The budget 2014

[VikkiMumsnet]

George Osborne is all set to deliver this year's budget on Wednesday 19th March.

Here's a useful link for what's expected to be covered. Headline issues are likely to include property tax and stamp duty, as well as an increase in the personal tax allowance (up to £10,000).

What do you want to see as part of the budget, and what are you dreading coming up? Share your thoughts below.

It's rare I find someone like minded like Contrarian on there. What a nice change. Yes I suppose all that.

The big problem at present is that we have not come out of recession as fast as thought and tax receipts are not going up and there is this massive national debt and on top of that the huge difference between what the state spends and what it receives each year. I think the interest on the debt alone is as much as the NHS budget. So huge problem left over from labour's time to deal with.

As for a tax on people's houses on top of council tax, it would not be very popular and would encourage people to live in a shoe box and spend their money on cocaine and fast cars. It's a bit unfair to tax those who choose to house their children rather than those who piss their wealth up a wall.

These days they leak most of the budget before it happens so I don't think much will be surprising.

But who defines deserving/undeserving?

The people to whom the money belongs. That's the one advantage of administering benefits locally, it personalises it. I accept that it'd be unworkable at the moment (for a whole host of reasons) but the principle is a good one.

I think all many of us ask from the benefits system is that it treats people fairly. At the moment, it is unfair on so many levels as to render the whole shooting match unfit for purpose.

Laura I'm (usually) about as popular a cancer on these threads. You won't do yourself any favours by identifying with my cause

I don't think it is because that leave vulnerable individuals open to being left destitute.

Contrarian
Council Tax (a tax levied and collected locally) is probably one of the most inefficient taxes out there (VAT being the most efficient I'd guess).

Do you have ANY evidence to show that Council Tax is less efficiently collected than VAT?

VAT is an esoteric incremental tax that depends on location, nature and date of supply that is collected and distributed by every business and authority in the UK on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.

Council tax and business rates are fixed annual amounts based on a bricks and mortar address.

You do not get much Carousel fraud in council tax.

The UK has the most centralised tax system in the world.
Countries like the USA manage to make local taxes democratically accountable to local people.
Why is the UK so scared of that?

what is unfair about council tax is that basing it on the value of the house might make sense if that house is owned but when it is rented the value of the house says nothing about the tenants income. someone may be in a housing association property in a nice area and end up with a tax bill more fitting for someone earning triple figures and i have never understood this 25% reduction for being single! i mean at the very least there are 50% less adults in your household! i do find it baffling that i as a single adult with one child will pay 75% council tax whilst a house up the road could have 4 adults sharing with each of them paying a third of the council tax i pay.

poll tax would be far fairer in terms of ensuring that households filled with adults sharing were paying their fair share and households with single earners supporting children weren't subsidising them. the four adults sharing up the road are producing a hell of a lot more rubbish, are driving and parking 4 cars etc etc.

i would much prefer a per adult charge levied upon every adult in that local authority. i was a bit young during the poll tax protests but can someone summarise what was considered so awful about it?

that is actually pretty outrageous isn't it? i'm a working single parent and don't have money to burn so why am i paying three times more council tax than an adult with no dependents to support living up the road? it is presented like a services charge paying for the services of your local area including police - well me paying 3x as much for my services as someone else better off than me seems crazy.

The trouble with the poll tax was that multi millionaires paid the same as students
and the implementation was a disaster : as the rules did not take into account the fact that people move house, might not be on the electoral roll etc etc etc

Council Tax discounts
There is a flip side to
one person in a huge house hardly uses council resources
which is
councils have to pay to house the homeless and deal with the financial costs of overcrowding
which is FAR FAR greater than any savings made on little old ladies in big houses

ALL council tax discounts should be abolished above Band E
you want to reduce the cost of your house - take in a lodger under the (tax free) rent a room scheme.

oh! and on this street there are several houses where full time working adult children (I'm talking people in their 40's not kids home from uni) live with their parents and own multiple cars and presumably aren't paying a penny or are giving their mum a tenner.

