Is Anyone preparing/hunkering down for 'after the budget'

[IsUnemploymentRising]

The news is today seems to be full of headlines such as unemployment is going up, housing markets are softening, budget is make or break.

Lots of people such as Andrew Bailey quoting things like markets could crash due to debt and AI bubble etc

I just don't see how RR or anyone else for that matter can get us out of our current situation without considerable cutbacks and pain.

Raise Taxes - lots of people think this is maxed out now with rich leaving and businesses already hit (thus rising unemployment)

Cut Benefits - will they try this again. If so what will all the people on benefits actually do to live. Will they all get jobs. Is there jobs?

So are you hunkering down?

Me personally I wish they would just get on with it. I hope to move house in next few years and whilst I'm still committed to it I can see another frozen housing market coming where only forced sellers sell and everyone else sits tight.

I'm retired (although not getting any pensions yet as too young) and definately worried about pension values (ie stock markets, bonds etc). It's very difficult to plan when your pensions are dependant on things outwith your control. (not applicable to those with final salary/defined benefit schemes of course)

State pension is a good 14 years away for me (I'm fully paid up) but I worry it will be eroded when I have built it into my calculations for retirement not to mention the freezing of tax brackets which means we are all getting taxed more each year by stealth.

I'm probably in a better position that many to weather the storm as no mortgage or debts and holding cash etc but even then I worry about our currency being worth nothing soon if they go down the route of printing money again.

Am I being overly pesimestic. I mean how are they actually going to get us out of this. For those on benefits (apart from worrying, being scared etc) how will you actually cope if your benefits are cut.

I have no confidence in them at all, I constantly worry over money, debt, food shopping, I seem to be working more to be worse off

which is all very nice of course but if the UK purse is empty now.........

There used to be council/NHS run OAP homes, convalescent homes, care homes, homes for the disabled etc. These were generally large "hospital style" places with large wards, etc. Unfortunately, a lot were Victorian so were "end of life" in the 80s/90s, and needed replacement, which was too expensive, so we ended up with "care in the community" instead where the plan was to "care" for people in their own homes/family homes, with visiting support from healthcare workers. Of course, there were inadequate resources/staffing put into place as they didn't fully understand/admit the scale of staffing needing to traverse the countryside visiting multiple residences! At the same time, there was an explosion in privately owned care homes for those for whom "own home" wasn't possible. At the stroke of a politician's pen, we lost the "economies of scale" of large hospital style care homes where large numbers of people could be looked after by relatively small numbers of staff and now we have NHS and private "carers" spending large amounts of their days travelling between patients!

and the trouble is the more people feel like this the more they will retire early and not work as soon as they can. I know I did it.

Working seems to be becoming a mugs game which is just so wrong.

that makes sense. thanks for posting. So maybe we need to go back to more OAP council run places then?

Well indeed. Same argument applies to welfare, we can’t keep spending money where there is none. As a higher rate tax payer I am heartily sick of paying huge amounts of tax (60% marginal currently) and subsidising life style choices for others.

Those who are deemed capable are sanctioned heavily if they don't look for a job and go on any courses offered, you are only excused if proven to be incapable, so not sure your idea would work.

Not sure either given the Labour conference didn’t do too well.

Re the op my main concern is jobs. We are seeing the impact already and it’s really bad to see.

This is VERY real. I have lots of clients who have that attitude and to an extent I do the same myself, i.e. not work as hard/long as we could, because we don't have to, and don't want to pay more tax to the wasteful government/public sector. The tax regime promotes this way of thinking.

I've got clients with small shops, cafes, guest houses, deliberately working fewer hours to stay under the VAT registration threshold as it would cost them thousands of pounds to go over, plus lots of wasted extra admin time re VAT returns etc. One guest house keeps his top floor closed, to stay under the threshold. Likewise a small village bakery that only opens 4 days per week. I crunch the numbers for such businesses regularly and they could be tens of thousands worse off by opening a day more or offering an extra room or two in a guest house! It's absolutely insane.

Likewise with workers, freelancers, etc. Most "could" work more, but earn enough working part time, often just at the income tax threshold, especially those close to or in retirement.

This is what the lefties don't understand. They have no concept of the behavioural aspects. I've got clients who literally won't work more if it meant that they'd pay tax, even though they'd keep 80% of the extra earnings (i.e. part time semi retired freelancer). Likewise people with lots of savings/investments who spend a lot of time arranging their investments to avoid paying ANY income tax at all, i.e. maxing ISAs, using the tax free allowance, savings allowance, dividend allowance etc. They just don't want to pay a penny in tax.

2/3 decades of encouraging "tax free" savings via ISAs and different allowances has set in motion the thoughts that paying "any" tax is bad and avoidable, and that mentality is now set in stone, not helped by the sheer waste and inefficiency that we all see from public services/government.

I really don't know how we can change that mindset.

At that's before thinking about the ever growing "black" economy, tax and benefit fraud, illegal working, money laundering, that we all see on a daily basis which costs tens of billions a year!

