Am I the only one that thinks that the budget is good?!

[isitactuallybadthough]

NC’d for obvious reasons.

I mean it seems that they’re trying to help the working class?

I am not on benefits. I’m also not lucky enough to live in a property worth over £2,000,000. But surely the worst off in society will be better off under this? With the energy bill cut and two child benefit scrap? Also books for libraries, national wage increases. I do understand people feeling frustrated at the pension/ISA parts, that will probably affect DH and I but overall I’m pleased as the worst off will be slightly less worse off?

I support the lifting of the two-child UC cap, and paying more tax so other families don't have to work to feed or clothe their children. I don't mind paying £500 a month to travel to work, and getting up in the dark and cold in winter, and working 10 hours a day, to generate that tax. I don't mind paying even more tax so the state can cover the costs feeding, clothing and childcare. I don't mind seeing my graduate children, struggling to find jobs, paying for welfare bill through a freeze on the student loan repayment threshold, announced in the Budget. We will have more time together as a family as they won't be able to afford to leave home, as a third of any graduate salary will be paying taxes and student loan debt. I won't mind when the government has to raise taxes yet again next year, as the welfare bill will rise as busienss layoff staff or reduce hiring to cover the increased business rates and wage costs. I'm afraid though my patience with being a tax machine will wear off at some point, likely sooner than I expected.

The worst off don't need altruistic words or sanctimonious attitudes, they need the money that comes from people who pay a lot of tax.

My worry is that with this mansion tax, they have started at £2m but before we know it that will have dropped and house prices will have risen so a lot more people will get caught in it.

Ok. Let's leave the kids out of it. Something like taxing your pension IN as well as OUT, Taxing your house, taxing your car, taxing your savings. On top of already having taxed you for this...All of these measures punish people for taking responsibility for themselves and their finances both in short and long term. Businesses have been crippled by the extra NI. They no longer hire. If you're lucky you get a one out/ one in. Most often is just one out. People in the private sector are NOT getting pay rises in line with inflation. And very few have final salary pensions. Ultimately, people like me are essentially getting a pay cut. You keep shaking the money tree at some point there will not be anything else falling out of it. The private sector is getting screwed a bit too much. So yeah. I am fully entitled to not be elated by being subjected to tax raids. You wanna tax something? Tax the plethora of Chinese tat that people but on temu or some such. Tax Amazon for any employee on a time limited contractual agreement. Tax crap food more. Tax British gas. Tax water companies that discharge waste in waterways. There are other ways!!!

My other concern is the constant raising of minimum wage. My husband employs over 350 people. Each year the costs escalate significantly and given the industry he’s in, it’s only a 1-3% profit margin to begin with!

Isn’t only working families claiming UC who will benefit from the 2 child cap being lifted?
Non workers living solely on benefits are still subject to the toral benefit amount cap, yes?

Ok. So you have benefited from an environment that rewarded hard work and allowed you to capitalise on your success. I want you to be able to fully enjoy the fruit of your labour. But if you want to pay more tax to balance it all out, fell free to volunteer your money directly to the local school your kids are not attending. Pay for an extra teacher or all the Kids' trips or their lunch.
I am not against tax. I am against tax that penalises hard work, planning and trying to ensure I am not a burden on society in 30 years time.

Not true. My husband gets PIP and UC and he doesn’t have to do any work. He’s got Fibromyalgia. He gets around £2500 a month.

I am very uneasy about this tax too - and I don’t own a £2 million house. It just seems to be a big change to say “If you own something expensive you have to pay more tax”.
People are entitled to own things; they are already paying tax on income, they pay VAT etc and now they are paying tax for owning a possession. This feels like something new.
The idea that they can defer the payment until they sell the house or die is also a worrying new precedent because it means tax no longer needs to be in any way affordable.

@Obeseandashamed If he can't afford to pay even the minimum wage to his staff without the business struggling then how viable is it? There has to long been a culture of the government effectively subsidising companies to pay low wages while the state is topping people up with benefits.

Oh do get lost with your “making bad choices” crap.

You do understand that anyone is one illness, one accident, one disability, one sexual assault etc etc away from their life turning 180’ and them living in poverty, relying on benefits etc, don’t you?

