“Tax the wealthy” (RR budget) what does this even mean?

Whenever you ask who the ‘mates’ are you just get told Michelle Mone, then when you ask for a few more names, get accused of being a Tory bot.

Our country actually scores well on the corruption index and it’s quite rare for corruption to actually happen in higher level government. Rayner couldn’t even keep her legal-but-still-a-whoopsie SDLT quiet. We have thousands of social justice journalists out there absolutely gagging to trip them up for something. I’m far less worried about a few hundred thousand quid going missing than I am the shady influence of ultra religious MPs and their secret affiliations abroad.

What? Have I understood you correctly, that you expect the likes of, say, Tesco, to only make c£250,000 profit? (assuming the “lowest paid salary of the companies worker” would be equivalent to approx full time on min wage). On sales of £60bn?

Wow. Kiss goodbye to your pension, then, unless you are a public sector worker of course.

I'm not an advocate of the system as I think the can't be arsed need more of a stick to get them into work than a carrot. But we already give everyone a subsistence level of income, we would save a fortune on administration if you got rid of all the different types of benefit. I don't think many people would stop working, people like to have extras in life like holidays and netflix, a subsistence life would be dull.

I am very wary. There is no definition of what wealthy actually means. From experience it sometimes means me. I have worked hard for a long period of time and will retire soon. I do not wish to pay more tax and see my living standards decline. I have paid consistently more than my fair share.

I don't think such a thing exists.

What do you mean by untaxed wealth?

We can’t afford our current welfare bill though, so I’m not sure why we would choose to spend more for nothing to change.

There’s lots of people on this thread talking about rental property and measures that could be taken around that.

My only view on that is anecdotal and from my own experience. Recently I inherited a chunk of money when an elderly relative died. I had this lofty idea that I would buy a flat and be a good landlord, i.e. not charge my tenants ridiculous amount of money, fix things when they broke and generally keep the place in a good state of repair. I had plenty of terrible landlord when I was younger and I thought I could be the change!

When I looked into it, with the interest rates at the level they are, no relief on mortgages anymore and changes to taxation around rental income - it just didn’t make sense. I wasn’t trying to make a killing or anything. I just wanted to break even and hope for some capital growth over the long-term. The idea being that it would be a place for my kids to live someday.

I just couldn’t make it work. I put the money in an investment account instead.

I wonder if my story is representative of a lot of would be small landlords, who would be nicer landlords for tenants to have but can’t get into the market because it doesn’t add up financially. This means the only people that can afford to do it are the huge corporate landlords who are just in it to gouge tenants for as much as they can.

my point being, that if a system of rent control came in then wouldn’t this make this problem worse not better?

Yes they’re very low now, that poster sounds like they’re from June 2024. And look how that’s turning out.

Evasion, avoidance, mitigation, cash-in-hand.

All with flourish in the face of another tax raid from these Labour thieves.

I never really get this argument. That a government is happy to be unpopular/voted out to "help their mates". And that most MPs specifically go into politics to do helpful things for their friends. It just seems a bit counter intuitive.

It means they'll add extra tax to those wealthy enough to be able to pay more but not rich enough to employ accountants to ensure they take advantage of every loophole out there.

I'd like to see a government close the loopholes to ensure a fairer system but that will never happen because it would affect their mates and they'd not get cushy jobs and perks after they leave politics.

the three big taxes raise over three quarters of the total tax take. By ruling out a rise in these they have shot themselves in the foot. Tinkering around with IHT and property taxes isn’t going to raise the amount she needs and these are complex to implement

this government are weak - look at the WFA debacle - they made the decision and then backed down far too quickly. They’re not willing to make difficult decisions. The problem for them is that by not making the difficult decisions they are making things worse and so will lose popularity. If only they had the gumption to make the hard decisions and take the short term hit of unpopularity

Also about 6 months behind the curve, most insults have now moved on to "Reform or Farage" bot accusations

You sound very out of touch.

This is somewhat correct.

You cannot specify where the money goes to. The payment is to general expenditure.

(Alternatively you can offer to repay part of the national debt, which given it has been many years since the UK had a budget surplus, is much the same thing).

At least the the polls would suggest there are getting to be fewer and fewer labour bots . One poll yesterday had them third place tied with the Greens. If we had a Reform government with a Tory opposition the country would really get going.

I don't actually think it would change anything. The people who were motivated would go to work in order to live more than a basic life. The same people today who can't be arsed would then also want that more than basic life, but would as they do today blame those who work for them not having it.

We can agree to disagree. The house price disparity winds me up enough.

Another Labour response. How unusual.

Very pre GE too.

Salaries are higher in the south and services & investments are significantly higher in the south so we are in reality it’s all the same. My house is worth £500K, 20 mins from Manchester but I can assure you it’s a boring ordinary house, not some mansion cos it’s up north

That sounds really nice but in this scenario why would people do jobs that are really boring and repetitive or very long hours and stressful or involve cleaning up shit? Especially when they would be working to fund everyone to stay at home with their kids and their hobbies. There is quite a lot of seething resentment in society as it is.

My proposal would be the opposite of setting region against it would be setting a fair position based on the local market.

It's too complicated, even to do regionally.

Some parts of north Yorkshire are as pricey as the south for example.

I live in a very cheap part of Scotland but anyone trying to buy a starter home in Edinburgh would disagree that Scotland is cheap.

At one point Jeremy Corbyn mooted taxing by garden size. I live in a rural area where land is much cheaper and it is the council houses with the biggest gardens.

I can't see how you ever get a one size fits all option.

Council tax needs looking at as there are wildly different bandings for similar houses and massively extended ones don't pay higher rates until sold.

The private sector have not enjoyed inflation-busting wage settlements, and nor do they enjoy public sector pensions, nor tenure.

Be serious.