To think Labour won't increase taxes

How’s it going @ArtVandeelay ?

Can I ask who you think will win the next election? The Conservative Party is dead. They decided to become the Brexit party and have lurched to the right and served up a series of disastrous Prime Ministers. the days of them being the party of fiscal responsibility are long gone and I don’t see how any reasonable person could vote for them now.

Hopefully this is a blip like Labour with Corbyn and they will come to their senses soon.

Possibly!

I expect you will be looking for a new one from November then

It will lead to massive resentment. It’s a really short sighted proposal. People already resent the gold plated public sector pensions.

Hammering private pensions seems very short sighted

would be good if she could do some re jigging to get rid of the income tax cliff edges and just try to make the tax system in general more streamlined. But given they’ve promised not to touch income tax rates that’s going to be tough

Not really. Private companies have budgets. Staff budgets are inclusive of employers' NIC. If NIC goes up, the number of people that can be employed for the same money goes down a percent or two.

In the public sector any increase to NIC is paid for out of tax revenue. In other words, increase the cost of public sector payroll and you increase your own costs. It is a bit like standing in a bucket and trying to lift yourself.

I agree that it will be bloody next Wednesday. Get the bad stuff out now, then turn it around with sweetness and light in 4-5 years' time.

The pensions tax which only applies to private sector workers (those with shite pensions anyway) seemed particularly vindictive.

It'd be a terribly divisive idea.

This. If you're going to raise taxes, do it at the start of the electoral cycle. Taxes will definitely go up. The pensions tax which only applies to private sector workers (those with shite pensions anyway) seemed particularly vindictive.

I can only hope. At the end of the day they are are Labour government.

@MushMonster they should but it won’t happen.

My IFA seemed to think that the numbers (whatever they are) that are coming through on the tail of the Tory government are better than expected which takes the pressure off the amount that R Reeves needs to find.

It’s all speculation and I really hope that they’ve done an Expectation Management number on us, and it ends up being less dire than predicted.

Who knows?

They will certainly try, but they should not be allowed to cripple companies offering basic services, leaving behind obsolete plants and making people sick or inconvenienced for lack of drinking water supply ( in UK- like it rains every day here!) and pass the money we pay for the water to their stakeholders. I trust that Labour will stop them. The Guardian has indeed an article about it, I think today. These guys need to pay for the harm they have done. They actually are a good example to set. They thought they could get away with it, but it should not be so, at all.

The budget deficit is over £80bn, public services are in tatters and the UK economy has seriously underperformed for years. Taxes have to go up in the short term simply to stave off national bankruptcy, unless you cut spending heavily.
The difficulty is how the government finds the spare money to invest in infrastructure so that the economy can grow again (which will then pay for public services and allow taxes to fall) while putting in enough money to stop public services from completely collapsing in the interim.
*
The FT have done a budget game so you can try and work out how to do it yourself. It's really hard!*

This!

Whatever gov in power was going to have to do this, we are fucked.

They’ll just pass it on, water bills are going up more than expected already

Yes, if I was a landlord I might be slightly twitched.

Oh, I forgot. They should speed up the fining of Water companies in breech. That would round a few pounds too!

And remember if too many people are crippled financially then it sinks the economy as people stop spending. Businesses go under, etc.

This is what my financial advisor thinks!!

I think they will gather the around 20 billions they are looking for, but not from NI contributions or income tax, at least for the lower thresholds (they may try to chip a bit from the high high earners).
It will need to come from other taxes. Here hoping that it will tax big corporations excessive profits, excessive bonuses and unfair financial moves.
On the later, increasing taxes on rent income could be one. There have been people evicted from their low rent homes, for no fault of their own. Property is then sold and refurbished or rebuilt to emerge as new rentals as much much higher price. It is things like that that drive the housing prices up and the cost of getting a roof over your head in UK is far far too large already.
I think the pounds to plug the hole will come from things like this indeed.

How bad can it be? Cost of living is already crippling people. I don’t see how things can be made worse on a day to day basis? Capital gains tax, inheritance tax, etc, those sort of one off things are a different story.

The budget deficit is over £80bn, public services are in tatters and the UK economy has seriously underperformed for years. Taxes have to go up in the short term simply to stave off national bankruptcy, unless you cut spending heavily.

The difficulty is how the government finds the spare money to invest in infrastructure so that the economy can grow again (which will then pay for public services and allow taxes to fall) while putting in enough money to stop public services from completely collapsing in the interim.

The FT have done a budget game so you can try and work out how to do it yourself. It's really hard!

https://ig.ft.com/chancellor-game/

This was pre GE selling in and after for unions

The rest will get the hard stuff

They'll raise taxes in some way now, in the hope of cutting them nearer to the election I would think.

I just hope whatever they do isn't too grossly unfair - some of the proposals being floated seem discriminatory in various ways.

I think 30/10 will be true and real carnage