To ask what should have been in the budget?

[dollopofsauce]

All I've seen do far, from reading threads on here and watching CNN, is doom and gloom.

So what should Labour have done to swerve the hate? What would have been an acceptable way of raising money to help fund health, social care and education?

Genuine answers, please.

Well possibly, but we don't actually know.
You guess they'll make the excuse, but you don't actually know. You guess it'll be the same excuse as last year but actually know.
So in essence, you don't know.

Change business rates from being based on the size of the business premesis to some sort of tax based on company turnover. The system needs to catch up to the digital age where companies can be making millions with virtually no physical premesis.

Make trusts which are deisnged to bypass inheritance tax illegal. When the richest person in the country died and no tax was paid something is very unfair with that system.

-get rid of right to buy or the right for council to profit share any capital gains for the next 30 years to stop people buying and then selling after a short time for sometimes 10x the price (£100k and then sell for £1m)

-slash useless government departments cost budgets and only focus on essential services

-increase tax for everyone even 1% for everyone doesn’t make that much of a difference but will raise a lot of money and more fair

-education - I wouldn’t tax private education as it helps free up space in state sector which reduces expenditure or tax payers money. Instead I will divert extra funds into this sector to improve state education and close down underperforming or undersubscribed state schools - there is a reason they are failing and people aren’t choosing them!

-make people work or do community work to get benefits or government should assign them jobs even if it doesn’t fit their qualification to encourage more people to actually try and look for work (maybe this already happens to some extent)

-increase tax on tobacco, alcohol, gambling

-NHS - create an incentive for people to use private service or buy private insurance eg through a medical levy if you earn a certain amount and don’t have private so that there is less burden on the public sector

-tax multi nationals appropriately and ensure they pay tax on uk profits in the UK

-vat on small items imported goods eg shein - they are taking sales off local businesses

I actually think it is a great budget. They could perhaps have gone further and tried to recast certain parts of the tax system to bring in more tax from the wealthiest (such as inheritance tax e.g. get rid of the 7 year gift rule and make gifting over a certain amount a taxable event full stop as they do in other countries) but the non-doms stuff is helpful as is the 2% on SDLT for second homes (I'd have added 5%) and bringing pensions into inheritance tax. The budget has some useful stuff on carried interest which will bring in a decent wedge in the short term as well as some useful well thought-through anti-avoidance legislation. They could have raised council tax on the largest/most expensive homes as that is long overdue and CGT rates could be higher (although it is well-known that increasing CGT rates actually decreases the tax take). .
Overall I'd say Labour clearly worked hard on this budget to strike the right balance. They listened to the OBR and took advice. I think it is the first budget we have seen in a long time that might actually produce growth.

I would have ended the temporary cut in fuel duty, given where petrol prices are now.

Business rates and inheritance tax should be reformed, though that needs more than a budget statement for that. Business rates based more on turnover, inheritance tax not raised on your (main) home if under a certain size at least.

It is a disastrous growth stunting budget and they would have been better to focus more on realism than ideology.
Real world consequence : Real decision to halt any expansion, and real decision to increase our product prices because our team members are good and to stay competitive, they will still need wage rises to ease the approaching inflation.
Women are the biggest losers from this budget. Sad but true…Done with moaning.. Time will tell and much as I detest the previous lot.. I think they have squandered a real opportunity

@Bestfootfwd If people knew how much finance directors were paid then they’d stop bitching about train drivers on £70k.

Well, we appear to have 3bn a year - 'for as long as it takes' - to send to Ukraine. Maybe we could start there?

they could have funded general practice properly, and given exemptions from the NI payments, both which would have had knock on effects on hospitals

I wouldn't have minded 1p or 2p or whatever on all the tax bands, or a little extra on the higher ones.

Does anyone know when the next budget it, and whether increasing income tax is a possibility then? I know they promised not to do it in the first budget, but not sure how long their promises were meant to last for. I don't think there is a spring budget now but I'm not sure.

Maybe they should have put more tax on things we could do with less of, like gambling and petrol, rather than on jobs.

Sorry, not with you - so how does that increase tax revenue then?

So cutting international aid, then?

Encourages more businesses to be based in the UK. And therefore paying UK corporation tax. Ireland has attracted some crackers with a very low corporation tax. And business is what creates jobs and prosperity. Why? What did you think created wealth?

Well, yes. I guess.

Of course we should help in the war effort. BUT people simply can't, in all seriousness, think sending billions abroad is a good idea when people in the UK will knowingly be struggling under these apparently 'necessary' increases.

