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.

I'm with you. It's frustrating to work so hard and sacrifice so much for it to be taken away. Options to consider- reduce hours and salary for a bit to ride out the labour government (and enjoy some time out of the rat race) or delay capital gains disposals/move to a low tax haven.

Exactly. And your neck is on the line if you get it wrong. It’s not a “clock
out at 5pm on Friday and forget about it all until Monday at 9am” job.

Oh you are funny.

I grew up in a council estate under Blair and my married parents both worked full time in low paying jobs.

Around me I saw single mothers who didn’t work with 3 or more kids with nice material possessions and holidays every year, whilst we didn’t have such luxuries.

I voted Labour but I can’t say I’m surprised that the hard workers and sensible people are going to be hit whilst those who are deemed “in need” reap all the benefits.

I’d go for inheritance tax first and foremost. I’d leave a minimal amount tax free (equivalent to personal allowance) & tax rest at same rates as we do income. I’d channel a decent portion of the money into funding social care. It seems fairer to me that all families with savings/assets lose a portion from their estate vs some losing nothing as parents died suddenly or with something requiring hospital care and others lose majority as parents died after many years with a degenerative disease needing significant care.
You could put in a provision to mean you only pay when your partner/spouse dies and you would doubtless also want to look at what other provisions are needed to protect dependent children. In principle thought it seems the best approach.
In general I’d also support rolling NI into tax over a longish period of time so everyone pays at the same rate for earned and unearned income.
The pensions one suggested to adjust the relief rate I think will be tricky as public sector workers are mainly on DB schemes and you’d either have to base it solely on actual contribution by the worker (massively unfair to private sector) or base it on overall value of contributions in a given year (complex to calculate for DB schemes and liable to have people like teachers, nurses & doctors owing additional tax without option to reduce contributions.

All the labour voters that can't wait to pay more taxes make me laugh. If the tories had wanted to hike taxes I bet they wouldn't have been rubbing their hands together in such glee.

I didn't vote for labour or the tories so certainly not saying saying the tories were wonderful, just the sudden desperation to pay more taxes by posters to prove they did right to vote Labour is a joke.

Everyone will pay more and more and there will be nothing to show for it because the NHS and everything else is just a huge black hole that will swallow everything and show no improvement. We're paying junior doctors an extra billion pounds over the next two years but that's not going to improve anything for anyone if we don't train more doctors than we currently are.

The big question is why aren't Labour going after the super rich? Then they wouldn't need to make it 'painful' for the rest of us.

This is the society we all live in, if you think you're paying too much - maybe you're just not exposed enough to some of those areas where the money is desperately needed? Like A and E, child poverty or the massive delays in the court system? I hope you don't have to experience these directly but if you do then you should be proud of your contribution.
If you are struggling on your income, then am sure you can imagine the situation for people with lower income - how much they are struggling.
I pay a high level of tax and face similar challenges to yourself but to make things better we need to pay more.
To be honest I'm frustrated more budget isn't going into public services! The rhetoric of just stopping things getting worse is really unambitious and I don't get why Labour isn't trying to improve things.

I don’t accept it and I’m sure that not many people do believe that is the case. I think most people realised that things were in a terrible state and that there was and would be no money to do anything with
If KS is sincerely saying that he did not realise this then either he’s too stupid to govern or he’s lying to us

We already spend a fortune on the NHS and A&E.

There have always been disinterested parents who allow their kids to wallow in poverty. Giving them more cash just means they’ll be pissed or high more often whilst their kids are left to suffer.

There are massive delays in the court system yet kids are running around stabbing people to death and dealing drugs and nothing seems to be done about that. But tweet something and you’ll be hauled up faster than you can say “Starmer”, despite the delays. Although sending death threats to women and their unborn children seems to go unpunished.

The hard workers??
I work fucking hard as a TA thanks! I love my job, but the pay is poor. Want to swap OP?

I'm not sure what else I can " go without" The hairdresser and the car I suppose.

Haven't rtft so sorry if this point has been made but I'm just wondering how exactly do people propose that we sort the country out?

