Rough' tax rises on the way

[Violashift]

What does this even mean? I can't take much more. Not with the rising energy prices and the absolute mess up of the mortgage interest rates rising.

How will people survive? Already we have not had pay rises and now we will all probably be taxed more.

I feel at the end of my tether. It's really affecting my mental health.

I don't know.. but I assume there will be help for people really struggling.. please try not to dwell on it, @Violashift - I know that's much easier said than done, but it will be dragging you down further re MH. Big hugs..

In all honesty I will probably have to cut out a few charity donations and some insurances. I just hope it's spread fairly and not just on low earners.

We need tax rises unfortunately - I felt a red mist descend on reading the details of the mini budget. We can’t furlough people and businesses over what turned out to be a bad flu (why oh why was it not just the vulnerable who stayed at home and were furloughed?) and then not pay it back as a society. The books have got to be balanced.

OR - everyone who received furlough can pay it back. I don’t think that would be popular.

And BP has reported massive profits today! Anyone who votes for the tories have lost any sympathy from me. These tax rises are arbitrary. What happened the £37 billion of our money that went to test and trace that never provided a single piece of work. The tories used the pandemic to fleece us and now fleecing us again with tax rises.

Yes all that PPE and 'eat out to help out ' won't pay for itself

don't know.. but I assume there will be help for people really struggling

That's much easier said than done, though. How do you define who is really struggling in a way that will include everybody in need?

I don't want to put a downer on things, and I'm sure we'll all (have to) manage one way or another; but there are too many crude methods used to determine who is struggling that simply exclude a lot of people in that position, especially as this is all so unprecedented.

Whatever they do, I do hope whichever government doesn't try to take all the credit for 'rescuing' families by capping the cost of gas and electricity (i.e. stopping it from going up even more than it already has), whilst simultaneously putting a higher amount on to people's mortgages because of soaraway inflation caused by that same unavoidable increase in essential utilities.

Personally I can’t get on board with a low tax economy. I don’t know why tories like Truss bang on about it so much. It’s at complete odds to what most people expect in a modern society in terms of healthcare, welfare state, education and public services.
Public services have been crippled for the last 12 years, this isn’t just covid or the mini budget, it’s a decade of Tory rule decimating services.
I think a progressive tax increase is necessary. Probably something like 1% rise starting at about 35k/40 and rising up the bands.
What we do not need is a tax cut to those over 150k.
Given the energy crisis and the gross profits from the likes of shell and BP a tax should be placed on them to deal with the current situation.
We should also stop pissing about and being squashed by big companies like Amazon and go after them for the tax they owe.

the trouble is as I see it though @luxxlisbon is that what is being suggested is an increase in taxation in conjunction with social welfare and infrastructure cuts. So basically, pay more and expect worse services.

It's more cuts to public services that worry me the most. I've been saying for a while that the biggest thing the government could do to reduce poverty in the UK is a massive social house building project, make council housing landlord of first resource not last. Hasn't Tory brexit cost the economy 4% or something ax well?

I do think, on all of these poverty, poor public services etc threads, if you consistently vote Tory, you have no right to complain, this is what you voted for, you can own the consequences.

I also don't buy the 'the books have to be balanced' story. It sounds obvious, but running a country's finances is nothing at all like running a household budget.

Whatever they claim, there is ALWAYS plenty of money for what they want to spend it on - be it nuclear willy-waving, HS2 or whatever.

Global money supply is all about control and manipulation and nothing to do with actual money - if it were, why would the wealthiest countries be the heaviest in debt? Can you imagine that at household level - where the people with family incomes of a quarter of a million were also the same ones queuing up outside Cash Converters early on a Monday morning? How can it be real when there's so much money supposedly in existence but no countries seem to actually own any of it and all of them owe it?

There is a £50bn financial hole to be filled and we are told it has to be filled somehow.

There was a £30bn budget surplus when Sunak left the Chancellor post (due to increased tax revenues as a result of things like Petrol price hikes). That has vanished and would have filled a huge chunk of this.

£4bn PPE was burned as it was bought even though it didn't meet standards and cannot be used.

£37bn on Test and Trace. To quote the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee:
"Test and Trace cannot point to a measurable difference to the progress of the pandemic, and the promise on which this huge expense was justified - avoiding another lockdown – has been broken, twice."

