New NI tax. How are people meant to afford this?

[OnTheBrink1]

We bought our house just before covid, got a mortgage that pushed us quite a bit but worked it all out and it’s been doable since then. We needed to push the mortgage quite a bit because we were upsizing to get an extra bedroom for the kids and a downstairs loo and in our area and from what we had before it was a jump.
Been managing since then but no progression opportunities in DH job during the last 18 months due to covid it seems as recruitment was largely paused.
However, now we will now have to pay an extra almost £900 per year on this new tax. £73 I make it.
We don’t have any benefits of any kind.
It’s going to be quite a struggle to afford the mortgage and still maintain the car (which is old but we need for work and kids stuff) plus all the usual bills and food. Kids are between 8-12 and need bus passes, constant uniform and all manner of expenses of course.
I mean we will struggle by but it’s going to be tough to afford that extra £73 a month when we had all the mortgage planned.
Just don’t get how they can bring it in so soon when it’s such an increase. How are others in a more difficult position going to afford this? People will be loosing their houses surely?

Although I will have to disagree on lower paid jobs usually being stressful- that’s not my experience. Of all the lower paid jobs I’ve worked in the past and of all those I know who currently do, the vast majority go home at the allotted time and don’t think about work until they return

Corbyn would have destroyed the nation. These high spend big state Tories might not be the small state low taxers I want in power but they are heaps better than Corbyn or Starmer would be.

The LP do need a new leader. ( who though is a good question .. !)
With Starmer in charge they are sleep walking into another election defeat.

@Xenia

Corbyn would have destroyed the nation. These high spend big state Tories might not be the small state low taxers I want in power but they are heaps better than Corbyn or Starmer would be.

Utter bollocks

@Xenia

Corbyn would have destroyed the nation. These high spend big state Tories might not be the small state low taxers I want in power but they are heaps better than Corbyn or Starmer would be.

And Johnson’s not destroying it? Unless you have a crystal ball, you can’t possibly know that a Labour government would have been worse. I, personally, don’t think it would be possible to be worse. At least they wouldn’t be giving millions of public money to their mates.

Get writing to your MP to bring in the Robin Hood tax. This is the type of tax that would raise a lot of money without taxing individuals and is already in effect in better countries than this one is www.robinhoodtax.org.uk/
All of this is a choice and the government choose to penalize the poorest and middle earners when they could tax the very wealthy instead. Remember this and don't vote them in again

@RubyViolet

And council tax looks likely to increase, during the debate in the Commons today it was pointed out that in the small print of this bill were references to potential funds raised via council tax revenue increases.

Oh no! My part time vet nurse daughter and her low wage husband already pay £263 per month council tax in their small hamlet ( no amenities like parks, library, street lighting etc). They bought a run down house cheaply and did it up. They are in E band in West Dorset where most of the 12 houses in the hamlet are very large and we just wondered if they got lumped in with the bigger homes, although I do know that the band is based on the 1991 value of the home. Band for band comparison West Dorset's council tax rates are much higher than where my sister lives in SW London.

My husband and I will pay £2k+

I’m more than happy to pay for it taking into account the majority of those unable to work in lockdown received generous furlough payments.

Part of the problem here is that one way or another, the pandemic needed paying for. We all knew they’d be a nasty financial fallout. The other part of the problem is that we have a Tory govt. in power who will find solutions to finance crises that impoverish the poor and even to some extend, middle-England. Of course it’s not an equitable solution. Of course it’s another way to maintain the hierarchy of power that bolsters the positions of the ruling elite.

Of course, any of you complaining about this must have voted for literally any other party. If not, tough titties, you have no right to whinge. Next time, use your vote wisely

I think a lot of people are going to really struggle, us included. But honestly I don't think it's sensible to stretch yourself so far on a mortgage. What will you do when interest rates go up? Or if you had a large sudden expense or lost your job. I mean a lot of people are in the same position but it's a gamble and it only takes one thing like this NI increase to really put the pressure on.

50% of the money raised by this increase (1.25% of income) will be raised from the too 14% of taxpayers. People who will never need to use state social care and probably don’t use the nhs either

We should be taxing wealth and passive income not adding more to workers.

@Yourcatisnotsorry

We should be taxing wealth and passive income not adding more to workers.

Up the revolution!

Hopefully at the next election people will remember what Johnson and his pals have messed up over Brexit, Covid, NHS (where are the 40 new hospitals (that aren’t actually new hospitals), education, Afghanistan and so on.

