feel free to add to the £200 donated to HMRC in 2022. All presumably by MNers

@KeebabSpider thanks for the link, I just listened. I’ll order the book too, although god knows why. I’m downbeat enough about the situation as it is 😩

@kirinm absolutely. The huge financial black hole. It’s like we’re living in an alternative reality where the UK is in a great place yet reality says different.
All this doom mongering is so tiring. If you truly want the country to improve then give em a chance.

The Tories who most here seem to wish had got back in, were promising tax cuts! Where was their magic money tree?!

I was getting the 3k from the Financial Times analysis.

I was being facetious about the cars, but to that point, you have to look at the country as a whole and not just one's own circumstances and area. There will always be outliers, and if you fall into that category, it is unfortunate. I sympathise as I was an outlier in some of the things the Conservatives mismanaged, so I feel that pain.

I don't agree that it is an attack on private schools. I can understand why you think that, however it is a choice to send a child to private school. From your post earlier, there are other factors which should be dealt with in the state system. Nobody should feel that they have to send their child to private school in order for the child to be safe.

It would be a longer discussion for another thread as to whether the education they receive is / should be better in the private system. My personal experience is that it is not better, and one would hope that the standard of teaching is the same. There will be outliers in this area also.

It’s the edge cases that will suffer most. People talking about these policies hurting the super rich with yachts etc like it’s an abstract thing but it’s not actually like that at all.

The desire to take the wealth and redistribute it is coming from their attack on private schools.

I don’t know where you’re getting 3K a year from. Even the cheapest private school in London will mean an extra 5K/year and that’s per child. Where I live there are plenty of parents driving their kids in Toyota Yaris’ to their local private school because they are avoiding the absolute ghetto London sink schools.

@Pleasebeafleabite at least £50k thanks.

What is your evidence for this "desire to take our wealth and distribute it"? I have seen nothing in the Labour manifesto, and heard nothing from any Labour MP that suggests that this will happen to any greater level than the previous government who have raised taxes to a higher level than in the last 70 years.

I agree that it isn't only about the money collected, it is about how that money is administered, but even the most died in the wool Conservative has to admit that the previous government have hardly excelled themselves in this area. More money alone will not save the NHS as has been proved over covid, where the Conservatives pumped money in ad infinitum, and it didn't solve anything.

I didn't vote Labour (or Conservative) but I do think his approach will be thought through and considered.

The VAT on education is a headline and will cost less than 3k per child per year. As soon as the private schools work out the loopholes, this will reduce too. For example, boarding fees will be exempt etc etc. Looking at all my local private schools, the parents dropping their children off in 100k Range Rovers could just get a more fuel efficient vehicle and woul probably save that.

Anyone paying additional rate tax is already paying at least 50 grand a year in tax and NI. How much are you contributing towards maintaining the current shit services?

I would love to see them take on the big corporations for tax evasion but we all know this isn’t going to happen.They are just too strong. It will be the small businesses that are on the edge that suffer in all of this.

Everything in the country is broken. Councils are bankrupt, hospitals are crumbling, waiting lists are longer than ever, there's barely any NHS dentist provision, schools are without essentials and people can't feed their families even when working full time or two jobs. But god forbid someone other than the Tories might have a go.

Do you just ignore what you see around you as you go to your private treatment or schools? Is it ok for everything to go to shit as long as you hang onto more of your money? If things were properly funded and worked as they should you wouldn't need to opt out in the first place.

The Daily Mail would love you lot.

Starmer talks about uniting the country but as a middle class family I feel nothing but resentment from his party and a desire to take our wealth and redistribute it in true Robin Hood style as if we were the ‘baddies’ for earning well through years of hard work.

I don’t seem how their slogans of ‘helping families’ apply at all to the middle classes. It just means you pay 45% tax on your higher earnings, so are more than paying for your fair state school place, though you don’t want to go to a state school for numerous reasons including being despised by the working classes for having money. Who wants their kid to sit in a class where the kids want to beat your child down to size? We’ve worked hard for that??? So you pay ££££ for a private school place and now 20% VAT because everyone hates ‘Lola and Hugo’. It feels like the Labour party just want to hurt the middle to upper middle classes. How is this uniting the country?

And as far as paying more tax for services is concerned. That would be great if I believed that there will be better services. How is more money going to solve the chaos in the NHS anyway? Just one example is their IT systems. They spent billions on trying to connect the systems and failed. This was in 2002 under Blair. I anticipate similar schemes across the public services and a complete sinking of money into the abyss

I think the Conservatives have already done that. Taxation is the highest level for over 70 years currently.

Perhaps, you know, they might not be grasping corrupt Tories. That has to be a good first step. Lets have the PPE millions back, might pay a few nurses.

There is no point in donating extra tax, as it will never be done on a big enough scale. My £1000 won’t make a dent in anything I may as well chuck it in the bin, it’s far better donating to a local charity who can use money to make a difference. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy to pay extra tax if the rates rose