If Labour raises taxes what will you think?

Lots of news can be viewed online without paying for a TV licence.

Every time someone says the NHS need major and urgent reform, the usual suspects all start with the 'waah waaah, American style health care where babies don't get treated for cancer because their parents are poor...'

Completely ignoring the fact that there are many European countries where a hybrid of public/privately funded heathcare is operated very efficiently and effectively. Certainly far more effectively than the sclerotic basket case that is the NHS, and no babies are dying of cancer just because their parents are poor. In fact health outcomes in most areas in those countries are vastly better than the UK, even when the social demographic breakdown may be broadly similar.

BBC already sells programmes globally and raises huge sums of money from that.

I really won't. Never watch anything on the biased bbc anyway, in fact, I hardly watch any live tv, so won't be renewing my tv licence at next renewal. Happy not to watch it nor any other live tv. The licence should have been scrapped years ago as the whole thing is antiquated.

I used to think that - and think I would miss some radio 4 parts - though I'd listen to ads for some things. I think it's often nostalgia producing that view.

Recent years the outputs been poor and honestly we're just not watching as much as we used to. I'm hard pressed to think of much of their TV output we've bothered with - even documataries now often look elsewhere or it's older programs. There new output been extremely unreliable for a while on certian issues.

I think the ITV or perhaps Channel 4 or 5 apps have a mix of paid for and free content - don't see why the Iplayer can't go down that route.

I won't miss the BBC. There is nothing I'm bothered about watching on it and certainly never the news as its been biased and agenda driven for a while now and I've long since decided its a fundamentally compromised and untrustworthy news source.

The NHS is more complex. I have private HC through work but I recognise that isn't universal and won't last for ever. I grew up in Europe where everyone paid for healthcare when they were working and I'd be happy if we moved to a European style model. I work for a company that supplies IT to the NHS and anyone who thinks it isn't already privatised when it comes to purchasing is deluded. Not to mention the extortionate prescription charges that working people pay. But Scotland and NI dont? That should be normalised for a start. The original free at pos model isn't sustainable sadly imo.

But more importantly, has anyone seen any clear, costed plan for using the money they think they're going to generate with tax rises to implement measure to.reverse the decline of the NHS? I haven't. It seems to be all earmarked for house building.

Repeating this because ot 100% needs repeating. Again and again.

Yes raise money for themselves. They can protect a brand and make it subscription.

If they really can be an impartial, rigorous provider people can choose to pay for that.

What the BBC need to do is get some payments globally - they need to raise money themselves.

Government is essentially now asking state school parents to subsidise state schools. The BBC needs to go out there and sell itself globally more and then it will be fine.

The BBC is like the NHS. You will miss it when it is gone.

The TV licence fee income is going to be absolutely hammered over the next year. So many people already don't pay. Communities are so fragmented and transient these days, so many people live in shared accommodation rather than nuclear households that are fixed for years and easy to trace. It's far too expensive and labour intensive to keep track of who probably should have a TV licence but doesn't. As usual, they will concentrate on the low hanging fruit and hound the people who have always had a licence, but may have allowed it to expire and become overdue, or have made the conscious decision to no longer buy one, rather than focusing on the millions who don't have a licence at all.

Coupled with the latest revelations from within the BBC, confidence and trust is at an all time low. We can expect to see millions more people choose not renew their licence when the time comes. It's perfectly possible to watch plenty of TV content (with certain caveats) without straying into territory where you should have a licence, but for those who are probably going to ignore those caveats with impunity (most people) it won't be at all difficult to do so and the likelihood of being prosecuted is minimal to say the least. There just aren't the resources to prove it and to take legal action. And the more people who revolt, the harder that will be.

I think the same may well be true of council tax to a degree, although I foresee that anyone sticking their head above the parapet on social media to suggest a mass protest via non-payment of council tax will be seen as agitators inciting criminal behaviour. They are easily identified and will pay the price with unusually swift and disproportionately harsh prosecutions leading to imprisonment, similar to what we saw with Lucy Connelly and the rioter/protestors after Southport.

It will be harder to galvanise a nationwide movement on council tax because some councils are so much better than others. Not everyone will be equally motivated and most law-abiding, compliant people won't want to risk a court summons for non-payment. Whereas not renewing your TV licence is pretty low risk in comparison.

Council elections next may. That could be brutal for Labour….

Most it will go to interest payments on the national debt.

I think if she puts up council tax significantly people will coordinate and mass refuse to pay. I dont think they have the resources to prosecute everyone.

I think the BBC is in trouble, people will look to recoup by cancelling the licence fee. TUI etc will also be affected, people will not book a holiday next year to again try and compensate. People will generally spend less which will stagnate the economy. Reform will get in at the next election probably. Way to go Labour!

There is going to be a huge backlash.

Lashings of more taxes to deliver nothing will not go down well.

NHS, Schools, Roads, Social Care will all still suck.

The new money will go straight into the pockets of those who contribute nothing, and just take take take.

