Tax increases imminent

[Iwishicouldflyhigh]

Heavy hints that taxes will rise in the next Budget after the recent climb down (as the ‘taxes won’t rise again’ was based on a 5 billion saving in benefits).

I can’t lie, I’m so pissed off about this. I don’t think anyone wants to see someone who is genuinely unable to work to be further penalised, but we all know there are thousands of people who could work but don’t.

this country is going to absolute shit . We pay more and more for less and less.

I genuinely hope your son gets a lucky break soon and well done you for supporting him.
None of this was clear in your original post.

Your son is going through a temporary hard time and doing everything possible to help himself. It is those who do NOT try to help themselves but expect the tax payer to fund their lifestyle from cradle to grave that and are the problem.

Oh so you count pensioners as lazy fucks that don’t want to work?

Also taxes aren’t allocated in that way. For the most part they all go into one pot, and all government spend is taken from there. As I said, less than 10% of taxes is spent on UC/PIP, so your comment that the majority of taxes is spent on lazy fucks who can’t be bothered working is simply inaccurate. 10% is not a majority. Majority means over 50%.

You can set the threshold very high so that it doesn't impact those who don't "need it", i.e. maybe £100k or even £50k. If a pensioner has income of £50k, they have hefty assets (savings, investments, BTL properties, occupational pensions) and clearly doesn't "need" the £12k state pension. Moreso for someone with an income of £100k!

Trouble is, of course, dippy Rachel would set the cut off at a stupidly low level of something like £20k which would cripple people financially!

It IS going to hell, and will get a lot worse before it gets better (if ever).

I always wonder why the government will not provide universal free childcare for working parents so that they can encourage all mothers of working ability to go back to work? The net over the 18 yrs life at home of the child is far greater than what the government would lose for those first 4 years. I feel it would solve a lot of problems.

Come on. Most people clearly aren't talking about the genuinely disabled. They're talking about those that are at it. And if you stopped immediately reacting so defensively then you'd realise that.

My daughter graduated last year. Luckily she got a degree related job pretty quickly, but she struggled to find a job.

She applied for lots of bar, wait staff, supermarket type jobs and the vast majority of the time never heard back.

She had some experience - part time bar/waiting experience while at uni/over the summer when home from uni.

Feed back from others in a similar situation was her age - she was over 21 so minimum wage was higher - bars just want a load of 18-20 year old students as they’re cheaper and easier to get rid of as they’re mostly short-term.

In the end she removed her degree, all dates and her date of birth from her CV and started hearing back a bit more.

You can indeed. Dippy is a bit sexist though. Not sure one would accuse a bloke of being dippy.

Government spending is expected to keep increasing, yet tax revenue remains far behind. We can’t simply tax our way out of this. What’s needed is a significant economic growth and a reduction in spending, though that feels nearly impossible with everyone wanting their share from the state. We need to acknowledge that there aren’t enough people contributing, and the welfare system might be overly generous.

The ageism and ableism being justified in the name of saving the NHS in this thread is truly shocking. It's astonishing to see people openly taking pride in being both ageist and ableist under the guise of supporting the NHS.
I hope the people making such awful comments never have to face old age or disability, but at the same time, I wonder if they would sacrifice their lives in advance to save the NHS.

Speaking of state pensions enjoyed by today's pensioners, let them live their lives in peace. Those who criticize them seem to be eagerly waiting for their deaths, ready to seize their properties with fireworks at hand. Too many people even wish for their parents' deaths just to claim their inheritance.

Now, about future pensioners, let them enjoy their retirement—they've been paying their whole working lives. It will be survival of the smartest; those who invested in future-proof assets will be fine. However, those relying only on state, private, and savings plans might struggle but can still live well with smart choices.

That’s inaccurate as you’re just looking (I’m guessing) at income tax. The tax burden includes other taxes like VAT. The tax burden as a proportion of income is higher for those on a lower income. We have a regressive tax system overall. The wealthier you are, the less tax you pay as a proportion of your income.

Estimates from ONS and IFS show this pattern for overall tax burden (as a share of income):

• Bottom 10%: Pay about 35–45% of their income in total taxes.
• Middle-income groups: Pay 30–35%.
• Top 10%: Pay 33–35%.

