Rishi's £200 loan is really a sneaky tax

[GreenLunchBox]

So you are not allowed to refuse this 'loan' and from April 2023 everybody's bill will go up by £40 a year regardless of if you received the £200 or not.

twitter.com/MartinSLewis/status/1489584984235065344?t=joBqwQ20p5VPx3EKYUT2tQ&s=19

Some scenarios:

1. A married couple receive the £200 now then split up. In their new houses they each pay back the £200 over the next five years. So it's actually COST the couple £200

2. 5 students in a house share receive the £200 between them (so receive £40 each). They all move out and then each get charged £200 separately over the next five years. Government gets £1000 when they were only given £200.

3. A young person living at home about to move out. They didn't receive the £200 as it went to their parents, but they have to pay an extra £200 on their bill over the next five years

When you scale this up the government are going to make an absolute bloody fortune from this - doubling or quadrupling their money in some cases whilst pretending to be the good guy.
What a racket they're running.

AIBU to say we need to stop this racket?

@JackieWeaverHandforthCouncil

Rishi Sunak is positively dangerous and anyone who’s taken in by his slick PR campaign is very naive. He would be a disaster as PM. I work in an area loosely associated and can see how dangerous his influence is to normal workers. He. Does. Not. Care.

If he replaces Boris, we’ll look back at the Boris years as the good old days. Slash and burn, transformations for the sake of it, cut staff numbers and resources to show healthier balance sheets. He’s 100% only on the side of the 0000.1%. When the petrol crisis hit, he was in California at one of his twelve houses on holiday calling it a work trip as he had one meeting. He doesn’t give a shit about you and your ability to pay. His coffee cup costs the same as the ‘loan’.

Many people don’t want this loan but watch how hard they will pursue you to claim it back. ‘Oh you missed the letter explaining the convoluted way to repay? Here’s a fine on top of the loan’. Easily managed to write off furlough and PPE fraud and track and trace multi billions though.

Absolutely this. The man is so removed from normal it's painful to see people taken in. He doesn't care, he is as dangerous and evil as the rest of them.

I don't want it. We should be able to decline it.

How is it even legal to force a loan on somebody? 🤔

"Many people don’t want this loan but watch how hard they will pursue you to claim it back. ‘Oh you missed the letter explaining the convoluted way to repay? Here’s a fine on top of the loan’. Easily managed to write off furlough and PPE fraud and track and trace multi billions though."

I hold no brief for this shower, but let's not make stuff up, let's stick to the stuff that they actually have done wrong. The one thing that is clear is that the forty quid a year "repayment" will be shoved ono every household energy bill in the future, and hence paid in exactly the same way that your normal bill is paid.

How is it paid?
What if you are on a prepayment meter?

Another one who really doesn’t want this. It’s not going to make any difference to us and if far rather it went where it would do some good. Plus I have a 17 year old at home who is already going to be paying the costs of the covid cock up for the rest of her life as it is.

We have to remember that the Sunak treasury is doing this to us whilst also writing off billions in COVID fraud and slashing taxes for the city. He is actively working to impoverish normal people to support the wealthy and those with the means to defraud the taxpayer on an industrial scale.

@CharacterForming

French domestic electrical supply mostly comes from nuclear power stations which is why their bills haven't gone up nearly as much. I'd argue that we should have also invested in nuclear energy but to be fair that should have happened twenty years ago so it's genuinely not Sunak's fault.

The reason the French has only increased by 4% is they are using a windfall tax on the energy companies to pay for it instead of impoverishing their population.

Shell just announced a 19 billion profit.

It is 100% Sunak's fault, he could have done the same.

@Ifailed

for a start it's charged at household level rather than individual level.

My gas and electric bills are in my name, they are not charged to "the household", as I suspect everyone else's bills are.

Yes but the £200 won’t be going to you specifically, and then collected from you. If someone you live with currently moves out in a year’s time and lives on their own, you will pay back £200, and they will pay back £200 even though together you’ll have only received £200.

