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.

You snuck that last bit in on an edit again.

Not meant to patronise. I thought you were sharp enough to realise I was teasing you. Hey ho.

I didn’t say I was far left. I said I was on the left of the Labour Party, a middle of the road democratic socialist party by European standards. And unless there have been changes I haven’t been informed about I’m not in charge of government policy, so my views are a bit irrelevant.

Teasing can be patronising.
No sneaking involved.

Ok your views (and mine of course) might be irrelevant. But Rachel Reeves's aren't. And she's put up a picture of a communist behind her desk which doesn't bode well for the rest of us.

Ok sorry about that.

She’s not a communist herself. Don’t worry.

She may not be a communist, but she's an arrogant ideologue, determined to spook the markets as much as possible.

Time will tell and we will all hopefully learn.. The weakest link in Team GB is not our politicians..it is us. We have the politicians that we have nurtured. We have nurtured them by abdicating our responsibilities of being factual, using evidence and good sense and instead focusing on greed, envy, entitlement and feeling sorry for ourselves all the time.

Some of the “ socialists” on here won’t give a fiver to their own parents yet we all keep braying for the “wealthy” to take care of us and our children while treating them with the derision that you would a thief. Even the politicians in their VIP boxes who move to multi million pound flats so that their children can “study” and are also personally worth a few million pounds. Ironic.

I don’t personally know any super rich. I’m
guessing that most of this “broad shouldered” breed grew their shoulders with significant personal effort, and I’m sure they will be expending their considerable talents and energy to protect whatever they consider they have worked hard to achieve.
Let us keep waiting for someone else to take care of us. The care takers are deserting the British Isles and our even bigger sense of entitlement in droves.

The economy isn't something that can be fixed by Labour alone. Or by Tories alone. Or any other party. Parties looking for re-election are looking for short term changes to stats, rather than long term financial social stability. What they should've done imo is to form a cross-party working group where all parties commit to investing in sure start centres and early years education with a view to long term reductions in prison services. Investment in school meals with a view to increase concentration at school and better dietary choices so in a generation's time there will be healthieer adults putting less pressure on the nhs. Investment in extra curricular enrichment clubs at schools with a long term view of making a generation have better employment prospects or active lifestyles.

One party alone can't achieve it - long term plans need everyone to commit.

Not sure I’ve ever read such a pile of nonsense before.
Don’t think it’s even worth trying to address it.

More tax on fags, booze, lotto, gambling, junk food, cosmetic surgery, all the crap we don't need and are better off without. More tax from companies like Amazon etc and close whatever loopholes let them get away with paying a fraction of what they should. Cancel the pointless HS2 and not throw away any more billions. The money they announced for NHS will make little to no difference, they'll probably use it to hire even more managers and diversity whatever. It needs sorting out properly, not just yet more money chucking at it. Time to introduce charges for users, as in the many many countries which have better healthcare than us. And stop lying about the £22billion 'black hole' which has been officially discredited. Lying twats.

It’s too hard to address that’s why. Cuts too close. When we realise that we are all more alike than we think ..poor or rich then we’ll have a greater consensus..when last did you hand half your pay packet to anyone? How easy was it? Why do you expect someone to give half of their pay packet to you? Did they steal it or work for it? If they worked for it then why are you entitled to it?
The wealthy do pay more and rightly so but pointing at the wealthy is now the lazy easy choice instead of looking at our own selves. I think most wealthy people like other normal humans are happy to share..up to a point. Let us stop the hypocrisy.
Even in a colony of beggars you will not find this socialism we all find so fashionable now. Again because like everyone else they are human and they will share but ..only up to a point…same as most other humans. Very few of us are actually “Mother Teresa”

Stop the NHS always being free at point of use, as in many other European countries where their health care systems are far superior.

yes it’s easy to demonstrate it’s a working farm before and after death but farms where the person has done some farming solely to get the agrucultural property relief can do the same and continue to exploit the loophole that the whole point. We have family thst are genuine family farmers who have a sheep farm so it takes very little looking after except at lambing so they have other jobs too. I work in accountancy/ tax, we’ve been advising clients with big houses with land to get some sort of farming activity for years, it’s basic IHT planning and long term so our clients will have been paying someone to look after sheep and/or crops for 25 plus years by the time the die purely for IHT reasons. I’ve been thinking for a while about how they could keep the existing relief as it is for genuine farmers and from a practical and legal point of view it is impossible to define what a genuine farmer is

RR seems to be throwing the baby out with the bath water for very little actual gain. A lot of people who own land and don't want to farm it themselves just rent it to farmers that do.

