Should non-citizens pay the same tax if excluded from benefits?

Agree @TopPocketFind that not everyone is after a career and in addition, I would say that not everyone gets the opportunity to have a career.

I am sure you are happy that people are willing to work in these low paying jobs, whether it s students, second job, part time, short tem or long term

Your pub experience wouldn't happen without it.

Not everyone is after a career. The country would come to a stillstand if people didn't work in these low paying jobs.

The least we can do is pay a decent NMW

This is exactly what I think: they’re making a lot of noise that will excite those who lack critical thinking skills, but are unlikely to deliver, or certainly not in the way it’s being proposed.

Its actually the £45bn a year in extra costs for businesses to export to the EU since Brexit. This has caused many small businesses to stop exporting and downsize, laying off workers and therefore lower profits to tax,

The corporate tax rate was lowered from 20% in 2016 to 19% in 2023 where it remains for small profits up to £50k, after that there is a sliding scale that increases the profit % based on higher profits up to 25% for profits over £250k

Corporate tax rates in the G7 range from 24% to 32%, so the UK is on the low end for taxing businesses, with small businesses having a big discount of 5%.

So they aren’t taxing too much too soon imho.

Nope. It’s due to chronic lack of jobs, not because they cost too much.
That’s just an excuse for companies to filter more profit upwards to the executives.

This is not at all true. My husband got ILR as my carer as I am on PIP. He didn’t even need to get a job, my status as disabled person mean the financial requirements were waived. It was 10yrs to ILR, twice the usual time because it used to be 5yrs to ILR then.

Plus the income threshold was £18k (no children) at the time so many care workers, NHS staff, lorry drivers, construction workers, tube staff, bus drivers hospitality workers, and so on were able to immigrate and afford the visa and ILR costs.

The recent changes have made it cost prohibitive to regular working people and legal immigration (other than asylum seekers) is now limited to the privileged few.

But most people with ILR NOW, are not from wealth or privilege.

But all the vulnerable people in other immigration categories are on the path to ILR. The fact the requirements to periodically renew their visa on the path to ILR and to attain ILR itself keep getting progressively tougher over 10yrs has meant alot of immigrants have come and made a home in the UK only to be told their NHS job that was sufficient to achieve ILR is now not well paying enough.

And the NHS surcharge and visa fees literally double every few years for adults and children, meaning people are getting priced out and forced to leave after investing 5, 7, 9 years towards ILR.

I think the chances are more than very small, given the past decade of an increasingly hostile environment towards immigrants and the multiple changes to immigration laws that have made it harder to be eligible to renew a visa, apply for ILR or citizenship by increasing the minimum income above the average income, quadrupling the NHS surcharge, and also extending the timelines to attain ILR and thus citizenship. The other laws regarding forced removals of you can’t prove your status because you obtained ILR, as say a Windrusher or descendent resulted in a huge scandal of legal residents illegally removed from the UK - some even died in Jamaica or Virgin Islands before they could appeal and return home to the UK.

Yes it’s a very individual choice as the circumstances of the costs vs benefits don’t always balance out to a net benefit to pursue British citizenship, even if the barrier of the costs to apply and, if applicable, renounce is overcome.

@TiredShadows I read today that government ministers are aghast at the damage the loss of non doms' tax has made to the UK's tax receipts; they had no idea of their value to the UK's economy.

I don't think Reform have thought most of their ideas through and I think this is a distraction at best from far more significant issues with loophole-benefits given to non-citizens and often non-residents buying up British assets that has a more severe impact and Reform has a history of being quite chummy with.

The argument that because someone can't get benefits they shouldn't pay the same tax is unreasonable and has negative consequences when we look outside of family situations into wider society. We've only recently closed the most visible non-dom loopholes. There are a ton more that are being used by non-citizen, often non-residents, who buy British assets and significantly contributed to the rise in housing costs in some areas . Many very fortunate, wealthy people cannot access the typical welfare benefits, but gain many other benefits from being part of things - the idea that someone not being able to access benefits means they shouldn't pay the same tax as those who do gets us no where good fast when extended further.

Reform’s latest policy proposals include cutting all benefits for foreign nationals including EU nationals with leave to remain.