If more businesses aren’t viable what happens to employment and jobs?

There is no evidence that removing the child benefit cap will lead to more children being born to anyone, low income families or otherwise. One study in Wales showed a small increase in birth rates, but not big enough to be statistically significant and attributable to benefits.

There's actually very little evidence to support the efficacy of any pro-natalist policies, though the cap wasn't lifted as part of a pro-natal agenda.

So much casually ignorant contempt for low income families on this thread. People need to get their heads out of the Daily Telegraph and GBeebies, do a bit of research before spouting off about their money paying for other people's reckless breeding, and try having a bit of empathy. It takes imagination, I know, but not everyone is out to take something from you.

@ForthelovI agree. It seems like policies of envy similar to the VAT on education. We don’t own a residential property worth £2m either but the tax doesn’t sit well with me. We are band E but have a normal 4 bedroom family home. The 4th bedroom is a box room! The postcode is what attracted the value of the house rather than the size of the house itself.

@Flapjacker48 I never said he can’t afford to pay them but it makes it a lot of work for little gain when your margins aren’t huge to begin with. An increase to 350 wages as a family run business is a lot 🤯. It’s mainly the warehouse staff that are on minimum wage but every time the minimum wage goes up those in more skilled positions also begin demands for salary top up as the gap between skilled and unskilled workers narrows. That coupled with the general increase in costs and NI hikes last year makes it difficult for businesses, particularly in his industry which is an industry that affects most households. The business hasn’t been passed down to him from his dad either but when it does that scares me too as it will likely attract lots of tax and we simply don’t have the personal funds to pay it.

@EasternStandardExactly! I know my husbands family business has looked at investing in more technology to streamline but that means cutting jobs which again doesn’t help local people. He has also had to move some of the admin stuff abroad to an external company to try and cut costs and keep pricing competitive. His business turnover is a figure that makes my eyes water but his personal pay is less than that of a lot of people working in finance, senior healthcare etc etc. We have a mortgage and don’t live a particularly lavish lifestyle.

I think the evidence is that this seldom happens - that birth rates are not greatly affected. I can hunt out the evidence but not now , I m on my way to work 🙂🙂

You are part the problem not the solution.

A violent or abusive parent should still be financially responsible for their children but with no right of access, or only supervised access via a contact centre. It's unreasonable to expect the taxpayer to be happy about assuming full financial responsibility just because one parent refuses to step up.

Taxes pay for welfare to be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice and not a substitute parent for parents who can / could step up financially but can't be bothered. (children in care excepted)

If your concern is genuinely about child welfare, your energy would be far better spent asking why absent parents are allowed to dodge their financial obligations rather than trying to shame or malign people who think personal responsibility matters. Help should exist to supplement, not replace, parental responsibility. It should also be limited by number of children and time.

So, stop trying to insult the intelligence of people who feel empathy with the mother and compassion for children whilst also having an expectation of responsibility from parents.

I'm pretty sure businesses will deduct employer national insurance contributions from pension contributions.
So if you and your employer put in over £2000 to your pension per year it'll be taxed at 17 or 23% depending whether you're salary is over £50k.
NI is regressive tax at this point: The higher rate is for lower earners who are trying to save more. Yet another tax cliff edge!
It will hit most people in their 40s and 50s trying to do the right thing for retirement.

I'd like to think it is to encourage younger people to pay into pensions early so they put the £2k in per year.
I estimate that the average UK earner with the standard NEST pension isn't impacted (but haven't researched the detail).

So all those who don't work will now be paid more from our taxes .... the more children they have the more money they get.
All because the left wing back benchers are scared of losing their seats at the next election
They care about their jobs as MPs not about the kids.
They have broken their manifesto promises yet again.
Bring on reform

Poverty is not something anyone should live in, adults or children and long term this impacts on the health and longevity of the individuals. So individuals in the most most deprived areas don't live as long etc. and it becomes a cycle as the cost of things go up people need more to survive. However money doesn't fix the underlying issues, it of course helps but we need to improve education, get more people working, improve wages and build communities to support individuals and families, this will help improve the position longer term.