1. Accept that we're all buggared. Accept a crap NHS, police and education system, no public services, more and more people fall into poverty including people who are working full time. It's tough shit. Some people just have to be at the bottom of the pile and it's dog eat dog

2. Raise taxes. Upset the richer and arguably less vulnerable in society a bit. Accept that this is necessary if we want properly funded public services

3. Blame immigrants despite the cold hard facts tell us that they're not to blame and that 'fixing immigration' in the sense that Farage is talking of is simply not feasible even if it was desirable to the majority of the country. Become a dystopian neo-nazi society and probably still be unable to afford a loaf of bread

What exactly do people want this government or any government to do? Is there really a solution that doesn't upset somebody?

apparently they discovered £22 billion black hole in his first weeks in the role

All the politician commentors I saw were saying this would happen - and several independent financial organisation pointed out they had more information than they were admitting.

Taxes would have had to go up whoever got in - our borrowing is high, our workforce shrinking as population ages thus more dependents and living standard between classes have gotten more out of sync. Austerity did real harm to services leaving nothing to cut and in desperate need of cash injections.

There are a few taxes publicly they said they wouldn't touch and many more they didn't rule out raising - I expect level won't be raised either catching mor people with taxes.

Personally the winter fuel benefit being cut is a blow mainly due to timing - older relative recently bereaved worried about money - we think just too many savings to get pension credit though income is low enough - it's going to be a battle to get heating on with them and stop them getting sick. Though overall I agree with cut as thought it was daft they got money when our kids were very young and due to circumstances our livable income really low and we tried not to use heating or be out somewhere heated as bills were too much - and we did get ill with chest infections.

The danger with paying higher tax to improve public services is that it wont be spent wisely and will therefore make little difference. labour have a track record of throwing money at things but not improving the actual fundamental issues. Look at the train drivers pay, for example, where they havent asked for any modernisation as part of the pay increase

Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Both DH and I work full time for MW. Our salaries combined is barely over 40k. Not entitled to any benefits and can't afford to buy a house so will be renting til we die. No little nest egg for the kids to inherit.

If you’re not a single parent and you both work, I expect the government will soon group you in the same bracket as those earning over 100k.

Didn't you read the op. Salaries apparently directly correlate to how hard someone works. So you and your DH must be having such a breeze at work!

(I'm being facetious, in my experience it's often almost an inverse correlation, our chief exec was off playing golf most of the time )

So allow the strikes to continue for evermore? costing the country growth and productivity?

How would you pay for the extra staff, buildings and scanners the NHS needs?

What is the Tories "track record" after 14 years in power?

Agree with this, but more to the point, I haven't seen anything to confirm a rise on income tax, just possibly more wealth taxes, which is much needed.

I earn far less than you OP in a stressful job and really need the income, but I'm not ñàive enough to not realise that to fix the country we need more taxes, and we need to blame the right people for this, which is the Tories.

I hate saying this but you need to suck this up. Those of us at the bottom end of things have been doing this for years already.

Unaffected? Because the cost of living doesn't affect the bills?

I'm sure if you looked at statistics on how many people have NEVER worked a day in their lives it would be very minute.

Sorry OP, if you are finding it rough with your income but I think at the moment, no matter what your earnings are, everyone seems to be having a tough time. Nothing seems to decrease ( unless it's food with value engineering making products smaller. )

"Hard workers" also include those on NMW too, OP...

Sorry, but this is not true at all.

Take Spain, for example. Unless your skill is on a shortage occupation list, you can only get a work permit if your future employer can show that they advertised the job through the national employment exchange and received no applications from qualified Spanish or EU citizens.

Currently the list consists almost entirely of seafaring personnel and building trades. And with bricklayers commanding £350 per day in the UK (not least because so many Europeans left after Brexit, exacerbated by Covid), there aren't going to be many wanting to go and work for Spanish wages in the heat.

There are essentially no opportunities any more for British passport holders with normal white-collar or personal service jobs to work in the EU. You used to get people who would go out for a season, work in a hotel spa, like it, stay on, set up as a hairdresser for the local expat community. Not any more. And those expat communities, especially the working-class ones, are moribund, because they can't sell up and move back to the UK as the people who might replace them don't meet the income requirements for retirement visas.

You're not the only hard workers, no. I'm a ward sister on a dementia ward earning far less. I work fucking hard, always have. So do my colleagues including cleaners. As do many other workers.

That's an expectation though. We don't know it will happen yet.

The fact is that globally Western countries are in massive debt. Our financial system as we know it is at the end of its cycle probably. Its shit for everyone and its quite telling that someone on 120k is feeling the pinch, even if it is from their perspective only and far removed from what dual income families on far ower incomes are putting up with.