Think of it more as being done by address - they’ll give £200 to every address, and collect £200 from every address. Even if the people who live there are totally different and didn’t receive the £200.

I'm all over these boards noting what swine the Tories are, but in this instance it wasn't even deliberate, I'm sure. They just don't spend enough thinking time on important issues, everything is on the hoof. Frankly, we should all stand as MPs, as anyone could do it!

Fucking joke...we don't want it either

@CharacterForming

"Many people don’t want this loan but watch how hard they will pursue you to claim it back. ‘Oh you missed the letter explaining the convoluted way to repay? Here’s a fine on top of the loan’. Easily managed to write off furlough and PPE fraud and track and trace multi billions though."

I hold no brief for this shower, but let's not make stuff up, let's stick to the stuff that they actually have done wrong. The one thing that is clear is that the forty quid a year "repayment" will be shoved ono every household energy bill in the future, and hence paid in exactly the same way that your normal bill is paid.

How do you know they won't come after you with prosecution if you don't pay back the £40? You can go to prison for not paying your taxes, BBC license fee and council tax. To my knowledge you can't go to prison for not paying your leccy bill. This is a government money. OF COURSE there will be sanctions if you don't repay it.

Yes but the £200 won’t be going to you specifically, and then collected from you.
If someone you live with currently moves out in a year’s time and lives on their own, you will pay back £200, and they will pay back £200 even though together you’ll have only received £200.

Exactly. If you decided to change supplier and the new electricity bill was in your partner's name (for example), you'd still pay back the £200, just under another name. It's not a personal loan or debt in any meaningful sense of the word.

How do you know they won't come after you with prosecution if you don't pay back the £40? You can go to prison for not paying your taxes, BBC license fee and council tax. To my knowledge you can't go to prison for not paying your leccy bill. This is a government money. OF COURSE there will be sanctions if you don't repay it.

Martin Lewis has literally described how it will work in his tweet. It's a levy added to a household bill. It's not like the licence fee or council tax.

I agree with your post@JackieWeaverHandforthCouncil , but we must lose Boris, as his head is mostly in his ass, which is worse. Which else of them, then??

An unpaid electricity bill will be pursued in exactly the same way as it normally would be.

Dd leaves university in June - they won't even spend £200 by then ... seems very wrong

Martin Lewis has also posted a 2 minute video explaining it all. Yes the word loan was a mistake, it's not, but gives you the explanation Sunak isn't.

@gogohm

Dd leaves university in June - they won't even spend £200 by then ... seems very wrong

It goes on to October's bill

There's definitely a case for a windfall tax - though you'd still have to decide how to redistribute that money. Flat cash discount to every household's bills or percentage discount?
And cutting the VAT rate slightly on rising rates could be revenue neutral but since it's only 5% the impact would be negligible.

@gogohm

Dd leaves university in June - they won't even spend £200 by then ... seems very wrong

So their account will go into credit. That's what normally happens with energy bills.

How is this going to be done for people who don't pay bills quarterly or monthly, but who feed coins into a meter?

How will they administer the thing for renters, many of whom move about fairly often? Where will it leave landlords if their tenants just bugger off? Who is going to pay what, and how?

The whole thing is crackers.

How will they administer the thing for renters, many of whom move about fairly often? Where will it leave landlords if their tenants just bugger off? Who is going to pay what, and how?

Watch the Martin Lewis info on it - this isn't a loan.

It is a levy that will apply automatically to every electricity bill, it doesn't follow the individual. A renter who moves 5 times will just pay the levy on the electricity bill in their new place. If they move in with someone else and don't have to pay bills any more - lucky them, they will benefit from not having to pay the levy.

Link to the Martin Lewis video:

www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/02/martin-lewis--how-the-flat-rate-p200-energy-bill-loan-really-wor/

To put it simply, everyone gets £200 credited to their electricity account in October.

From next year everybody gets £10 a quarter (about 11p a day) added to their bills for the next 5 years.