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.

Agree that should not have been done and I would rather that go back up than some of the other taxes they are planning.

That’s not how it works with higher level jobs. In most cases you are paid for knowledge and experience not for physical output which means if you change from 5 days to 4 for example, they don’t recruit someone to work the additional day.

Give up your job then. It’s that easy, if it’s so easy being poor…you can choose that option. Go claim some benefits.

You appear not to understand how a lot of higher paid roles work.

In many cases the role is portable. I could base myself in any country and still do my job. Many of my colleagues who don’t have strong ties to the UK have already started to relocate to other more favourable jurisdictions.

My boss who earns around £1m pa is not a UK citizen but has lived here for many years. She has decided to relocate elsewhere in Europe as she feels the UK is no longer a welcoming environment for higher earners under Labour. She will continue to do the same work but will no longer pay a penny in tax to the UK. That means over 400k tax lost every year. That equates to the same amount of tax as 100 people on an average wage.

You don’t need many people like that to leave before you’ve got a huge hole in Treasury receipts.

This current government knew exactly the financial situation,everyone did.

Wasn't blaming you. Just pointing out your lack of awareness in your posts.

Everyone is in a different situation. I’m self employed. Trained hard for 5 years to be a hairdresser (regrettably!) and have worked for other people on very little more than minimum wage. My husband has a trade and is also self employed, we do get the 15 hours free childcare, but that’s because WE have paid taxes. You aren’t paying for my free child care. The career choice I made means yes I do earn around 22k a year, I’m aware I’m poor compared to the likes of you, so surely you don’t begrudge us free childcare when even on such a low annual wage we still pay tax. It’s hard on everyone. There’s always things people aren’t entitled to that others are, for example, when I went on maternity leave I was working for an independant company and they had no maternity policy so all I got was stat. The start up money (£500) or the free milk vouchers, or school dinners for my son, whilst I was left with nothing every month, would have come in handy, but I wasn’t entitled to it. I felt it unfair but it is what it is. I don’t blame anyone else for that because I choose to do a job that pays less. You choose to do a job that earns more so you have to accept that there is things you aren’t entitled to either!

That works when it comes to doctors, doesn’t it!!!

As someone else said, we need higher paid workers more than they need us because they can go abroad or retire early.

Hence longer waiting lists and impossibility of seeing a GP!

Yep, nail on head. After IR35, several of my very highly paid freelancer/consultant clients moved abroad. Some are still doing the same work, for the same companies, but are now doing it outside the UK so HMRC aren’t getting any taxes from them at all anymore, and they’re not buying stuff in the UK either as they’re not here!

What’s the saying about killing the golden goose?

These were the kind of people previously paying tens of thousands to HMRC every year and buying things in shops, paying tradesmen, buying coffees, using trains, etc.

Yes, that is what carers get when they care for someone. The condition is that you care for a minimum of 35h per week. It's a governmental 'benefit'. Many of us want to work but cannot as social care is not existing so we are forced into this sort of slave labour.

Thanks for the patronising tone, but I’m well aware of how senior level jobs work. If your job can be done in 4 days, not 5, then any employer would be foolish to pay 20% more. If you are being paid 20% for no reason, you would be foolish to take a cut for the same workload. But if you are genuinely suggesting that you would be better off taking the cut, rather than paying additional tax, you would be free to do so. But I suspect you know that it isn’t true.

Would you say the same to someone on benefits? No? Funny how everyone on here makes excuses for those on benefits. Eg they couldn't control how many children they have etc. You wouldn't tell someone on benefits to move to a cheaper area or a more modest property.

You are happy to tell a higher earner to have fewer children and live in a cheaper house but wouldn't dare tell someone on benefits they should have less children and live somewhere cheaper.

I’m a huge advocate for taxing companies where the product / service is sold, which would stop some of this international tax avoidance. You are free to move around the world as you wish, and pay tax wherever you can get away with paying the least to society, of course.

There needs to be a fundamental shift in how people see remuneration. Jobs traditionally associated with wealth creation, rather than health, exploiting rather than teaching, and male-dominated industries - these are where huge funds slosh around. That’s the reason some people get paid so well and others don’t - it’s a value judgement based on patriarchal, capitalist ideals.

The OP bemoans how hard she works - she thinks she deserves her pay packet more than a teacher or doctor or carer because she is harder working or cleverer. She doesn’t see that it’s an arbitrary value given to one role, not the other.

That's so true!

Well yes, we need more doctors and nurses - but most of the ‘oh bloody Labour is raising taxes’ threads are tinged with a hint of ‘how dare they capitulate to the unions’.

I don’t think there are many jnr docs on £120k. If a consultant wants to spit out their dummy and retire early, there should be someone ready to step up waiting in the wings.

If there is not, this is yet another failure of the Tory’s to maintain a proper pipeline of trained experts.

In the OP’s case, if they decide to reduce their hours or retire, their employer will have a way to plug the gap either by internal restructuring/ promotion or recruitment.

Personally feel we all need to stop sniping at each other and realise that the debt has been building for years due to a combination of unforeseen crises and long run cost challenges and that everyone needs to contribute to taxes to turn this situation around and every person is valuable. All of this ‘this person is more valuable than that person’ is over personal.

Tax reform is overdue, and so is much other reform. Here’s hoping labour do something considered and not knee jerk.

I agree - but would add years of financial mismanagement to that list of reasons.

Can you not see the wealthy are subsiding everyone via the tax system plus they provide employment?
Across all sectors.

Rubbish. Sunak paid 23% tax on his millions earned last year. That's the equivalent of someone earning under £50k.

It's not like he and those like him couldn't afford a fair proportion. Get the wealthy to pay their fair share proportionally.

So they haven't left yet but "might" do.

Plus of course a millionaire could be an average worker selling their home they bought 30 years ago to retire in Spain as they have an EU passport.

These changes etc happened under the Tory Government, thought this thread was about Labour?

The growth of fibre broadband has had a big effect coupled with Covid, which encourage WFH.

Simply not true.

In many cases employers are paying for expertise not number of hours worked. Typically at hiring people sign up for FT contracts but once they have proven their worth they can negotiate shorter contracts such as 4 day weeks.

Such scenarios suit both parties both logistically and financially.

Dropping a day which constitutes a 20% reduction in working hours only results in a 12% fall in pay if you earned 125k for example. If you factor in childcare it is quite feasible with certain salaries that dropping to 4 days actually leaves you in a better financial position than working FT.

Once you earn decent 6 figures it is a trade off between time now and time later ie do you prefer to work a bit less now or retire a bit earlier.

If Labour reduce pension tax relief to a flat 30% you’ll see even more senior roles looking to reduce to a 4 day week as it’ll be impossible to avoid the punitive tax rates of up to 60% or even more for those with student debt.

It is literally what many high earners at 100k are doing. They also have skill sets where they can name their price. So not easily replaceable. I am sure @taxguru will back me up here. My accountant said they’ve never seen such a productivity issue. His main source of work is people between 100k-125k and keeping them below the punitive thresholds that seem them worse off for working more.

Oh absolutely @Pinkstripepurplespot we need better structures to stop things being covered up - two glaring examples: nobody challenged that the uk spending plans assumed 2 percent rises in election campaign - laughable - and the asylum overspend on the front of the bbc today.

of course, they weren’t covered up to engaged observers, but there are no watch dogs with teeth.

plenty of campaigners like Paul Johnson, Martin Lewis and Dan Neidle must be sick of saying the same old things and getting nowhere.

Not to mention the nhs productivity problem where more staff and spending has not led to increased productivity…