Which taxes should Burnham put up?

Good thing only the super rich will be affected...

Also adaptations to a car. Extra costs associated with normal activities that able-bodied people take for granted. For example most people with a garden take it for granted they can maintain and use it. Not so for a disabled person. They may need adaptations and a gardener.

The list is endless, really.

A Family Investment Company is best viewed as a long-term estate and wealth management vehicle, not a quick tax-saving scheme. It tends to be worthwhile only where there is substantial wealth, a long investment horizon, and a desire to pass assets to future generations while retaining control.

"...leave it to his kids without inheritance tax rules applying."
This is not literally true.
The reality is more nuanced.
The strategy works because:

• parents can freeze the current value of their estate;
• future investment growth accrues to shares already owned by children (or trusts);
• therefore that future appreciation may never enter the parents' taxable estate.

• the original wealth may still be within the founder's estate;
• the future increase in value belongs elsewhere.

Food medication therapies extra washing adaptable clothing adaptations in the home wheelchair repairs we had to buy one of those push button water boilers rather than a kettle pads because you can get some for free on the NHS but they arnt unlimited so you need to buy your own

Taxis , equipment, extra heating, carers, therapy, physio.

I would also make the categories for what you can spend PIP on more limited - and proof that it's being spent on that

That would be very expensive to administer. Currently there are no "categories". What categories would you suggest? @SirChenjins

What about tax avoidance vehicles for wealthy families? Check out FATFIRE subreddit, it is eye opening.

One chap with £15 million was told exactly how to set up an FIC so that he could essentially leave it to his kids without inheritance tax rules applying. Also meant that he could earn and take out loans against the company, essentially tax free.

Whereas a comfortable couple who aren't as financially clued up on this, with say a £700K house and £400K pension/other assets between them, will have an estate that will require the payment of inheritance tax.

Quite. You have to turnover thousands and thousands more just to stand still. Why bother? Take 3 months off instead.

I can see an arguement for lifting the threshold massively, but also reducing it to barely anything - say £5k a year, so basically everyone pays it and the cliff edge is gone. The rate is spectacular too. In Germany hospitality pays 7%, France, Spain and Italy pay 10%, Ireland pay 13.5%. People can afford to go out an eat and businesses are still profitable. We pay 20%. No wonder so many businesses are laying off staff and shutting down. 20% of sod all is what gets paid as businesses close. I would be so on board with a 10% hospitality tax on all hospitality and dump all the faffing about for receipts to deduct the 18p VAT you paid on x/y/z. People wouldn’t be bending over backwards to save 7-10% of a proportion of their turnover the way they do to stay under the threshold to not pay anything at all.

I would ALWAYS prefer to buy anything from someone local and in business for themselves than from any global scale business. Okay, it's not easy for some things, but I would never buy a new car, and I prefer to stay away from the big dealerships for servicing. I eat seasonally where possible and prefer to shop in my local market town for food, trying to take as many links out of the food chain as possible. Detergent and loo paper come from the supermarket.

Whilst I think there is some spite on both sides, I thinking conditioning has a big part to play in that mindset. It's also not helped by the people (government) who should be helping you up just giving you hand outs and effectively legitimising your frustrations.

@Badbadbunny its the typical spiteful “who do they think they are… think they’re doing so well don’t they!!”

generally said by those who are net takers, have never contributed and see tax payers as idiots for working, but are happy for their lifestyle and the generations before and after them to be fully funded by them, cos entitled init.

Agree 100%. This politics of spite and envy against entreprenneurs, self employed and business owners is doing massive damage to the economy.

The VAT threshold really has to be increased. Several of my clients are deliberately holding back their small businesses so they don't get caught by it, including shops, guest houses, tradesmen etc. The thing is that once you exceed it, you have to pay VAT on ALL your sales income, not just the excess, so you can end up several thousand pounds worse off by a very small increase in turnover. I've got clients who are shops that have cut down the number of days they open, a guest house that's shut down it's top floor of rooms, a takeaway that doesn't open at lunchtimes anymore. It's utterly stupid that our tax system is a barrier to growth.

