National insurance - people have short memories

I know I would be happy to pay more tax if I could see my investment paying off on improving economic growth. I want to see the UK as a good place to do business, to attract foreign investment because we have a high skilled, productive workforce utilising excellent modern transport links.
But I just can't see that that happening, rather than increasing productivity I think employers will be cutting hours, cutting investment in training and upskilling. I just don't see growth happening anytime soon.

Genuine politics comes down to discussing where we want to be in the space between "The government should own the pubs" and "A private company should run the army and police". Bad-faith politics consists of claiming that your opponent holds one of those positions.

@Blondiie yes it was billed as a temporary measure but then got changed to permanent.

How would your idea of paying for healthcare services work for those on minimum or low income or those elderly or with health conditions requiring multiple appointments or services?

How would fewer public services work in education, social care, emergency services, unemployment or sickness benefits? All these services need huge investment not less.

Really? It’s been temporarily 20% for nearly 14 years now - baring the temp reduction during covid.

Which is what we are seeing.

When the UK get's it's collective head out of it's arse and accepts that maybe - just maybe - there were some upsides to being in the EU, things can start looking up.

My business could stand this a lot easier if VAT wasn’t 20%

that was meant to be a temporary increase

Xenia, which public services should be gotten rid of then?

Britain can't keep borrowing more and more with no consequence for ever. At some point it will all come crashing down.

It already is but people want someone else to pay.

Wait until nurseries, old people's homes, GPs start shutting in droves.

We have an ageing population so care homes will still exist, likely to be more expensive though so people will have to get used to paying for their care.

It’s a huge burden to put on business, especially business with lots of part time and low paid employees such as supermarkets, retail, hospitality, care, food distribution and production.

It’s on top of the previous burdens of Brexit, covid, Liz Truss, VAT hikes, Putin.

Some businesses will go bust and twats will rub their hands in glee because the business owners might be “Tory” or “have holidays” and nobody deserves to run a business that can’t stand a tripling of raw materials and energy costs, hiked interest rates, extra red tape, increase in wages of 40%, increased interest on borrowing, increased taxes in VAT and NI. The staff will be unemployed.

Some businesses will stay open with pay and recruitment freezes.

Prices in industries dependent on low wages like food and childcare will increase, everything gets more expensive, wages go up across the board. Inflation increases so interest rates are hiked again.

My business could stand this a lot easier if VAT wasn’t 20%. It used to be 8%. If you need an extra £2800 per employee then you need to generate £3500 to cover the cost plus the VAT (at least in hospitality where you claim close to nothing back) and you would have to do that without incurring any addition expenses such as raw materials, increased opening hours, utilities, bank charges eg you would have to do it solely in price rises. It would be doable on its own but it’s not on its own. It’s on top of an absolute avalanche of shit.

Well those who orchestrated it are definitely not prepared to step up.

So it'll fall to those who didn't actually vote for it.

Great.

I am surprised they didn't just unwind Rishi's pre-election lets pretend every things going great unfunded tax reduction. It is all tory gaming with our incomes.

Someone has to pay for Brexit.

Crazy society wouldn't work if lots were left vulnerable.

Says it all if you don't want to invest in public services. What about roads, armed force and police. Don't use them either?

Flabbergasted.

It depends what they said they were planning on doing with the increased tax revenue. And it also depends on the constituency I am in doesn't it? Here Labour had no chance so I wasn't going to waste my vote on them. This isn't a gotcha moment.

I don't know how you know I didn't vote for them before I said I hadn't!

I'll say what I've said elsewhere. I own and manage a small business which supports 2 full time workers and two part time. We have been in business for 20 years and have weathered the financial crash, Covid and the aftermath, so we must be doing something right. We are too small for the new measures to affect, however I am able to look at the bigger picture and see that it is bigger than just me. Majority of the burden falling on a minority shouldn't be how it works. Everyone should pay their way to the best of their ability.

The system the UK has fallen into is crazy.

Take prescription charges as a small illustration. Most people pay nothing. A large percentage of prescriptions are dispensed free of charge. If many more people paid a much smaller amount rather than the £9.90 per item that some people have to pay, it would generate more revenue surely. I was in the surgery the other day and a woman was making a fuss that her prescription wasn't ready. It was ibuprofen. She was asked if she paid for her prescriptions. "No" was the answer.

I think the employer Ni on wages from about 5k to £10k and the 1.2% extra of NI together (for employers who are above the employer NI exemption and those with a nanny where there is no exemption) costs about £1k per employee on minimum wage. if the minimum wage increase is about £1 an hour roughly (it is a bit less) that is about £1800 a year per minimum wage employee so that is about £2800 a year extra. So someone I heard about yesterday has about 800 staff - kind of care business and they probably are mostly on the minimum wage. 800 x 2800 = £2.24m a year extra so presumably that means redundancies. That is quite a high increase.

I would much rather we had many many fewer public services. I have seen a doctor twice in 15 years - I call them my £100,000 NHS appointments for 7 minutes a time and would rather have no NHS or one where people pay at point of use and in return pay half my tax bill.

I was under the impression the budget was all about facilitating economic growth. I was looking forward to investment in public services and infrastructure - I am happy to pay more tax/NI if I see an improvement in roads/rail etc I find travelling pretty painful going anywhere these days if it's by car or rail. But I didn't see anything that would encourage growth. In fact it seems to have clobbered small business and farmers. Who would want to start a small business these days?

There's always many reasons not to start a business, there's no perfect time to do it. You do it anyway.

The barriers are actually very low, especially for online businesses. You could start one today for under £500, or less even. There are also various investment opportunities and funding options out there.

But no I wouldn't recommend hiring staff or renting premises from day 1 unless you've done it before and know what you're doing or you have strong investment and a long term plan.

@IMustDoMoreExercise "I'm sure you are clever enough to find the cash from somewhere, just as clever as all the entrepreneurs who will be leaving the UK and setting up elsewhere."

All of the clever entrepreneurs who could started leaving the UK in 2016 when the country was conned into voting for Brexit and businesses were cut off from the largest unified market on the planet, cut off from a supply of well-qualified staff, had supply chains disrupted and had higher costs of doing business imposed on them - the complete opposite of what Boris promised.

I was correcting your incorrect comment that an employees cost is an employers cost, and that because employees NI was decreased, employers are back where they are and shouldn't complain. What am I missing?

I think the whole system of taxation needs streamlining and making more straightforward and transparent. Abolishing the nonsense that is "national insurance" would be a start.

What are we insuring ourselves against exactly?

That's not how payroll works, a lot of people don't understand payroll. Employees NI comes out of employees wage. That's why it's gross pay minus PAYE and employees NI equals net pay (take home pay)

Employers NI is ADDED to the gross pay that an employer pays someone. So no, your comment is incorrect. This new increased NI and reducing of threshold is a new cost to the employer. It has absolutely no bearing on employees NI and how it has dropped

I know you didn't vote for them.

My question was if they had said they would up income tax would you have voted for them?