To ask how much you think income tax will rise by?

[Wonderofwimbledon]

We’re absolutely financially at our limit… I’m so incredibly stressed. An income tax rise will break us and we won’t be able to afford it. We won’t have money to eat.

What do you think it’ll be? I just want to curl up and cry- we can’t take anymore increases our bills , mortgage everything has increased we have no spare money at all

So very odd that you think that just because someone is concerned about how much Labour are fucking up, they voted for Brexit . I certainly didn't.

So odd that you forget how Corbyn - Labour leader at the time - didn't speak up about staying in the EU. At best he was staying on the fence for political expedience, but he more likely he supported Brexit given he was against the EU previously. Whereas David Cameron - the Conservative leader at the time - campaigned relentlessly for Remain. He did call the referendum - he recognised that the question was ripping the UK apart, and had to be addressed - and sure enough the UK people chose Leave.

But whilst Brexit did cause economic damage, that's not what's happening here. The economy was recovering when Reeves took over. Despite Brexit.

But now... the fictitious famous £20bn black hole - which Reeves tried to fill with £40billion of tax rises - has now grown to a £50 billion black hole. Because tax rises and a complete failure to even slow down the increases in spending fucks up the economy.

Sunak did try to warn you about it.

Sunak said "Labour will raise your taxes. It’s in their DNA. Your work, your car, your pension – Labour will tax it.”"

That's looking pretty accurate. NI increases on employers already last year, which led to job losses... and in the next budget it's almost certain there will be income tax increase, possibly an electric car per mile tax added, and a pension tax raid (not yet clear exactly what, but at the least NI charged on contributions).

He created the Labour tax rises dossier before the election where he showed the shortfalls in what they were promising. Unfortunately, the £10billion shortfall he highlighted 15 months ago is still growing, so it will get even worse.

Terrific post, and bang on.

Workers caught in the £100,000 “tax trap” would lose 65p of the next pound they earn under Labour’s planned raid on incomes, analysis shows.

Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering a 2p rise in income tax in the Budget this month, which would break Labour’s manifesto pledge.

The Chancellor is also considering a 2p cut in National Insurance, although this may be limited to those earning below £50,270.

The move would mean employees earning between £100,000 and £125,140 paying a 63pc effective rate of income tax – up from 60pc today – plus 2pc in National Insurance contributions.

Nearly 700,000 Britons currently fall into this bracket, double the number from six years ago, according to official figures.

It’s not really up to you or Labour to decide if there’s ‘something wrong’ with people’s lives because they’re more comfortable than someone else, this is what you don’t seem to understand. At least you acknowledge people can hold different views, I think that’s at least some progress amongst Labour supporters.

Yes no one wanted to hear it. So here we are. Labour failing, taxes going up and that hole getting bigger.

I believe Rachel will tinker with pension contribution relief as well. If you’re in the £100-£125k bracket and it’s enormously stressful/time consuming then it’s probably not worth the effort -especially if you have children at nursery. Lowering pension contribution tax relief to 20% would really make it even more unappealing to take on additional risk, stress or responsibility

100%

She will try to spread the love/pain, in an attempt to silence any one group.

I feel for all of us - including the ‘broad shouldered’ and ‘non-working’ people, as we are known(?)

No its not, no one things the Black hole is 50bn for starters, its 31bn.
Sunak spent 29bn on a railway that was then cancelled, he cut NI by 11bn, the guy is an idiot.

Hence he led the Tory party to their biggest defeat ever, with Tories jumping ship to Reform.

Trump and the rest of NATO agree defence spend should go to 5% of GDP
For the UK, thats 189bn.....

How would you find that 189bn over the next 5 years or wouldn't you?
The cost of Tariffs? around 22bn to the economy, this year alone.

2 issues not even discussed in July 24.

We both earn a good wage, took out a £500k mortgage quite a few years back to live in a 4 bed semi in a decent catchment area. The house isn’t grand. The mortgage is a pretty low rate and is £2,800 a month. We have a Sen child who we pay to educate privately. That’s another £2,200 a month. These are choices we made, but we had no option with the private school. It was that or home educate and every penny is so well spent there. But so many other young people must be in a similar situation with regards to mortgages. £500k gets you even less in this area these days. Add in nursery fees and you can see why many high earners begrudging paying more tax. They’re skint too.

So many of my parents generation think a mortgage is £500 a month and they don’t even factor in nursery fees at all as they weren’t a thing when one parent could afford to stay at home.

I wonder if there should be a wealth tax, instead of constantly raising income tax

Wealth taxes don’t work. The government are well aware of how damaging a wealth tax would be the the economy. Labour would jump on it if it wasn’t massively damaging wouldn’t they?

The wealthy tend not to introduce taxes that damage their wealth and/or that of their supporters.

Is it really worth it in the long term to take on 7 years university debt to become a Dr when compared with not bothering and becoming state dependent? Probably is for now, it’s quite clear what the direction of travel is and why we have a worsening UK productivity issue.

Do you really think Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer think like that? I don’t think they do.

Terrific post, and bang on.

Edit: Soz, duplicated for some reason.

Rachel and Kier can’t even define what a wealthy person is let alone come up with coherent taxation policies. They also struggle with what a working person is or what a woman is.

Times & Guardian

Cabinet ministers have privately warned Rachel Reeves that increasing income tax in the budget may spell electoral disaster for the Labour party …
One cabinet minister called for Reeves to set out an “off-ramp” for reducing taxes …

Another minister said: “My concern is there hasn’t been enough consideration of the consequences of breaking the manifesto commitment. This could do to us what happened to the Liberal Democrats after the 2015 election, given voters are already extremely despondent with us.”

Doh!

Who else are you going to vote for?

Im not voting for any party who doesn’t know what a woman is - that’s Lib Dem’s and Green Party out immediately. Labour, Tories. Not Reform for decency reasons. So it’s Tories possibly though they have no chance here.

Fundamentally why? Surely as an independent nation we at least should have soek strength and resilience to handle the post Brexit difficulties

How would pay for the £189bn required to boost our defences and more importantly, keep the USA in NATO and under writing our security, against an expansionist Russia?

You don't want any tax rises, so how do we raise this money?

So how do we do that then?

Brexit has caused the x ch immigration crisis, introduced huge costs to our exporters & made living and working in Europe far far harder.

According to economists, it has cost 4% off GDP....

Public sector pay increases, NHS budget, welfare budget - let’s start there.

Happy to consider tax rises, holistically with the above.

But strength and resilience will see us through the self inflicted harm. And there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Thanks. Brexit was bad. It hurt trade with the EU (very silly to do) but fundamentally the UK economy is build a bedrock of strength.

You can't blame everything on Brexit

Anything but introduce a wealth tax for the super rich…. We are literally being squeezed to death.