Anyone watching the Budget 2024?

[LadyofRutshire]

I couldn't find a thread on today's budget. Anyone watching live?

It’s not uncommon for Small business owners run an unsustainable business or to have a poor understanding of the finances of their business. I wouldn’t take what they say online at face value to be honest

I’m sure businesses will pass a lot of the increase on but then I suppose the product will need to be worth it as not every customer will want to pay more.

Thank yous. I'm just trying to understand everything and the amount of information coming out is slightly overwhelming

God there's a lot of ignorance on this thread as to how businesses operate. Especially small businesses. Do people not realise that the MAJORITY of people up and down the country are employed by small business owners. Not large PLC companies that do not employ the majority of the workforce.

Many businesses, especially during the past few years, operate on a breakeven point or with a modest profit that they pay corporation tax on.

An increase in NI for employers of small businesses is a massive hike, plus the general increase in utility costs not to mention the business rates, rents, insurances etc. etc. Running a business is costly. Adding additional NI to the employer costs, then multiply that up by how many staff is a significant amount of money each month. Plus then factor in if some of the workforce were on NMW and those increases and the monthly wage bill has automatically increased quite a lot. At Breakeven they will then be running at a loss so will have to reduce staff count. At modest profit the profit gets wiped out so no wage increases for staff next year or the year after.

How much does it cost to employ a nanny out of idle, and off topic, curiosity? Feel free to ignore if it's too nosy.

I'm interested to see if my employers put prices of products up. They're very cheap as it is, average per product £2, no one will ever pay more than that so we shall see

That’s unrelated. As I said above, I work in insolvency, I spend all my time working out how businesses can turn around to financial sustainability.

Cutting costs or reducing the work force (even if only by “one person” as above) is every day behaviour in business and always has been. It’s exasperated in 2024 due to the events of the last 8 years. This budget won’t impact it in comparison to brexit/ mini budget/ Inflation/ general life. If you believe it does, I’m afraid you just don’t know enough about running a business.

Because in order to be commercially viable, farms need to be as large as possible. A farm is essentially a factory that produces your and my food. It is national infrastructure.

If a farm is reduced by 20% every time an owner dies, that farm will be uneconomic within one or two generations. It will be broken up, sold off for development etc. And then suddenly the UK's ability to produce even half of our food is removed.

You only have to look at Valencia today to see what climate change is doing to the area around the Med, which has traditionally grown a lot of the fruit and veg we eat. And with Putin disrupting cereals and oils from Ukraine. our food supply lines are at risk.

The risk is increasing every year, and those with no understanding of food production (including the Labour govt) are sleepwalking us in to a crisis.

All of this was already happening, even before the budget. It’s not like most businesses weren’t already trying to cut costs or their wage bill.

Why is this a good thing @AquaPeer ?

We do have a skills shortage and plenty of unfulfilled vacancies though so perhaps there will be other paths for people to move into.

Thanks to all who helped earlier. Sorted! We exchanged at 16:55!!

Well played.

Hi eastern standard you keep asking me questions but I am still waiting a on a reply from you from my post at 17:19, top of page 31, where you asked whether I knew anyone who had an employer

This is it. We really do. We don’t have an issue with people who can work being unable to because they can’t find work
We have had labour shortages since Covid, exasperated by reduced immigration

Where did I say that those things didn’t impact businesses?! This will impact on businesses profitability so they will get rid of people as a result.

It doesn't - the figures are wrong.

Foundation year one is £36,616, plus an on call allowance and a weekend working allowance. Whilst those vary, they will typically bring this up to £40-45k.

Source: https://www.nhsemployers.org/system/files/2024-09/Pay-and-Conditions-Circular-MD-5-2024-R.pdf

Nothing for me - a huge splurge on schools and hospitals, but nothing to encourage fiscal growth, so when that money runs out they'll be coming for more and I expect that will be more IHT and pensions.

Thank-you for explaining this.
I agree with you.

Nothing for me - a huge splurge on schools and hospitals, but nothing to encourage fiscal growth, so when that money runs out they'll be coming for more and I expect that will be more IHT and pensions.

Realistically we can’t grow until we invest in stuff.

Where did I say that those things didn’t impact businesses?!

don’t understand this so assume we are getting confused with so many posts.

put it this way, in my current portfolio

company a had 300 redundancies Jan- sep this year
company b had 130 redundancies april
company c had 9 in August.

none them will need to make additional redundancies to swallow the increased NI. And these companies are with me because they are close to bankruptcy.

their problems were much much bigger than a 1.2% NI increase. Company A lost 16% of its income in 2023 due to brexit and immigration rules

How many pages do you get for a thread?

Just wondering if I should start a new one ?

I've caught up on the thread a little bit and a lot of interesting points have been made.

What, like manufacturing and farming?

What about 'businesses' such as GP surgeries and universities with no profits nor surplus?

As a PP has said, no, their GP practice won't be become bankrupt, but they will not replace a GP when they leave. And that's good for society, how?

And universities, where do we start. The vast majority, with the exception of Oxford, Cambridge and possibly a few others who have high philanthropic and/or historical Trust incomes, are already in a catastrophic, financial mess. They are already making huge numbers of redundancies, cutting courses and reducing modules.

There's no precedent for HEI bankruptcy, but without some form of govt intervention, I don't see how many can survive. This doesn't just affect students and staff, but has massive ramifications for research, the local economy and knowledge exchange.

Just go in a website for hiring a nanny. You will get all your facts about taxes, employer taxes, holiday, pension.

What you need to consider that a mother pays this from her after tax income. She gets taxed twice for returning to work.

So, more than wonder how much to pay a full time nanny, wonder how much a mother needs to earn after taxes to pay her nanny & employment taxes/pension.