October budget going to be painful

[increasinglyconcerned]

Here we go..... I knew it. Labour were promising not to hike our taxes in the election campaign and here we are.... apparently they discovered £22 billion black hole in his first weeks in the role and it's not his fault.

Let me guess, those of us who earn six figures and already pay 45% will pay EVEN more and take home even less. It's the hard workers who will take the brunt. What's the point in working anymore!

I earn a little over £120k and I'm taxed the same as those earrings £500k.

Before people jump in saying they don't feel sorry for me, I work full time to support my family, as of January I will have 2 DCs in nursery, plus my mortgage and get ZERO free hours childcare, whilst they keep promising free childcare but I just pay more for everyone else to benefit.

I cannot afford to pay more taxes to fix this country and especially when so many people are getting a free ride and not paying their way, ranging from millionaires with tax havens to those claiming benefits dishonestly.

No one is offered a £100k job from earning nothing - and there are plenty of people who would turn down a slightly better paid job if they did their sums and realised that they'd actually be WORSE off for taking it. That's the whole point of this thread - that earning more on paper doesn't necessarily mean you'll be better off when it comes to your take-home-pay. So often you end up with more money in your bank account if you're lower paid, but taxed less and qualify for tax credits, free nursery hours, etc.

Exactly this! We need people to be financially secure so that if/when they incur a rough patch, they are less likely to rely on the already over burdened state. It's the same reason why we want people to have pensions.

Of course many people choose to spend every penny they have. They will then be the ones pleading poverty and insisting that your ISA savings should be taxed at 89% because they can't afford to eat.

It isn't only working people who pay income tax.
Pensioners who have paid into private pensions also pay income tax

I doubt that many pensioners voted for Starmer anyway. Look at the stats, Labour's number of votes didn't really rise in the last general election by much. They won because the Sunak was unpopular and the Tory vote disappeared to Reform and Libdems
Labour won't care about the Pensioner vote. They only care about their core voters, i.e. public sector, unionised industries and those dependant upon benefits

Spot on, @taxguru, and while it's true parties usually need floating voters, they don't need them quite as much when holding a massive majority

So just as the Tories spent 14 years shovelling money to corrupt cronies, we'll now probably have 10 years of Labour feeding their own preferred groups - and as ever, sod all those in the middle

Exactly!!! cognitive dissonance at its best

@BlazenWeights I hear this all the time on mumsnet. I had a rubbish childhood with useless parents. I got bullied to extreme throughout school and i suspect I have adhd too. Not everyone is capable of being a high flyer. It's hardly funny but there you go. I'm trying now in my 40s to help myself but it's a bloody struggle when you've got no support. My self esteem has always been shit but there we go.

How? Most cruise ships are registered in tax havens like Panama, are owned by foreign cruise line firms, etc. You'd need some kind of international tax treaty to tax them more. This is the problem with the global economy! Successive governments have been negotiating and trying to find international agreement to stop/curtail tax havens, but unsurprisingly the tax havens don't want to play ball. What can we do? Do you want to nuke places like the Isle of Man to force them to give up their tax haven statuses? Cruises don't even charge VAT or duties on booze or fags because they only open their shops whilst out at sea, so you can't buy from their shops when docked!

Another "nice idea in theory" but completely impossible in practice.

True. But the allowance is £20k p/a. Even with paying tax we will have far more than we need for retirement. I just don't resent paying tax on those gains. Similarly is property. If your house has over doubled in price I don't understand why you think that wealth should just be passed to your children.

Think that people who believe the 22bn black hold are being naive. The Lab party had access to accounts, and representatives sitting on the various parliamentary committees, so SHOULD have been fully aware of how the financials stood. The ‘black hole’ is just their way of framing the ‘shortfall’ for funding the initiatives they committed to in their manifesto.

there is a lot of research on tax that makes it clear there’s a tipping point where people react and tax take reduces. And rhetoric aside, the IFS has said time and again that if you do want good public services, lower and middle earners in the uk need to pay more tax, and that higher earners have paid more tax relatively since 2010.

the debate about who works hardest is beside the point really, higher earners always pay more in a progressive system but in higher tax European countries ALL workers pay more tax.

