Another budget one. Sorry.

[photodiva]

I keep seeing posts about how this budget will be so bad for us all, am I the only one who won't be (personally) directly affected? Or at least, in a negative way?

I get the issues around businesses and NI but I am a civil servant.

I will get a pay rise! Yep, you read that right. I earn NMW so my wages will go up.

And I don't have a 'gold plated ' pension.

I totally get there will be a lot affected but I can't be the only one who benefits can I?

It's not that bad, it's mainly the upper classes getting taxed & those who attend private schools will need to pay more.

Mostly the heavy lifting is being done by business.

It doesn't make much difference to me either

Many businesses will pass on the cost, they are a business after all so you will pay indirectly. Plus if some small businesses go under then less competitors could mean a captive market. Or they may cut staff so the level of service could fall.

IHT on farms, on paper a farmer can have 3 million but it’s in acres of land. They don’t have say 500k in cash in an account so can not pay the IHT on death. Farming is not like any other job. That is a threat to food security. We have been importing food for a long time. Any issue with the food supply chain such as a war can have huge implications if we are less capable of producing food.

You will be affected. It just won’t appear on your payslip.

Businesses be passing on the increase on the customers.

I’ll be a bit disadvantaged, which feels about right given our living circumstances, and certainly nothing like after Kwarteng’s ‘not perfect’ mini budget, which added an extra £400 of mortgage costs a month to our living expenses.

some of the budget threads have blown my mind a bit - it’s like the OPs and their supporters were expecting a budget that would address every social ill and personally benefit every single individual at no personal cost to anyone 🤔it’s not rocket science to recognise the parlous state of our public services and (surely) to then acknowledge that money was going to need to be found from somewhere to address them, otherwise we’re only heading in one direction. I think RR has actually done a pretty good job at sharing the pain tbh.

I will get a pay rise!
But your costs will go up even more. Who do you think will pay for the increase in NMW, in National Insurance, in the benefits bill as people get laid off, etc.
This is not a Budget for growth.

I'm sure it'll be felt indirectly as business passes on the cost, but I'm happy to give it a go, trickle down economics haven't been a success so let's go directly to the source.

This and the post before it are interesting in that they miss that businesses employ people and the majority of extra costs will be passed on to employees (OBR)

Op if you're public sector you may not face the same issue

It will when prices start going up because manufacturers can’t afford the massive uptick in wages and national insurance contributions without passing it on. Where I work have started discussions with the supermarkets already. We produce an everyday essential that 99% of people reading this will probably buy every week.

Well, everyone will be affected. This stuff filters down. Farming is a big one, the IHT changes mean that passing on family farms is a lot less easy, which means land may end up being sold off and our country's food security affected. Businesses having to pay more NI will try to recoup that through higher prices and by smaller pay rises for staff. And so on. No one exists in a bubble.

The headline changes may not personally be targeting you, but we will all feel the effects of it.

I don't think it's a bad Budget, but to say that it only affects X and Y isn't really seeing the big picture.

No difference to me. As a pp has said it is mainly larger businesses and very wealthy people affected, but there will always be people who come off badly and find it tough. I do think in the current climate it should be affecting people who can shoulder the burden a bit more, rather than putting strain on people already negatively impacted by our economy.

I'm sure people will argue that the less wealthy are always supported by budgets, but the point is it hasn't been enough to slow poverty and economic growth has stalled, services have been underfunded and wages have stagnated. Previous budgets never addressed that. It is a step in the right direction I think, but so much more is needed.

Any business that can will pass on the cost, so that will be a cost to consumers, rising cost may lead to increased inflation, which impacts interest rates etc.

Those business that can't pass on the costs will scale down pay rises, recruitment and possibly need to cut jobs.

am I the only one who won't be (personally) directly affected? Or at least, in a negative way?
Wasn't there something about making the Civil Service more productive.

As a pp has said it is mainly larger businesses

Why only larger businesses?

@photodiva if you are a civil servant and not in the civil service pension scheme then join it immediately!! It's a really good scheme.

(you say you don't have a "gold plated" pension. I dislike that sort of description but it is a very good scheme as it gives you a guaranteed income in retirement. I have 10 years of CS pension and then moved back to the private sector. Swings and roundabouts really)

Well it will affect business...especially small and medium size businesses. Increases in NMW plus Ni may mean laying staff off and putting up prices. Unemployment grows, inflation grows. Less tax collected. Public services cut. Government borrowing more.

Food security is also severely threatened due to inheritance tax on farms.

Its not a great budget. No forward thinking. It will affect you somehow

I don't trust business to pass on tax breaks to people, look at the 5p tax cut on fuel, do you remember the cost going down 5p? They certainly didn't where I was, took weeks to see it noticeable lower, the RAC have frequently reported how slow the forecourt is at passing down reductions when the price of the barrel goes down, but you can guarantee they'd have jumped up 5p today across the country had that initiative been removed. Big business plays the victim when it wants to, yes it is absolutely integral to a growing economy, but I am sick of Tory governments pandering to it protecting shareholders huge profits as services reduce in quality while we are expected to bear the weight of CoL.

I will be about £3k a year worse off. I have zero faith that any of my additional tax will create improvements in health, education or transport.

This!!! The ‘Gold Plated’ schemes are not affected by the change. It’s the crappy DC schemes most private sector workers are saddled with that are affected. Let’s just hope we don’t die before we get to pension age.

I can't see that this is actually true. There is a thread from a GP whose practice will be hard hit by NMW/NI increased costs. If lots of GPs close their practices, we will all be hurt.

It seems on the face of it to be OK for most of us. But the way that "rich" people are being hit will hurt us all. And just to be clear - I don't think all those hurt in this budget are actually rich. Farmers might be asset rich, but they aren't cash rich - also there is a thread with an 83yo farmer who is considering killing himself before the IHT on farms comes in, in order that his grandson can take over the farm without a crippling/unpayable IHT bill.

And the private school thing, done to death on here, but if you read contributions, you will see that many people are facing serious consequences over this. I have also read a thread where a state sixth form is deluged with private applicants and it will push out state applicants who otherwise would have got in.

I don't really understand the full impact of DC pensions IHT, but I imagine that people are going to be less keen to build a big pension pot.

It's very dangerous to sit back and say that this stuff doesn't affect me/you/the majority IMO. None of it affects me just to be clear. Not yet. And that's the key.

I think it's one of the sneakiest budgets I've seen. Hurting minorities to please the masses.

"Today we are setting a 2% productivity, efficiency and savings target for all [Govt] departments to meet next year by using technology more effectively and joining up services across government," said Reeves, in her Budget speech to the House of Commons.
So you could lose your job to a computer. Still happy?

It's a poorly thought out budget, very Labour centric but not really seeing the commercial bigger picture.

And this is true - the company that DH works at is already scaling down pay rises which were about to be dished out in the next few days. Management had them on hold until they heard the budget. So now, the pay rises that were deserved, agreed and planned will be cut.