It's all a mess and I have no confidence that Reeves has the ability to even chip away at all the tax/benefit problems we face.

But that's not actually "getting" a job, it's being forced to go through the motions of looking for jobs. We all have experience/hear of people going for interviews and refusing to engage, not answering questions, giving stupid answers, as they clearly don't want to get the job, but are only there to "tick the box" that they've applied for x jobs and been to y interviews. Actually stopping their benefits after a period of time would force them to take job hunting seriously rather than playing the system!

The pound is on a long term downward trajectory due to Brexit primarily and it has screwed everything up. So there is no real choice, we need to get back into the EU in a strong trading relationship (not just for the UK, but also the EU needs it too). They just do not know how to tell us.

Like this To drop my hours to 22.5 even though I’m a single parent? | Mumsnet

I keep on linking this thread to demonstrated how awful our welfare system is.
It discourages everyone from work - those at lower end are better off on benefits, those at the top end reduce their hours because of crazy thresholds.

It has to be reformed

Maybe we could start with people working cash in hand and tax dodging

Nail on the head.

@Badbadbunny - so unless you are working at least 100 per cent (what does that realistically mean) in the most lucrative job you could possibly get for your skill level, then you are tax dodging? So all those smart people doing badly paid creative jobs are they dodgers too? And the super rich structuring we all know they dodge, and those on benefits, and the middle classes with their ISAs.
Not really, I think there is simply too much information available now and people can work out how to benefit themselves quite easily and the State lost control a long time ago.

There’s a 50/50 chance I’ll be made redundant shortly and I’ll get a very nice payout which I could live off for several years by being careful. I’m minded to do that so I can enjoy not paying tax for a while.

Humans are bonkers. All this is artificial financial nonsense created by the rich.

We should, but we've had a few decades of dismantling our police/courts system, local councils, tax collection agencies, etc., so it would now be very hard to turn it around and get back to where we were in, say, the 80s.

I started work in a small accountancy practice in the 80s and proper tax enquiries/investigations were common place. It was expected that a small business, such as a shop or builder or guest house would be visited by a tax inspector every few years. Sometimes to check VAT return paperwork, sometimes to check wages paperwork, and less frequently "full" investigations of all financial aspects for income tax/nic on profits. In our offices, we'd have a tax inspector checking client "books" at least once or twice a week, sometimes every day. All that's stopped. Brown re-organised and merged the tax agencies, shut down all the local town centre offices, ,made huge numbers of tax inspectors redundant, and the "tax gap" and black economy has grown ever since. It'll take years or a decade or two to restore that kind of "local" tax enquiry/investigative network. Nearly all HMRC resources are now engaged on large scale organised crime tax evasion, i.e. those defrauding millions in VAT carousel fraud etc. There's no one down a local level looking at small scale builders, Turkish barbers, hand car washes, cleaners, etc - because they're getting away with it, it's spreading like a virus with more and more people evading tax, defrauding benefits etc.

We NEED to tackle it all, but there's no political will to do so, so it WILL all get worse.

I won't be doing anything different, I'm already loading my pension and have ten years to prepare for retirement at 60.

Whatever the decisions of tax I am welcoming a time of political stability in the UK and a party not running around like headless chickens over Brexit or Covid and having a new PM every five minutes, however much the right wing media may desire otherwise.

There's only so much a single government can do re taxing the very wealthy, unless governments work together to close tax loopholes across the world. Which the EU were doing. No wonder the likes of Farage and his rich mates weren't keen.

Not at all, people should be incentivised to work and work more, not punished, which is what a huge number of people now have the mindset. We need to find ways of changing that mindset. Starting point would be to scrap all the cliff edge thresholds and stupidly high marginal tax rates.

Im sure they won't be appealing to any future employer, even if they do try harder, but no one wants to talk about the lack of jobs and unemployability of some people.

The issue is for those losing their jobs. They will have cause to worry.

I actually think slashing benefits would give lots of people incentive to sort themselves out but I could be wrong.

Aye

Just wondering if your real name is Philomena Cunk @IsUnemploymentRising ? You sure are asking a lot of questions, and doing the ....... thing.

Nice to be able to retire 14 years early and have all the time to ponder these questions. The Matthew Parker Street is as follows:-

The Conservative Party Foundation Limited |

Westminster Office, 4 Matthew Parker Street, London SW1H 9HQ,

Sooooo many questions can be answered if you put your shoulder to the wheel.

I mean how are they actually going to get us out of this.

They're not going to. They can't. They'll continue to tax and spend and borrow until the country is rammed fully into the ground. I don't think even the IMF can touch this mess. We're in so much trouble. A run on the GB Peso and a Sterling crash are on their way.

See, if we just fixed all this stuff back in 2008 during global financial crash, we'd be in a much better standing by now. But no, it's easier to kick the can down the road than face the consequences of one's own actions (government).

Why link that address? Labour did a lot of that pre GE on here and look at how it’s going now.