I will never understand unions. They'll fight to the bitter end to make employers pay more - but don't seem to care if the government steals more than half the money: which directly leads to more job losses for those same employees.

Teacher pay rise strikes were just as inexplicable. They went on strike until the government increased their pay: but stopped without requiring any extra funding for the schools. So the school (and students) were directly worse off, since the money would stretch to fewer teachers. Unbelievably selfish.

@strawberrybubblegum

Freezing the personal allowance has also hit those on minimum wage the most.

How was increasing employers NI percentage and reducing the threshold at the same time as increasing NMW more honest than anything Conservative governments did?!?

Despite them pretending that it wasn't a tax on 'working people', it increased the cost to the employer for a full time NMW worker by 10% - which predictably meant unemployment rose: especially at entry-level, where the reduced threshold bit hardest.

But of that 10% (£2388) extra cost to the employer, the NMW worker only got a a 5.5% raise - £1021
Whereas HMRC got a 34% raise - £1367!!

HMRC got more of the extra money than the employees - not only in percentage terms but even in absolute terms!! And they had the cheek to trumpet that as a win for the NMW employees. Employees who took the hit in job losses, for less than half the reward.

That is fucking Houdini-level dishonesty and gaslighting.

NMW for adults over 21 went up: from £11.44 to £12.21
NI Increased from: from 13.8% to 15%
NI Threshold change: from £9100 to £5000

Full time NMW pre-Reeves: £21,049
Employer NI: £1649
Employer total cost: £22698
Employee gets: £18,674
HMRC gets: £4024

Full time NMW post-Reeves: £22,466
Employer NI: £2620
Employer total cost: £25086
Employee gets: £19,695
HMRC gets: £5391

Their taxation decisions are more honest than Conservative governments who prefer to lower income tax and increase spending taxes at every opportunity.

It’s a part of the economy that kind of operates in the shadows, which I find interesting bearing in mind how intersectional it is.

European Development Funding for research and economic development was also a core source of startup funding. Lost thanks to Brexit.

One thing the Tories DID do was encourage private investment in startups and they created TechNation, which really did move the needle when it came to creating an inclusive startup ecosystem that was genuinely competing with Silicon Valley.

I fear all of those gains/progress will be lost as talent goes overseas. Especially the younger folks.

My son is already exploring moving to the US (where he has citizenship) for A-levels because the UK is “low vibe and full of people who complain and don’t do anything” - his words 🤷‍♀️

Thanks for the explanation @Berthafromtheattic - that's really interesting.

I would think that they've joined the Conservative party.

I was a VC scout for six years, and that’s not entirely accurate.

Venture capital actually brings money into the UK. Over the past 10 years especially, a large share of investment in British start-ups comes from foreign funds, particularly American ones.

The asset class/industry grew massively during the ZIRP era (the Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon), because family offices, pension funds, and other institutional investors were desperate to find some form of yield.

The “problem” with VC (and how one could perceive it as taking money out of the UK) appears later, when it’s time for a start-up to scale and eventually exit (typically through an IPO or acquisition).

You see, VC operates on a power law — much like the music industry.

For every investment that goes to zero, you only need one or two runaway successes to return the entire fund (all capital deployed plus, say, 3%).

That’s why such a focus on unicorns - if your fund raised $200M to spread across a series of bets (startups) and one of them exists for $1B, you’re laughing.

Put another way: you only need one Taylor Swift or Coldplay to de-risk the bets you make on one-hit wonders.

The challenge for the UK is that it’s a small market with high taxes, high risk aversion, lots of regulation (albeit less than the EU) and, arguably, “tall poppy” syndrome.

So founders often sell early — usually to an American giant like Google (see: DeepMind) — or relocate abroad to scale and exit on more favourable terms.

VC money started drying up in 2023 (even American funds had to turn to the UAE and Saudi Arabia to raise new capital).

Last year’s budget didn’t help.

The government it increased Capital Gains Tax, tightened the rules for non-doms (who make up a VERY active segment of the UK angel investment community), and reduced Entrepreneurs’ Relief.

Together, those changes have made the UK less attractive for both investors and founders.

I know founders that have moved to the US and UAE because it’s too hard to raise money let alone scale here.

Ironically, as a fallout of capital flight (for lack of a better term), we’ve basically ripped the rug out from one of the few areas where the ecosystem was making real progress: closing the wealth and funding gap for women in business.

Over the past few years, a growing number of funds had been created specifically to back women founders and provide early-stage capital.

In fact, Akshata Sunak has been a prolific investor in women-founded startups building in sectors that couldn’t traditionally get VC or bank funding.

In 2003 it was 36.3% of working age households.

www.ons.gov.uk/generator?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2021/8a4a4e33&format=xls

We didn’t subsidise low wages in 1977 so that’s a very poor comparison. A better comparison would be with 2003 when tax credits were introduced. At that point 2 million children were lifted out of poverty at a stroke. Paying people properly would eliminate it but then everyone who objects to paying taxes would be complaining about price rises and inflation - which, incidentally, was 16% in 1977.