Also Non-EU nationals with leave to remain - many of us who already went through having our right to work and access to services including benefits pulled from under us unless we proved residency over many years, got an appropriate reference when the biometric residency permit requirement came in, and paid hundreds to get our rights that we'd already paid to apply for and passed back. I was one of them.

I doubt this hypothetical will come to pass. If any government chooses to make changes remotely along these lines, most EU and Non-EU nationals will be in the same vulnerable boat with no benefit in separating us out. The only way to avoid being impacted by any government changing immigration laws that impact those already here, already with indefinite leave to remain, is citizenship (and even that, some in Reform and elsewhere have wanted to attack).

Have to admit I’m not keen on that. If things keep going the way they are in the U.K. I’d like us to retain the option of moving to Europe.

Most EU countries allow multiple citizenships - in those cases, it wouldn't impact your option.

I don’t use many services - no kids so no education and health costs for them, higher rate tax payer so I don’t claim benefits, no major health issues so not using the NHS much.

You live in the UK, you are using a many services that involve government involvement from what you buy to the food on your table to infrastructure enabling the energy and internet you're using, whether you notice it or not, whether you think the government should be involved in it or how well you view their involved in it, simply living in the UK means using many services paid for by taxes. Benefits, education, and healthcare are maybe the most visible, but there are many others.

If you had a serious illness and became disabled, you’d be eligible for PIP. If a loved one became ill and you were forced to give up work to care for them, you’d be eligible for carers allowance.

Reform pretty much wants to take all of this away as well, or at least cut so most people won't be eligible, no matter our citizenship. With how things currently are, many severely disabled people, including the terminally ill, have been denied PIP and carer's allowance has been a nightmare to many.

Reform doesn't seem to know or maybe they rely on people not knowing.

While those at the top likely know, I don't think those on the ground know for many reasons from how the media blurs us all together to just not caring beyond their assumptions.

I live in a Reform area, have had many chats with those trying to be councillors and other political roles them since back in their UKIP days. Pre-Brexit, the ones I met had a very shaky idea of who could and could not vote (I had a couple who thought it was some UKIP victory that prevented some of us who'd never had the vote from voting), did not get that immigration laws had changed drastically before Brexit - had some that tried to reassure me that people like me could still immigrate (I guess I was looking pale that day). They struggled to get my explanation that those laws had already changed and people like me hadn't been allowed to immigrate in over a decade at that point. So many times I have had to explain that being married to a Brit and/or living here for X amount of years didn't not automatically grant me anything, anything still needed to be applied for, it all cost a lot of time, money, and energy, none of which seemed to benefit the nation much, but I'm sure all those private partners I paid those fees to were happy.

My gripe @TopPocketFind is that the economy is not growing properly because the government are forced to tax new enterprises too hard and too soon. I think there is plenty of energy ready to go, but new businesses need a gentler launch. That does not mean a series of soft subsidised cheating fake businesses... but that's what we will get.

It's not a career. If waiting tables becomes your career, then you are working in high end fine dining, and you like doing it.

@TopPocketFind a tiny example, if I may. We have had a sad week so we (DH & I) went out for lunch to a country pub we like. The waiting staff, note the respect, were superb. But I am sure that there's nothing in the budget to pay them more than pennies more. The waiting staff were doing the job to earn or save for their next adventure.

Not a Reform fan, to make that explicit. I am a big fan of high skill immigration. My DH has been in and out of our local eye hospital to save his sight regularly for the last 10 months. We have rarely seen a UK trained doctor or surgeon (and we have met a lot during the course of treatment). Partly, I think it is explained by the happy fact that the moderate temperate UK didn't experience as many eye diseases or parasitical infections as hotter countries.

That has always been the case.

Cheap experienced labour is often favoured.

I know

Reform doesn't seem to know or maybe they rely on people not knowing.

They are not fond on scrutiny.

It was a generous thought, but current NMW rules are not working. 16y olds can't get experience because they cost too much.

What gripe?

Not me @TopPocketFind . My gripe runs much deeper.

There are literally different immigration pathways and people here on different types of visas.

A fair wage should be enought to live on without needing a top up imo

That doesn't mean that everyone gets paid the same

Reform would like to lower the NMW

Teachers... slaps face. How could I have overlooked them? Teachers take your unformed children and teach them their letters and numbers. If you can read and write, thank your teacher. Literacy and numeracy are the foundation of civilisation.