@CookL

50% of the money raised by this increase (1.25% of income) will be raised from the too 14% of taxpayers. People who will never need to use state social care and probably don’t use the nhs either

They do use the NHS. Private medical care is only routinely available to the top 3%

@CookL

50% of the money raised by this increase (1.25% of income) will be raised from the too 14% of taxpayers. People who will never need to use state social care and probably don’t use the nhs either

Private hospital doctors, nurses, teachers in private schools are still educated in the state sector, the rich eat in places served by ordinary people, the streets are cleaned etc etc. They don’t live in a total bubble where they can pay for complete exclusivity.

And I bet you everything you want they’ll get all their medication free on the NHS, their catheters and incontinence pads. We’re not all that different regarding needs and behaviour.

70k is not the same 70k North as it is in the south

And it depends where 'north'. What a house will buy you in a 'naice' area of greater Manchester is very different to the best area of Preston for example.

[quote mobear]@longue The cap only includes care costs, not accommodation and other costs. For example, my grandmother’s care home is £8,000 a month (privately funded) but I think only 1/2 of that is ‘care costs’ so it would take her nearly 2 years to hit the cap even though by then she’d have paid in excess of £180,000 to the care home.[/quote]
It would be more economically viable for her to pay fir a live in carer

@sillylittleprincesspants

We have a high income but live to our means. There isnt much we can cut back on that we haven't already as nearly all of our income is on school fees. We have two years left and we're done but it's tight right now.

Very worried about the NI raise. Due to everything else except our salaries going up, including dh who's actually went down last year we are really stuffed now. I'm shocked the government want to do this now.
I did have to hand notice into our school last year and it really upset our dc but then dh managed to find a new job but lower paid and we managed to keep the dc in school but after selling everything we had, so I just don't want to have to go through it all again and schools in our area have waiting lists so it isn't even as simple as pull them out come what may. Really down about it. I think I'll be taking on a weekend job worst case to make up the short fall.

Downsize your house? Move to a cheaper area/one where schools don't have a waiting list? Surely if you had given notice your children's school last year, you had a plan where you were going to send them - did you not think at the time that having to sell 'everything you had' to ensure you could keep spending 'nearly all' your income on a luxury might leave you in a precarious position should anything else change?

Seems remarkably shortsighted of you. And forgive me if I don't feel too sorry for you managing to afford the luxury of having more than one child in private education and a 'high income' and yet complaining about having to get a second job to pay higher NI. That'd be like complaining you had to get a second job to run your Ferrari.

And yes, I'm sure all parents would do their best to keep their children happy. But private schooling isn't even by the longest stretch essential. Not even close. Dry your tears on an expensive blazer and maybe consider for a second that people like my mum, who with the NI raise and UC reduction, has sold her car so that she can afford heating this winter.

It would be more economically viable for her to pay fir a live in carer

Depends where in the country and whether she has anyone will to legally act as the employer and all responsibility that entails. There's also legal ramifications with regards to deprivation of liberty and how that can only be achieved in a care home (currently, law for change imminent). It does happen but isn't simple and often isn't legal (deprivation of liberty and also human trafficking, modern slavery concerns!). Elderly care is a minefield of legal and emotional issues.

@portico

You do understand that the furlough payments weren’t given to the workers, they were given to the companies?

So if what you are suggesting is that the companies should pay it back, in some sort of student loan scenario, then I think we’ll have an awful lot of companies winding up in the next few years.

The point of furlough pay was to keep the companies afloat when they weren’t allowed to trade at all / to their fullest, so not everyone ended up unemployed and a massive burden on the state.

Everyone I know who was furloughed would have much rather been working / earning instead of cowering at home worrying about their loved ones and watching their safety nets disintegrate. And they were the lucky ones with safety nets.

It will be a struggle. I’m also losing the UC covid up-payment this month too. I’m a single mum nurse, don’t take from me to pay for me but yet not pay for me. (Unions arguing over 3% pay rise but with the NI contributions Boris will effectively have won on the 1%)

I find that hard to believe. At the worst they will have medical insurance but I believe most high earners use private medical services.

@CookL

I find that hard to believe. At the worst they will have medical insurance but I believe most high earners use private medical services.

You’d be very, very surprised then about some of the pettiness.

@thatonehasalittlecar
"Everyone I know who was furloughed would have much rather been working / earning instead of cowering at home worrying about their loved ones"

Do I think that most people would rather have worked than have covid exist? Yes.

Do I think that those people who were sat at home in the garden ordering paddling pools and outdoor furniture online were cut up about being on furlough? No.