Ahh .. I think the approach here is .. “ There isn’t enough oxygen in the room, let’s get everyone to breathe less — preferably pop a stopper in one nostril each” ( level the playing field and all that) instead of “how do we create a conduit for more oxygen to get into the room? “ We don’t like that because some people who create those oxygen conduits might have ginormous nostrils and lungs perhaps even some personal oxygen stores and consume more oxygen than poor old X who works really hard and lives next door and has only one nostril ..that can’t be fair ..can’t have that..I think the gob stoppered nostril is much better..but look in the corner ..the economy seems to be slowly suffocating... can’t explain it .. and turns out only breathing from one nostril seems to demotivate some people, make some people ill, but even worse .. some of the other people in the room go around the pointing fingers at those who seem to be doing to better on limited oxygen still complaining about how unfair it all is….how are they doing it? .. are they fat, slim, tall, short, wind instrument players, genetically blessed with capacious red blood cells or have they purchased an unfair advantage by possibly doing some high altitude training in preparation for breathing through one nostril..We might have to level the playing field again..let’s pop extra restrictions on high altitude training, wind instrument players, maybe 🤔 an extra time limitation on their allowed breathing hours and so on and so on ..

Hence suggesting more support for childcare....I know several single mums would are smart, able and keen to work, but stuck in low paying jobs as the alternative is to spend £30 per child per day for wraparound care, and when you have 2-3 children it ends up working out more cost effective to stay in the school hour low paid jobs, trapping families in poverty both in real terms and in aspiration/experience.

Creating wealth for whom? Their thousands of staff on minimum wage and zero-hours contracts?

Forget the budget for the moment.
The question is what can labour do to sort out several key areas which would benefit the whole of society from an overhaul:
Education = education it's not just lack of funding, some schools are fantastic, the question is why, what makes a good school, it can't just be about funding. So why the competition for grammars..... really think about what makes a good school, and what do we need to do to emulate that across the board.
NHS = too big, too bloated, too many captains not enough troops. Layers and layers of bureaucracy. IT systems not fit for purpose. Despite this some hospitals are excellent some, and others, well quite frankly if you go in alive, it'll be nothing short of a miracle to walk out again. Question: why, what is it that enables some hospital to run with military precision, with excellent patient outcomes, and others which have similar patient outcomes as an abattoir?
Transport: why are some companies so much worse than others? When they are using the same infrastructure as the rest, okay transport does need more investment, but it also needs something else, but it's not my job to point it out, if the politicians can't work it out that's on them.
Local council districts; why do some manage their budgets so much more effectively than others? Again it's solvable again the government need to figure it out!
Disability allowance / incapacity benefits, why is it, often those that need these payments greatest have to fight so bloody hard to get it, yet others who absolutely could be working are still scamming the system, tarring everyone with the same brush, this is the biggest injustice, disable people and families with disabled children get the shittist of shitty deals, and it's not purely down to money, sometime what carers often need is proper support and a proper bloody break with decent respite, again this is about wanting to make changes, the infrastructure can easily be put in place, but the will is just not there.
Sometimes throwing money at the problem isn't the solution.
There are so many things the government could implement without costing a penny. But the will and having the enthusiasm and fire within to change is entirely missing.
But it's cheaper and much easier to apportion blame, divide communities and put in lots of little taxes which on the face of it won't effect too many people, in reality of course it will, you think the builder sending his kid to private school won't suddenly increase his price? Or the dentist now having to pay extra to reception staff and her dental nurse won't increase the price of treatment to you the consumer? Course they will, and quite frankly who can blame them?
I really had high hopes for labour turning it around, but it seems they are as entirely lacking in imagination, energy and motivation as the last lot. It's utterly depressing.

Ok.

The things you want to hear are not budget matters. They’ll come later from the different departments. Budgets literally are just about the money.

KnittedCardi · Today 12:06
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Should have just put 1p on income tax for everyone, yes, even the low paid. Job done, no fucking around the edges, complicating tax rules etc
Markets are not happy this morning. Close to being a Luz Truss response.

Stop it. The markets - bonds, which is how the borrowing will be financed, in particular - are perfectly sanguine. Absolutely nowhere near the reaction after the Truss clusterfuck.

Increasing personal tax allowance.

Look at how you can encourage businesses to start up. Advice and funding needed plus support for existing businesses in need of help. Enterprise zones where there are benefits to businesses who employ people.

Look at NetZero nonsense and what gas exploration would actually do for energy security.

Don't know if you remember( age dependent!) but there did used to be tax on gambling. It was abolished by Gordon brown, apparently to tax the bookmakers on their turnover instead, many bookmakers then promptly moved their operations offshore to avoid the tax! Another really well thought out labour policy.

Decent affordable wraparound childcare for working parents. An end to self employed people clearly working cash in hand and dodging the tax system. Especially those using this as a ploy to avoid CMS (their children become a burden on the state and this contributes to child poverty). Judging by posts on mumsnet it’s a pretty common phenomenon. Also properly tax cash only nail bars, car washes and barbers

Also not making severe alcohol or drug addiction an automatic qualifier for PIP. I work with two people who trained as PIP assessors but left the job because it was so unfair on people who needed it and abused by people who put a lot of effort into cheating the system