AIBU Income Tax rise.

[H202too]

To be panicking about income tax rise.

Things are tight and to loae even £30-60 a month will be difficult.

I know people are talking about the mansion tax being a no go. But I would prefer this than taxing the workers as per usual.
The tax free rate should be put up. What a mess.

If the previous budget supposedly plugged the £22 billion black hole left by the Tories, surely that's admitting the current gaping black hole of $40 billion is entirely of Reeves own making - in which she case, she needs to resign immediately before she bankrupts the country. Hopefully, this budget will get rid of her.

It’s not the least bad option though if raising taxes hammered growth and now they’re needing more. It’s a terrible option. Better if we’d avoided those policies.

Biggest class of shareholders are pension funds so it’s all chicken and egg

ultimately CT/IT/VAT make up over 75% of the tax take so it needs to be one of those. Tinkering with property taxes will raise very little and the impacting the market is damaging overall

theres no easy way out of this. They can’t put CT up for small businesses after hammering them last time and on big business it won’t raise enough. Anyone who thinks the hole can be filled by cracking down on avoidance/evasion in big companies is deluded - most of the tax gap comes from small businesses/individuals ultimately.

simplification of the system would make a massive difference

eg Sweden has VAT on everything - simple to apply and everyone knows. No debates about whether something is a biscuit or a cake

The true colours of the Labour voter.

It is shit when times are already tough and cost of living high - but I also know that public services are seriously underfunded, more money is needed in the system - and accept that means raising taxes.

So much money has been and is being wasted too.
HS2 was estimated to have cost a whopping £40.5 billion by July of this year.

With another £7bn to be spent by end of 2026.

And for what, exactly??

The 45% rate kicks in at £125k and is known as the additional rate.

You also pay NI at 2% so it would be 56% inc student loan.

My husband and I for the first time have talked about transferring to Dubai just to get away from it all for a few years
Alternatively wait until reform get in and then Dubai will come to you!😅
We'll have our very own British version of chop chop Square in no time at all I'm sure ✊🏻😊

I firmly believe and have done for a long time that there is enough money sloshing around to fund things that need funding and to raise people out of poverty - it's about spending it in better ways & stopping wasting money on projects that MPs no doubt have vested interests in.

@caringcarer
Farage/Reform cannot just “take us out” of the Human Rights Convention- law is not the domain of political parties - they can propose changes. The law lords determine whether a bill passes into statute or not.
Do you realise that the Human Rights Law (the UK’s incorporation of the ECHR protects not just Article 8 (right to Family and private life) that some (perhaps many) immigrants to the UK have successfully used to have family stay here/themselves as family members, but the right to life, to marriage, to education, to free speech etc.
Do you realise that the “Refugee Convention” is an entirely separate convention to the ECHR and Reform haven’t mentioned “taking us out” of that convention- that’s the convention that covers asylum seekers btw.
The Convention on Torture? Another problem for Reform as that’s another entirely separate convention (the UK is a signatory to all 3 conventions) that can be argued to pertain to the same asylum seekers..
As for stopping sexual assaults- don’t make me laugh - when the Met police are the way they are you think whoever is in government can STOP sexual assaults? Really?
And they may be housed in what were 4 star hotels but they aren’t having room service and spas …
Have you ever been inside a detention centre? I have - they had gyms and hairdressers and food.. you know it’s not quite the concentration camps that Reform might want.
My child is disabled (physically before anyone thinks it’s about “feelz” as some wankers on here have said to me before), and I don’t think she is having money taken from her to give to asylum seekers. She of course would benefit from additional money, very few wouldn’t, but it’s disingenuous to say anything has changed in terms of her receiving benefits because of any other factor in current society.
It’s simply not true.
And upthread there are posters wanting to cut benefits “for anxiety “ (I e no idea which benefit that is!) - perhaps it would be better to tune out the vitriol and propaganda from certain media and political figures.
Vote Reform by all means - just like Brexit - waste your time and find out what actually would happen if Farage won (clue tax breaks for the very wealthy and not much else- take a look at the USA). Look at that Brexit bus claim - how’s that worked out?

Don't see how Rachel Reeves can survive this.

She said she didn't know about the licence rule re her rental property.

It turns out she did know - she tweeted support for the policy and helped implement it:

x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1983849226795987452/photo/1

I just don't agree putting 1p on income tax will "hammer growth", especially in conjunction with everything else government is doing to boost it (planning reform, trade deals etc.) Ultimately the government is spending £70 billion more per year than it brings in, and we spend 10% of GDP on servicing this debt.

The options are to cut spending or raise taxes - it's a political choice and I think the latter is both the fairer and more popular option. (I say this as a higher rate taxpayer btw)

If you're not on X then here

How do bond markets affect the interest rate on Gilts? By their very nature, the interest on Gilts is FIXED for the life of them. The price moves up and down but if you hold then until maturity it doesn’t matter.
The Govt has never defaulted on Gilts but we are now at a point where I wouldn’t trust my life savings to index linked Gilts 10-20 years from now. China holds a massive amount of both UK Gilts and US Treasury Bills, that’s terrifying.

Someone mentioned tax free lump sums on Pensions, if they did away with that, there would be no big incentive to save and people would just opt out of them altogether. The facts of tax relief on the way in plus employer contributions are lost on most people.
I could see a reduction to £100-150k though as most people get nowhere near £400k in their pensions.

The thing is the bond markets love her because she’s the only one who is making tough decisions. In the last fortnight her ‘ill I’ll I crease income tax’ pledges have dropped our interest on loans predicted this year by £4.5bn. Get rid of Reeves and our interest bill explodes.

Reeves lied - now there's a surprise.

You ok, hun?

This budget is make or break for her. They are still giving her the benefit of the doubt but if she fumbles it then she’s out

she needs to increase the big 3 and cut spending. As a country we need to accept that some services cannot be government funded and that’s going to require a review. HS2 is a prime example of bad management and bad implementation.

I can't believe anyone would actually fall for the 'tough decision' bull. 😂Reeves is finished after this budget, if not before.

Pensioners were born in the1940s and 1950s in a very different financial landscape than now. Many worked in basic low paid jobs, afforded no access to employers pensions and even if they were aware of private pension schemes were too busy trying to put food on the table to even consider this an option.
Women stayed at home to raise children as there was no system of childcare available. When children went to school they went into part time work again mostly in low paid jobs as women's place in the employment field again was very different to today.
They now live on basic state pension in a world where, as people are highlighting, living costs are rising significantly.
To say that on average pensioners are better off than workers???

HS2 just shows how hard we e made it to build anything. The bat tunnels and newt surveys are ridiculous

Only just got a fifty pound a month rise which is pitiful so I bloody hope not.

The fact they didn’t put the money into the north of England rail system is the true crime

who cares that you can shave 10 mins off your journey to Birmingham from London when you can’t even leave from a central London train station. Sunk cost fallacy

It’s not just that I think US regional bank situation has had an impact.

But yes if she cries, gets sidelined or leaves they will show it. They don’t ’love her’ so much as will hammer anyone who borrows and spends more because Labour have already maxed it out.

Oth she’s not totally through it with taxes, she needs growth and keeps hammering it. And add Starmer to this too.

Well apparently I’m not considered a worker as I earn over 46k! I’m pissed off that this govt is coming after everything, income, houses, pensions of people who work bloody hard and are frugal and try to save - and doing bugger all to cut public finding, carbonic sector pensions, reduce waste, improve public sector productivity- just private sector private sector private sector. You have to have strong growing private sector if you want. A decent public one!

and don’t get me started on asylum or benefits or foreign aid.

its a total economic shambles run by utterly incompetent people and envy