Good points, particularly re Amazon.

That’s the thing though we advise them to farm it themselves not rent it out to someone to farm as then it’s not a genuine farming activity, this doesn’t necessarily mean getting out in their wellies and doing the actual farming themselves. if they are growing crops for example all the cost of seed, fertilizer etc they pay for and then the sale of the crops also goes to them. They pay a farm manager to look after the day to day stuff. You could in theory say if they aren’t physically doing the work yourself and are employing someone you lose the relief but then this also penalises genuine farmers who have staff help maybe as they have become older, disabled or someone reason they can’t physically do the hours

They should be taxing the large corporates higher. The rise in employers NI contributions will hurt small businesses, the large organisations can take that hit so they need to pay more.
I think an income tax increase would have been unpopular but would have helped. Perhaps a small increase of 1p per £1 and raising the tax free amount a little to protect low earners. The Scandinavian countries have high taxes but better public services. If we want decent public services, we need to pay for them.
Something needs to be done to improve social care which in turn would help the NHS.
There's lots that could be done but I'm likely thinking ideallogically and no way would I want to be chancellor!

APR has always been 100% and worked fine. The people you are talking about just chose whether or not they want to do the activity to claim APR. People just muddled through.

This changes everything fundamentally. It's not going to raise any money. I doubt the government will want to be helpful and give opt outs or methods to differentiate working farms. This is ideologically driven or Ed Milliband or Ange want to get the land for solar panels or building.

Entirely agree with you.

If a farm is owned by a married couple they will get two lots of APR and two lots of standard exempt bands, so that’s 2x 1,000,000 and 2 x 325000 so that’s £2.75m before any inheritance tax is due and then it’s only due on the excess

@Morph22010 you seem to be saying that your family are 'genuine farmers', although they don't have to do much and can (and possibly need to) have other professions on the side and their farm/home & life savings will be less than £2.75m so not a problem for them, so not a problem for anyone else. Also that your
clients are not 'genuine farmers but just doing 'something' - as in cash flowing, employing people and taking the risk and responsibility for the land - but that shouldn't count. To me, there isn't a huge distinction. Neither party is making much out of it, the capital is tied up, they are cashflowing farming activities with all the risk that entails and taking care & responsibility for the land.

Where I'm coming from, to quote a pp on another thread

'Agricultural land is expensive. A million might only get you 100 acres or less. Not enough for an economically viable farm. You probably need 500 acres plus. But, you also need another million or so of equipment and machinery. Then, to farm 500 acres you'll need working capital of the best part of £250k just to fund the seed, the fertliser, the chemicals, the labour to establish the crop, which might not be harvested and saleable for 9 months. And at the end of it, you might make some money. Or you might not 😂'

And my response

I do not own land, but I think there truly is a lot of ignorance around how much it takes to keep a farm operating. That farming is in many respects a labour of love and you absolutely need that long term generational incentive for land to be cherished. Sadly, I think we are going to end up with just a few mega corporate farms like the States eventually, with all that means for the food chain, insect life etc. As for building over the greenbelt 🙈, actually makes me feel physically distressed for our younger generations. There are so many brownfield/urban sites crying out for regeneration. Yes, costs more £ short term, but so so necessary long term.

Unfortunately the APR won't work like that. It applies to the value of the farm and kicks in if the value exceeds £1 million. HMRC have already confirmed unused APR allowance won't be transferable between spouses.

Remember Labour have presumably designed this to release land to house building or solar panels. They aren't going to leave any "loopholes" however reasonable.

Sorry..I left "IHT" out. The IHT kicks in if the farm exceeds £1 million.

APR is a relief that applies to an asset not a NRB/RNRB (although that relates to a house) which applied to a person. I'm sure as you work in accountancy @Morph22010 you know that, but have a look at the HMRC website.

Can you point me to where you are picking this up from so I can check facts pls.

mynunderstanding is thst apr isn’t transferable between spouses but each spouse has their own apr exemption so if they own half the assets it works out the same, if assets aren’t owned equally it doesn’t. I’d be grateful if you could point me to where you are picking up your facts so I can expand my own knowledge