sorry for tangent but that actually sticks in my throat a bit now i think of it! i'm happy to support the poor and sick but the idea i'm subsidising the bloke over the road with a jeep, a sports car and a little runaround actually rather pisses me off!

it's not about big houses - it's that a woman and her teen son and daughter for example need a three bed place. the three adults living next door will be paying massively less than her even though she's a single earner and they have three wages and are using three times the services.

where would that mother put her lodger TIP? in the cupboard under the stairs? what a nonsense.

surely the banding system could remain but the charges be at per person at that band according to who lives there?

with immigration, in my local town at least, the demographics of who lives in a terraced house have changed massively. there are very few 'family' homes and a hell of a lot of rentals with as many people packed in as possible - re: every room in the house bar kitchen and bathroom is bedroom with at least one tenant. the state of the rubbish on some of these streets is appalling unsurprisingly because the street has 5 times as many people living on it as it used to.

oh and you try parking!

TGH I don't think so, because the charitable sector would fill the breech - as it did years ago.

Talkin It was a qualified statement. Although, I'd be certain that because of the number of people employed in collecting council tax (many many thousands) and the costs involved in chasing non-payers, it's not an especially efficient tax to collect. I'm pretty sure I could find some data to back it up. VAT on the otherhadn is collected on behalf of the government. Yes it's open to Fraud, but I suspect that the cost of collection (by comparison to Council Tax) is miniscule.

The geography of the UK does not lend itself to having a decentralised tax system (I'm not sure we're big enough).

HoneyBadger I agree. You wouldn't have seen the rises we've had in council tax had they been levied against individuals.

sorry - mad multiple posts - but there's also the policing - condense an area x5 and clearly you have more policing issues to be paid for and in this town massively increased council costs via immigration. sure if they're working the central government sees increased tax revenue but no extra in the council tax pot that is used to actually run the area.

THehoneybadger
the answer to your problem is local income taxes - as is done in places like the USA

there are Federal taxes - that mainly pay for the military
state taxes - that pay for medicare etc
and county taxes - that pay for schools and local services
all based on your home address and pay check
AND land taxes to cover infrastructure costs

other bits of the US system are pants, but the localised nature of it, linked to democratic accountability is what Pickles said he'd bring in
but then baulked when he realised he'd lose power

There is no need for a poll tax to be progressive becasue income tax already is! Levying the same amount across he board, would be equitable.

bloody hell - the implications of how heavy a subsidy i'm paying via council tax is sinking in. increased population = massive extra costs, those who are the extra population don't have to pay anything towards it and meanwhile my council tax bill goes up to cover the costs incurred by them? hadn't really thought about it like that till now.

Those of us who pay the most council tax tend to take the fewest council services. I am a single parent paying £3k a year which feels a lot to me.

What I want is a much smaller state. Until we have that tax cuts are just messing around whilst Rome burns.

PS I live in a city that has gone from 0% to 11% Polish in ten years : I know about the infrastructure pain
and many of those people do not even get to vote ....

see i can't go with the smaller state theory laura - i believe in taking care of the sick and the vulnerable and i don't want that to go and i don't believe that it needs to go when there are so many other ways to reduce costs and create a more equitable division of resources. i'm not talking communism i'm talking ceasing to let huge companies make massive profits whilst paying awful salaries and not contributing to the services they use. i'm talking about not being able to take a million pound bonus whilst slashing employee benefits.

my council tax 1k after discounts on a little 2 bed housing association place in central england. it may not seem much to most but i have health issues and a young child and can only work part time at this point so it is actually a massive sum to me. cutting that would have far more impact on low earners than raising their tax free allowance as many don't even earn enough to pay income tax anyway or in any case 25% or whatever of an extra thousand is not that much is it?

Talkin Why add to the public payroll though? Why not collect centrally (cheaply) and distribute locally?

We don't need a larger state to care for the sick and vulnerable. You raise some interesting and valid points, but again, I don't thik it's an either/or debate. Smaller state and clamp down on corporate abuses.