If a pensioner has income of £50k, they have hefty assets (savings, investments, BTL properties, occupational pensions) and clearly doesn't "need" the £12k state pension. Moreso for someone with an income of £100k!

In a world where people earning £80k complain about losing £100/month in child benefit I very much doubt pensioners will accept any loss of pension.

Pensioners who are drawing state pension now paid into the system for all their working lives on the understanding that they would receive a state pension. They had no choice. If I am now not going to get one I want ALL my contributions, and those of my late husband who also paid in but died before pensionable age, back. It was expalained to us NOT as a means tested benefit but as an entitlement.

I agree with those

I also think that the government should stop treating the economy as if it was a household budget with self-imposed spending rules which hobble their ability to make change.

We are a fiat currency - it is a myth that there is a finite amount of money available for services and that if spending increases then taxes need to rise

It is a myth that was perpetuated by the right wing (in both the UK and the US) in the 80's to support the privatisation and wealth hoarding agenda and continued ever since.

Trickle down economics' has never and will never work - you only have to look at the increasing gaps between the most wealthy and majority to see that, as well as the uber wealthy's disgusting displays of spending (Bezos's $50 million plus weddding in Venice!).

We need to return to Keynesian economics - as a soveriegn nation with a fiat currency, if we invest in infrastructure and well being, then the economy gets stronger and GDP increases. Yes there would be more 'debt' in absolute terms, but the improvement that it would bring to the economy would reduce that debt as a percentage of GDP

The investment itself provides jobs, while the result of the investment means that roads and transport are in good condition for businesses and people are healthy and able to work.

A lot of businessmen in the 19th century knew this - yes they were rich, but they didn't just hoard their wealth, they invested in their workforce - George Cadbury is a brilliant example of this - he gave workers more time off and built housing for them because he knew that if they were well taken care of, they would be able to work harder and would be loyal.

During Gordon Brown's time as chancellor, he started to move us back towards that - there was significant investment in most public services, and especially in health which meant that within five years, services were running better than they ever had - but then came austerity after the financial crash.

Most countries ended their austerity programmes within 2 years and their economies boomed as a result, but we had it for 14 years with public services being continually and intentionally run into the ground under the guise of 'not enough money' yet strangely enough, despite this, the rich have continued to get richer!

I get why Labour feel like they need to keep the household budget pretense up - they are being pushed really hard by the likes of Reform who have much of the press in their corner. They need to grow a back bone and use their huge majority make some drastic, imaginative and beneficial changes and take the flack that will come with it by having the confidence to know it will make a huge difference - but if they want it to be visible by the next election, they need to get cracking now.

The idealists on the left need to stop sabotaging their own side because they are not getting absolutely everything they want and realise that it is a journey and some difficult decisions will need to be taken. "The art of the compromise - hold your nose, and close your eyes"

I do think there is more scope to tax the very wealthy. It is good that the government have got rid of the non-dom status, but I would also like to see them bring in a system like the US, where citizens still have to pay tax if they want to retain their citizenship, even if they live and pay taxes abroad - it would stop the argument that the wealthy will just leave the country if these changes were made. They could still leave, but if they didn't want to pay the tax, they would also have to give up their citizenship (and knighthoods / OBE's / CBE's / seats in the Lords) and the growing economy would attract other investors to fill the gaps left behind.

I agree, this country is all but broken and while I have been very disappointed with the new govt we have had the Tories in charge for 14 years and there is no denying that they left things in a real mess. In fact Tories have been in charge for most of the past 100 years which is quite thought provoking. Leaving that aside, the city I live in has gone from being a lively attracitive and reasonable place to being an utter shit pit. Dirty, shabby, unpleasant with violent crime an almost daily event. We pay the second highest council tax in the country, and tbh I almost hate leaving the house because our streets are so unpleasant. And it's not just where I live, I notice it in so many other towns and cities, it has taken much longer than the past 12 months to get to where we are now and I have no idea how things can change in a positive way. There is a school at the end of my (pot holed filled) street that is crumbling, council services have been cut to the bone and it is all just so disheartening

It is taxed already. Don’t tell me there are thresholds. They haven’t gone up in a decade and will likely be frozen for another and if you have a modest semi in outer London you will be over it even if you have no other assets. It’s madness.