Doesn’t help at all with the farm moving down generationally, though. Which is the main issue here.

Honestly I think 4 million would have been an incredibly fair starting point. I understand to people not in the industry that sounds like an awful lot of money, but everything is so expensive it gets swallowed up so quickly.

As I said before, my examples are from one of the cheapest places to buy and live in the UK. I don’t know how any farmers in the south of England will ever cope considering land value there alone is hugely more expensive.

I think overall it’s a good budget

the outrage ive heard over the mansion tax is laughable . You would think they had set it at 1 million

Very little I agreed with or can get on board with tbh. And not simply because it negatively impacts me - my concerns are more broadly that there was zero policy in there to trigger and encourage the economic growth that Labour spouted continuously pre-election. Nothing. We desperately need growth in the UK and they've now delivered 2 budgets that dampen growth significantly.

NMW - whilst it sounds great on paper, and I want everyone to be paid a fair wage, the reality is less young people in work. A struggling pub/restaurant hiring 4 waitresses currently on NMW, will likely just make one or two redundant as a result of the NMW hikes. They can, of course, raise their prices for their customers but they've already tried to do this following the NI hikes last year and there's only so much price rising to be done before people simply don't bother to go to the pub/restaurant as frequently anymore and the business owner has to close. It also means small businesses needing to raise wages up the chain too - you can't have the waitress on a higher (or very close) wage to the bar manager, for example. So the bar manager's wage then has to increase too. Great for the staff... but generally not feasible for a lot of businesses in the current climate.

Increase in income tax payable on savings, dividends and rental income if you're a landlord are not right IMO. Income is income - tax it as such. I think its dangerous when the gov starts specifying types of work/roles that require more penalising taxation (i.e., landlord). Its clear what will happen - the additional tax will be passed on to the renters in rent rises, and for struggling families that means less disposable income in the market and for lower income families it means directly paying back that tax-take to the landlord themselves in the form of UC for rent element. It's circular and pointless. Likewise, the savings income tax rise - why is the government disincentivizing people to save? Those on additional rate tax bands already have no personal savings allowance, so every single 1p they make in interest on savings will be taxed at 47%. This is grossly unfair IMO. Not too much issue for me as I am comfortable with stocks and shares and will just transfer cash savings (outside of ISAs) to S&S investment account as CGT is less than income tax - but I know that for a vast number of people investing is not something they are comfortable with, nor is it appropriate for those who want to take the savings as use them in the very near future (it needs to be invested for multiple years to de-risk it).

Salary sacrifice rules are contradictory with the governments conversation on pensions to date. We hear that the UK is not saving sufficient sums to their pension and that the gov wants to incentivize us to save more into our pensions (probably as they know the state pension is a bubble that will inevitably burst and many people will have to rely on their private pension in their elderly years!). Yet, as a direct result of the salary sacrifice limit rules my pension will lose out on £2,700 of contributions each year (my employer puts both employee and full employer NI savings into the pot as a result of salary sacrifice arrangement). Compound that across the 30 years I have left to work and that number becomes a big number, making a significant change in my overall pension pot value come retirement.

And yet, we're all supposed to be thankful that those saints in the Labour party took away the 2 child cap and as a result raised the welfare bill even further. It's genuinely ridiculous and a huge display of economic illiteracy and incompetence.

It's going to lift many children out of poverty.

The 2 child limit was either badly thought out or deliberately cruel.

On of my neighbours 'took on' three of her grand children as their mother wasn't fit to be a mother. Her other daughter took on another three, all primary aged, she was 19 when she was awarded custody.

Relatives who foster are not entitled to the fostering allowance.

It always comes down to "give all your money away, then" when people have run out of legitimate arguments. I am not a billionaire, so no amount of charitable giving on my part alone will make a significant impact. Philanthropy is not the solution - it's basically what they rely on in the US, and look how that's going. People who can afford to be squeezed a bit more need to be squeezed a bit more. And those living in £2m+ houses definitely fall into that category.

I think you're going to get your wish. Reading these threads last night and today, I think there's a very good chance Reform will get in. It makes me really sad, and worried for my kids' future.