£4.3bn pandemic business support thta was written off as was fraudently claimed/paid out.

£4bn MoD waste under the current Minister of Defence.

Abd let's not forget the big kicker: the £50bn budget hole and these stark warnings of tax rises did not exist before Truss and Kwarteng's little experiment. They played a game, lost and trashed our credit rating, making UK borrowing far ore expensive than it was.

They should get those involved in all those decisions to pay that £50bn in. How fucking dare they come with their begging bowls to the people and tell them the country is broke.

They broke it. Financially and metaphorically.

Oh I agree with that entirely. The Conservative party are not the party of you expect high quality public services.

It just frustrates me that the tories have managed to convince a whole loads of people that a low tax economy is in their best interest, which it isn’t.

Feels crazy when you could add 4% to GDP overnight which would recoup 40 billion in tax revenue just by rejoining the single market.

Infact, if we fully rejoin the EU we wont have to pay 35 billion in divorce payments.

Then windfall tax the oil companies to raise another 5 to 7 billion

Then go after the 16 billion lost in covid lion and contract fraud

Then go after the large corps who pay next to no tax.

But no...they will squeeze the middle yet again. Just like they always do.

Agree the complete lack of accountability is doing me in. I am beginning to lose faith in the social contract. I work hard, higher rate tax payer and have no problem paying tax. But increasingly I feel like saying "fuck that" because this government just pisses it up the wall. My kids' school has no money, the NHS is on its knees, our local bus route has just had its timetable halved.

I'm not paying tax for the likes of Truss and Kwarteng to pretend its Monopoly money. Shame on them; there should be some kind of criminal charges against them.

I think this is going to be interesting and not in a good way. The gap between benefits and those who are working full time is too small. If they start to tax those working more, especially those that fall just outside getting all those extra things provided, coupled with increase in mortgages then the shit really is going to hit the fan.

On top of that people seeing the crisis and costs associated with the migrants, people just won't accept it.

So much wastage, millions of pounds of fraud in the furlough, addiction to HS2, test and trace - the list goes on. It's a shocking state of affairs.

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants you should add Sunak to that list, splashing the cash around during Covid. He must think we are all stupid. He's as much to blame for this shower.

I'm not paying tax for the likes of Truss and Kwarteng to pretend its Monopoly money. Shame on them; there should be some kind of criminal charges against them.

This - in a massive bloody nutshell.

They are playing with our lives and never having to face the consequences themselves. To them this is all one big game while we scrabble about to try to construct some kind of happiness in the mud pie they made.

No it wouldn’t but I don’t think it would fair as it was a decision made for them. So everyone sharing the payback it is…

So that will be more money out of my pocket. I was just congratulating myself on finally being solvent and not doing too badly after years of struggle when bang I'm back down where I was before. If I had debt I'd be completely stuffed. At least I've paid it all off.

I also don't buy the 'the books have to be balanced' story. It sounds obvious, but running a country's finances is nothing at all like running a household budget.

Unfortunately the markets do mind a fiscal gap, so the old it’s not like running a household budget line that gets used a fair bit is defunct.

I would happily pay more tax if it resulted in better public services. I do not want to lay more tax if it is just to pay off government debt caused by their own mismanagement.

Unfortunately the markets do mind a fiscal gap, so the old it’s not like running a household budget line that gets used a fair bit is defunct.

Even so, if somebody turned up in a brand new Ferrari to the food bank and sobbed about how impoverished they were, and how urgently you needed to jump to help them.... what would you think?

I am most certainly not some Tory plant! I name change every so often and don’t post all that much. I just thought tax cuts was a dumb way to restore public finances! And the markets agreed with me! the Toryest of Tory policies is not my idea of fixing a huge deficit.

Everyone wants everyone except them to pay more tax. We will all have to. I want them to raise the tax free threshold to whatever would be sensible for the lowest earners then up the rest a bit.

We've had it easy for a long time, and sadly didn't know it. My Mum literally grew up on bread and jam, crumpets once a week as a treat and Sunday roast was homegrown veggies and whatever they could shoot. Only heat was from cooking stove and they had a bath once a week, all children dipping in the same water. Feels like many more will be living like this soon. We've also got used to having lots of gadgets, tv, gaming products, mobile phones, laptops - all cost and use energy, as well as holidays, meals or day trips out - these were all things that people didn't pay for years ago.