Very good point! Thank you

You don't pay into the system for your pension, you pay in to access public services - it has always been the case that pensioners are paid by the taxes of those who are working today.

If wealthy pensioners want to keep their state pension, they need to stop hoarding the wealth so that working age people can earn more, pay more tax and afford to have more children so the population can continue to sustain the cost!

I'm also pissed off. DH is a higher earner so he already pays a lot of tax - and before I get jumped on, I am talking around 80k NOT hundreds of thousands. I'm a freelancer, and my income has been massively negatively impacted because the economy is in such a bad way.

We live in London and we have tiny pension pots. If we have to pay more tax over what we do already, I am not sure how we'll make the numbers work each month, let alone how we'll cope as pensioners.

Forgive me if it's been discussed already on this thread, but WHY isn't this government introducing a wealth tax?! 2 percent for those with assets over 10 million, surely it's not that difficult?

This post is excellent. I wish the government were brave enough to take a leadership role, implement a different way of doing things, and invest in communicating why. The public have been misled and instead of re correcting the narrative, they are buying into it to win favour.

It is harder to evade trying to work. You can be sanctioned if it is obvious you are trying to not work. It isn't that easy any more.

The NHS is in a mess because of decades of under-investment. It was created after WW2 by Labour, but the Conservatives opposed it back then and have done their best to undermine it ever since.

Compare and contrast with countries such as Germany and Austria. The populations and politicians of both countries decided that after the war, as these countries re-built, good quality universal healthcare should be available to everyone (since everyone had suffered during the war and during the immediate post-war period). The quality to be achieved was defined as the level of healthcare that previously was only available to those who could pay. The service was to be funded by compulsory payments by employees and employers - which should sound familiar as it is not far removed from the UK model. Payments would be progressive, i.e. a percentage of wages, so the more someone earns, the more they pay. The biggest differences compared with the UK are that these deductions are spelled out on the wageslip, the funds are ringfenced and the administration and delivery of healthcare is taken out of the hands of politicians.

70 years on this is still the case in these countries, and any politician who dares to meddle with this would be quickly booted out. Thanks to good planning and sensible investment, Austria has twice as many doctors per capita than the UK has. People can see a GP just by walking in, Consultants' appointments can be booked within a few days and for many specialities, there are no (or only very short) waiting lists. Germany invests 30% more on healthcare than the UK does - i.e. every 3 years, the UK falls behind by an entire years' worth of investment; money that should have been used on training, facilities, equipment etc. Instead, many of the inefficiencies in the NHS are caused by the staff constantly working in crisis mode trying to find beds that aren't there, cancelling appointments because of ward closures, or broken equipment, or staff shortages; much of this caused by politicians failing to explain to the electorate that good public services cost money, and a catastrophic failure to plan and invest. "People are getting older and living longer ..." they cry. This seems to come as a surprise - who'd have thought that the politicians have had since 1955 to make a good stab at predicting how many over-70s there would be and what care they might need.

For those saying you are happy to pay more tax, you know there’s nothing stopping you?

All you have to do is contact HMRC and let them know you’d like to make an additional payment. People used to send cheques to HMRC to do just this.

As an aside, my boss was at an event this morning where Kemi Badenoch was speaking. She (KB) apparently said she’d rather Rachel Reeves kept her job as at least she is an intelligent woman - it’s who they’d bring in to replace RR that worries her in terms of the direction things might go.

My daughter is at university and her lecturers have told her year group that they're very unlikely to get a job with the NHS. They didn't say why and maybe this was about helping students have more realistic expectations post degree. Saying that, she was pretty deflated at hearing that as she love to work for the NHS. Now volunteering like most of her other science friends, to build up skills and experience. We're doing our best to support her but I'm worried for her future and her siblings too.

I had to check it waasn't 1st April when a friend texted this news to me this morning, but actually I think it's an excellent idea if it removes a few more maniacs from the party

The job markets…..maybe something to do with the additional NI costs for employers? 🤔