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?

I am delighted there is a serious cash backed commitment to investment in our public services - it is long overdue. We need the basic infrastructure of this country to work again. If my wages are depressed over the longer term, so be it. It needs to be funded from somewhere.

Exactly

Why is rising taxes where the majority of cost will be passed on to employees the 'broadest shoulders'?

And aside from the fact that people who do run small businesses work, why aren't those employees 'working people'

I can’t believe how naive some people are. Of course the budget will affect you. Slower growth. Interest rates. Mortgage anyone? The GP’s, farmers thread yesterday explaining how that will impact them. Every business that employs people will have to consider losing staff, cutting raises, raising costs to be passed on.

Things are going to get a lot more expensive and unemployment will go up. More people will claim benefits. The huge amount of borrowing like never before will affect every decision that is made long after we’ve gone.

The decision to not bring in household income for child benefit will hit single earners.

Lowering the threshold for so many things.

You will be tax more whether directly or by stealth. Crazy to think it won’t affect you.

I think it's a good budget.
I'm an average earner, DH a high earner and we will basically stay the same-zero changes.
I think they probably put the NI increase onto businesses after the tories tried to bribe voters/scupper prospective Labour government by cutting employees NI contributions just before General Election - The country couldn't afford this so they've had to plug that gap the tories left.

Couldn’t have said it better than this. And there are enough ignorant posts already where people believe they are not affected because they’re not ‘wealthy’ and delighted that richer are affected.

So many disastrous consequences which are going to hit those with the least hardest in the long term - sadly they’re mostly too short sighted to see it

And if you’re let go?

Do you work for an employer?

I say again, happy to pay if it were actually used wisely. It is not, in any department.

Classic socialist policy ie make alcohol cheaper whilst raising taxes that will impact everyone yet pretending they only affect the "wealthy".
I believe Russia did this with vodka....

I am affected by this budget - but I expected to be. I will be paying more tax. This is not a surprise. I don’t even think it’s a surprise to the majority of the public who before the election thought tax was going to rise. We still got a Labour government.

If it works then the Conservatives will be toast for a decade.

It will impact me. I'm a lone parent who decided to put my DD15 who has AuDHD into the private sector because of the shitshow SEN provision in local state schools.

I'm not wealthy. I can just about afford it. Local state schools are recently inundated with people moving their kids out of private because this has pushed them over the edge.

What's the alternative? Schools physically collapsing, councils going bankrupt, more and more people on NHS waiting lists unable to work? That doesn't sound great either.

I'm not sure what people think is actually possible. A budget that attempts to rescue the collapsing public sector and no one paying for it?

I think the employer’s NI increases might be an attempt to force Amazon et al to pay more tax on their UK operations (since they manage to pay very little in Corporation Tax by moving their profits elsewhere). They can’t avoid the taxes on employing staff. There is an attempt to mitigate the effect on small businesses by increasing employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,500. However I think it’s inevitable that businesses will pass their increased costs on to their customers, and/or respond by reducing staffing levels. So everyone will be affected by the resultant inflation/rise in unemployment or underemployment.

Great about your tax rise but that doesn't change that those lines which Labour relied on so heavily, and you just repeated, being incorrect

The thing is, the earners on 150k (which is alot I agree but not rich) will be making sacrifices like letting their cleaners go, no more personal trainers, no new car and such like to pay for their increased tax on things like school fees and the fact wages won't keep up with inflation because of the NI increase.

I don't know what the answer is, but to say it won't affect anyone who isn't a high earner is naive.

I'm not directly affected. I expect next year's payrise to be smaller than this year's to offset the increase in NI. But I'd have expected them to decline as inflation falls anyway.

The cost of goods and services may increase, but again it is to be expected. NMW increases every year and the impact to the cost of goods is relatively small.

Every year there are cries of horror about how businesses will lay everyone off and the dole queue will stretch from one end of the country to the other. But it hasn't happened. Even after the massive impact of lockdowns. So I choose not to buy into the hysteria.

I'm not against paying taxes on inherited pensions. I'm not against levying inheritance tax on farming assets, though understand the issue of it could lead to land being sold off.

I don't agree with the speed at which some of the changes are being implemented. Giving a couple of months notice of removing the WFA and then applying VAT to school fees doesn't seem fair, and I think should have applied from next winter and the next school year.

I won't lose my job to a computer but I would bloody love a fully functioning and integrated records system which saves me hours hunting out-of-area patient's GPs, a system that would automatically generate letters with basic patient information filled out so I don't have to spend 10 minutes just copying patient's address, DOB and GP details into a referral form and a system which will scout records to summarise historical information for clinical reports. It would save me hours a week and I can see additional patients in these hours.
I am sure many GPs, clinicians, social workers, teachers and such will very much welcome losing this part of their job to a computer so that they can actually focus on human contact.

She also slipped in social housing rents increasing by more than inflation for the next 5 years. The measures to punish landlords will result in some landlords selling up, resulting in fewer private rentals so the others will increase rents. The FTSE100 has dropped by 2% this week. Bond yields have increased which apparantly will result in interest rate rises. So if you rent or buy your property the costs will go up. The increased cost to business will result in some small businesses closing, some reducing staff numbers, some holding back on wage increases. The easiest way to cover these increased costs is to increase prices, so expect to see price increases across all sectors. She did not increase tax thresholds, so everyone who pays income tax will pay more. At the end of the day, the measures brought is to protect us during covid, lockdown, furlough, bounce back loans and grants, discounts on meals, reductions in business rates all have to be paid for, so the fact you can say that you will be better off as you are getting a pay rise shows that the gov continue to try to pull the wool over our eyes, and in many cases, it works.

The farmer thread is infuriating.

Count yourself lucky you will owe millions in tax. You are rich.

Utter madness.

There will absolutely be redundancies at my work due to the NI increase. This will not only mean that my job is at risk, but if I manage to keep it I'll have to take on more work. It will also hit the public as we teach the future healthcare workforce. Quality of their education will undoubtedly be impacted by fewer staff, and that will impact the care people recover from nurses in the future. So disastrous all round really

That's just silly! Lots of HMRC spend goes on people answering the phone and administering the system. Another big chunk goes on compliance activities to get in the tax that isn't being paid. Are you really saying that these are pointless activities?

Of course there is inefficiency and not everyone does everything perfectly. But to say that no money is spend sensibly on any department is just being silly for the sake of it.

I did say in my original post not directly affected. I do realise all the wider implications, obviously but not even fuel going up.

I do understand how hard some people are having it, my two sons are both struggling, hopefully neither will be too much affected either.

You obviously have no idea about how farming assets work or care about food security. This WILL result in farms being sold off and not to other farmers as they won't be able to afford to buy them. So they will go to developers. Young farmers won't be able to afford to buy farms so you end generations of knowledge and skill. What happens when all the farms are sold off? Who produces our food?
Don't you understand how environmentally and economically damaging it is to rely on food imports?
Labour obviously don't. It only takes another Ukraine war to show us how precarious we are if we rely on imports.

Good grief, my team, in the (many) years I have been there, has been decimated. Probably 3/4 gone. Obviously they have streamlined the work but I'm not sure how they can reduce it much more.

Fortunately I retire soon so won't be there to see it.