Hate to break bad news, but at £120k your marginal rate is 60% when you take into account the loss of your personal allowance. I am there myself and am funnelling it into a salary sacrifice pension to keep my taxable earnings below £100k. I'm losing access to 40p in the pound on the income over £100k, but achieving 60p in the pound tax relief. Squirrelled away for the future. Either that, or take on an EV lease through your employer if you can (again salary sacrifice).

But YABU to rage against Labour. The economy is shite because of policy decisions made by the Tories, being austerity (basically defunding public services and making no investments), Brexit (fools gold if ever there was any), and incompetent policy and spending during the pandemic (delayed lockdowns and poor procurement to enrich friends, family and donors). Ditto for your child care costs, which are also a result of Tory policy.

Preach as james o Brian says some people get privilege growing ip and they don't realise it . That can be any sort of privilege

I agree, but Labour only has a massive majority of seats because Tory voters changed to Reform and Libdems. The number of Labour voters didn't really increase much at all compared with their last GE defeat. All it needs is for those former Tory voters to return to vote Tory next time, and the Tories will win. If the Tories find a good leader who can win back the Reform and libdem voters they'll be in a very good position. Lots of people simply didn't like Sunak (particularly 3 million excluded from covid support) so would never vote for him. A popular Tory leader could well turn things around.

Charge/tax them to dock in the country? To be honest I'm not really certain it can be done but it's something I would like to look at. They are absolutely parasitic in nature!

Actually no the obr was reported that the tories had hid it even from them plus another 5 billion more. Labour isn't lying as the obr said this to the news reported this at the time

Nice thought, Gedoverit, but that requires a long term view and most politicians don't tend to be interested in them - not least because they probably won't be around to get the credit for the benefits

Tax cruise ships more. Lots of ethical and economic reasons for this

Seems you don't realise who owns most cruise ships and where they're registered, @Bumpitybumper; look into it even briefly and you'll see they're way out of UK jurisdiction

Exactly. Couldn't agree more

The media were fed up with them and ready to take them out, it had been a long time after all and it built up, there wasn't much he could do to get round that momentum

I think even journalists hit by tax rises might start to feel as disgruntled as others asked to pay up more. They are private sector not public sector, well most anyway

Its shit OP. I earn similar and already pay just under £50k tax per year.

If I had young children needing childcare, I'd be putting more in my pension to get me under £100k to get the help with childcare.

I know someone with 1 year old twins paying £4k in childcare fees, its crazy.

I'm not a fan of labour policies but you have to question what the Tories were doing when they've clearly spent a lot but the NHS, education, policing etc were all in such a terrible state under them.

I haven't got a clue what the answer is, neither do any politicians of either party.

What do you mean by saying that you keep getting promised free childcare? Isn’t it your high earnings that make you ineligible for the free hours? I can’t get mad about higher taxes, a fairer and more stable society benefits everyone (unless you only give a shit about yourself of course!)

How can the UK tax a cruise ship, owned by a foreign company, registered in a foreign country, starting in Barcelona and docking in several Mediteranean countries? It's nothing to do with the UK.

If you started charging more for the tiny proportion who dock in the UK then they may simply decide not to dock in the UK anymore! Then the UK would lose out on the revenue brought in by tourists from abroad, and emissions etc would be higher as more UK residents would have to fly out to join the cruise at foreign ports.

Completely bonkers and unworkable. We're in a global economy and are limited as to how we can tax/control foreign businesses!

The Tories smashed up the country so badly it is no surprise that we need this. Sunak has his billions , Johnson has his lucrative newspaper columns and Truss her lecture tour. They will be just fine and probably all going in Michelle Mone's yacht for their holidays

This

@increasinglyconcerned Starmer stressed that the increase in tax wasn't going to be on national insurance, VAT or income tax. Which tax are you concerned about, or is it that you don't believe him when he says that?