Death by a 1000 cuts it is then.

That, to me, is the problem with deciding which taxes should be raised under this Government. I have little confidence that AB will make the difficult decisions needed to control public spending, and even if he wanted to, I doubt the backbenchers would allow it.

As Pat McFadden is reported to have said:

"Every meeting I have is: 'Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?' They're asking the wrong questions."

So why should a rational taxpayer trust that higher taxes will be spent wisely? I need a bit more than blind faith.

A lack of trust has real world consequences. Just look at the number of people who started drawing from their pensions early because they feared the Government might reduce or remove the tax- free lump sum. Whether those fears were justified or not is almost beside the point. The mistrust alone changed people's behaviour, given that some people may blow through that money there is likely to be a longer term cost to taxpayers that might not otherwise have existed.

I have a few years until I can retire, and the uncertainty has certainly influenced my decisions. I'm not putting another penny into my pension until the Government stops playing around with them. I don't care about the compounding I'll miss out on. I work to support myself and my family. The state benefits from the taxes I pay, not the other way around.

but where does all the profits come from, when you already have various established industries and companies and globalisation ?
how many high street names are going under ?

I do think Burnham is going to have to get to grips with the cost of pensions and benefits. There is, for anyone with access, an interesting article in today's Daily Telegraph about how Slovakia has managed to taper the rising costs of pensions without a revolution.

I think most reasonable people accept that the triple lock has to go. Slovakia has kept the link with average earnings and wages, but capped it at 95% of the annual increase. This is modest enough to be acceptable to most, and probably also just enough to encourage even those on fairly low wages to save a bit more towards their older years.

I think this is the issue. Ultimately almost all of the super rich have the option to be globally mobile and people will go to nice places that have favourable tax regimes. This is why places like Dubai have seen an influx of wealth and Britain has seen a flight of millionaires and billionaires. The same goes for businesses. Why set up in the UK when you can set up in Ireland? You might have noticed that Ireland charges less corporation tax and has more favourable tax regimes than the UK. Look who has the enormous budget deficit and who has the surplus. Yes we will still get lazy left wingers banging on about taxing the rich and businesses more.

Until people realise that socialism is incompatible with economic rationality, it won't happen. The most sensible economic policy is the one that encourages people to work more and for themselves because they want to earn more and realise that they will keep a decent % of the profits. That persuades a young chef that they should open their own food truck or restaurant, or a builder or mechanic or plumber or electrician to go it alone. Someone who has watched their employer providing a service poorly may decide they could do better and set up in competition, like DH did 34 years ago.

Hardworking people who are genuinely good at their jobs will prosper and the rest will opt for the security of paid employment. I'm not talking about doctors and teachers who need hospitals and schools, just the ordinary run-of-the-mill companies that actually employ more than 55% of all employees in the UK

The VAT threashold in small businesses should be revisited - they encourage criminality and disincentivise growth, but people earning above minimum wage for grafting in a small business that they have set up is not inherently bad. We can’t build an economy solely on public sector, benefits and “foreign investors”. Someone needs to run independent shops and restaurants unless we want a sea of Tescos and Nexts with the occasional Greggs.

God, absolutely. Where is the investment in home grown start ups, small and medium UK businesses, growth? The VAT threshold is too low especially given the huge rise in inflation.
I know the restaurant business well, and so much fiddling goes on to stay under it!

Agree. We need to get over “all businesses are run by fat-cat baddies” and realise that supporting business is the only way to growth and job creation.
The VAT threashold in small businesses should be revisited - they encourage criminality and disincentivise growth, but people earning above minimum wage for grafting in a small business that they have set up is not inherently bad. We can’t build an economy solely on public sector, benefits and “foreign investors”. Someone needs to run independent shops and restaurants unless we want a sea of Tescos and Nexts with the occasional Greggs.

Passive income should be taxed is a way that still makes people want to invest, but doesn’t mean people are earning more than actual working people tax free. Encouraging investment is really important.