Am I the only one that thinks that the budget is good?!

Yet again tax had been made more complicated. We really need a mass simplification of this mess.

Scrap NI and merge with income tax.
Scrap salary sacrifice schemes.
Scrap government funded nursery hours.
Scrap child benefit.
Scrap the loss of personal allowance.
Dividend is income.

Keep it simple. Earn more, keep more. No cliff edges, simpler enforcement.

My old age is already here with financial security and morals intact. 😊

How it it fairer for the thousands of people who will lose their jobs and be plunger into financial hardship due to the actions of Rachel Reeves? Thanks to her woeful first budget, well over a quarter of a million people had already lost their jobs...how much worse does it have to get? The woman should hang her head in shame but instead she tells lie after lie after lie while digging herself in an ever deepening hole. Utterly despicable.

There’s a big difference between someone sacrificing large amounts into a pension to give themselves a good quality of life in retirement, when they will probably still be a HR tax payer and a net contributor to the country, and a divorced Man deliberately depriving his children of money by having a Ltd. Company and sacrificing down to minimum wage - the latter is morally repugnant and should be illegal.

Oops, typo, meant 50k every 2 years. Wish it was 50 a year!

Completely legal. I have saved 50k a year for the last 10 years with salary sacrifice and reduced my tax bill at the same time. It will be a nice little pot of money when I'm older and the best decision I ever made. Anybody who pays more taxes than is required of them is a fool. Let's see what takes better care of us in our old age, my pension pot or your moral superiority, shall we?

I absolutely agree with supporting working families on low incomes. I absolutely do not agree with supporting families in which neither, or only one, parent/s works if there is no justifiable reason as to why they cannot.

I’m very happy with the new budget it makes it fairer for everyone and is making things a bit easier for people on a low income and getting benefits this way there should be no kids going with out.

Happy to (you may also want to have a look at the definitions in the gov.uk pages or websites from taxation lawyers).

The Panama papers are a rather well-known example of tax evasion - hiding assets so as not to pay tax on them. And the use of company loans that are not repaid as a recurrent and disproportionate way of directors' remuneration is a form of tax avoidance (using a legal scheme beyond the way in which it was intended) and is frequently investigated by HMRC.

As someone in that line of work, I think it is important to use the right terms for the avoidance of doubt (and not to delegitimise tax planning).

I’m in a kind of wait and see position…I’m partly of a mind that the 2029 things won’t ever actually happen anyway. The salary sacrifice is my biggest concern, I need to sit and work out the impact with a. It of excel joggers poker. The EV one I don’t fully get the issue, I get it’s an additional cost but on my 12-14k miles per year it’s not much. I was thinking of going hybrid next next (diesel currently) but the 1.5p thing feels like a double tax.

Can you give an example of tax avoidance and an example of tax evasion?

Neither salary sacrifice nor ISAs are tax avoidance, they are tax planning and therefore legitimate.

Tax avoidance is pursued by HMRC and can result not only on having to pay the tax due but also fines. HMRC guidance is clear on the matter.

The issue of benefits being used to subsidise low wages goes back decades. It expanded under new Labour with working tax credits and the influx of EU workers happy to accept lower wages has made the problem worse.

The tax payer shouldn’t be propping up any business that isn’t paying its workers enough although some basic support may be inevitable in some sectors. The problem now is that it is so widespread.

How do you propose reversing the situation we’re in?

So are you saying that tax avoidance is morally wrong given that it’s not illegal? You clearly have an issue with it?

Are the many thousands of people with ISAs (a form of tax avoidance) morally corrupt?

Not sure the point that you are trying to make in relation to salary sacrifice (if any).

i would recommend you to look at the HMRC advice on tax avoidance (which shows that it is not 'perfectly legal' and outlines the consequences). Tax evasion is not legal indeed, so much so that, although both tax evasion and tax avoidance are illegal, tax evasion is more likely to result in criminal prosecution.

Tax avoidance is perfectly legal. Evasion isn’t.

It is not. Tax avoidance involves bending the rules of the tax system to try to gain a tax advantage that Parliament never intended - that is why HMRC has programmes focused on stopping tax avoidance and people, if caught, have to pay the tax due plus (potentially) a fine.

Tax sacrifice schemes are a form of tax planning.

You’re right, it’s avoidance.

The add on £26bn tax burden is on the lower to middle income through banding too.

Salary sacrifice is NOT tax evasion, what an idiotic comment.

I did salary sacrifice for my pension when I earned about £30k, obviously you don't know much about it. It's quite commonly used for private sector pensions

Lower paid people are affected by the salary sacrifice more than those in the higher tax bands, how can that be right.

@Crikeyalmighty By the time you factor people impacted by the ISA limit, limits on salary sacrifice and rebanding, extra tax on homes (which, by the way, are not by any mean enormous houses if you live, for instance in London), there are quite a few people impacted, plus there is also the issue of stagnation in the thresholds of income tax which means that the tax rates are not changing but the actual tax is increasing. So quite a few people and, crucially, people that increasingly see that the welfare system is a growing time bomb... so they are concerned not only about the impact now but the impact going forward and the fact that, like this time round, Ms Reeves is likely to come back for more.

The debate is now not only about the impact of specific measures in the budget but about the trade offs at play - following the disclosure of the OBR forecasts, the increase in taxation is associated with the choice to want to increase the headroom ...which helps stabilise credit markets (and control the huge amount paid in servicing the debt) but only needed because the benefits bills is increasing by 16 billion.

The only people it seriously hits negatively are those with tons of money to save every year in ISAs or enough to be doing salary sacrifice, so basically have spare cash or maybe those with enormous houses or who are at risk of a banding change ( we rent but not that many people like us are renting F or G band homes) possibly those wit EVs, but that’s more of closing a loophole .

myself I am anti salary sacrifice as it smacks of tax evasion , however to balance it I would have brought in funded nursery hours regardless of income , ( in Denmark you got the same low subsidised fee whether on the breadline or a millionaire) as I feel many do salary sacrifice to get around that .

But why should the tax payer be propping up unviable businesses with Universal Credit wage top ups?