The budget will be 'painful'

[darada]

We're going to get absolutely bent over a barrel aren't we?

I fear the middle classes are going to be hit hardest because the poor don't pay that much (not unreasonably) and the very rich have access to accountants, lawyers and advisers and therefore will wriggle out of having to really pay.

I don't mind paying my fair share but I fear we're going to be squeezed and the money is going to be wasted a lot of it.

Anyone else feel a tad dispirited like me?

I don't, you are correct. But articles like this give a very good idea of the situation.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/01/amazon-uk-services-main-division-pay-no-corporation-tax-for-second-year-in-row-tax-credit-government-super-deduction-scheme

They lied as per pp they were correct to say that, and used whatever they could to hide further tax rises.

As for your claims of stupidity, well as someone who posted the promises did not match the funding which were apparently 'fully costed' btw Labour voters were not up for hearing it. Anger I believe was the main emotion at hearing the promises implausible.

In fact given the state of this site pre GE to then claim there was no understanding, well maybe you and pp are looking at the wrong voters.

The tax burden is already yours, the Labour gov will try to take more as you are pretty much easy pickings

Where it falls down for them is impinging growth as people make different choices

Also I'm already sick of AR and her spiteful plans to let building companies have free rein to build a load of overpriced ugly shitty homes in the middle of the countryside.

In my experience, the average person lacks common sense, reinforced after reading so many comments here.

What our dear Chancellor really need to do is reverse the 2 NI cuts that were made by Hunt last year, and the £22bn black hole is completely filled, but no she (and Sir Starmer) will play politics and chose to not increase income tax, NI or VAT!!

Rather let's penalise hardworking people with increases in inheritance tax, CGT and let pensioners freeze..

NIMBY?

This, this is another really shitty decision that ought to have a lot of opposition but seems to have got a bit buried amongst all the other poor decisions Labour are making

I think they’ll move the CGT rates to match the Income Tax rates and maybe remove the CGT allowance altogether. Realistically CGT rates should have nothing to do with income tax banding, it should be a flat rate regardless of how much you earn.

I suspect the freezing of the income tax bands may be extended but maybe they’ll simplify the nonsense over £100k and simply tax everything over £100k at 50%.

Maybe they’ll increase the Stamp Duty for multiple properties or set a national policy of 5x Council Tax for second homes or something.

They’ll probably mess with Inheritance Tax too, maybe reducing the allowances and likely removing exemptions. I’d like it if they removed the limits on gifting (e.g. the 7 year rule) - but I’d prefer if they just abolished IHT.

Pension Tax Relief we are hearing so much about it’s difficult to think they won’t change this, but I think it will take time/work to implement changes here. I can see them reducing the maximum tax-free 25% to a set £ amount but think this would be backwards as it would punish pension investment growth.

The State Pension should be phased out gradually (long term) by legislation progressively forcing private pension contributions to rise.

Things like cutting MPs troughs back (expenses etc) will never happen and quite frankly is dust in the wind from a numbers perspective.

I'm happy to be a NIMBY. Around here it is farmland that gets built on, land that should be used to grow food rather than relying on imports which cost more £ and greater cost to the environment.
Concreting over fields and cutting trees down creates issues with drainage and run off which further erodes land. New estates are usually built with no thought to infrastructure and can decimate rural doctors/schools etc. Rural living = relying on cars as public transport tends to be non-existent which causes further environmental impact.
For all of the above reasons I'm happy to be a NIMBY.
Would be much better to invest in refurbishing current empty homes in places with existing infrastructure. Except that would cost too much

Absolutely disgraceful that CGT bands should be aligned with income tax bands, especially as you can't write off any loss made in the year against tax paid, all you can do is carry forward loss to future years.

Well of course it is. Bloody obvious after the mess the previous government left.

"The State Pension should be phased out gradually (long term) by legislation progressively forcing private pension contributions to rise."

Most people do not earn enough to save enough for a proper pension. Private pensions for the majority of people were always about having a top up to teh state pension.

I think tax should be equalised for all income, however it is earned.

Yep, me too.

Accusing people of being Nimbys is so short sighted.

These are not well built, well insulated,.efficient, small homes for first time buyers. These are all 4 or 5 bedrooms and 2 or 3 bathrooms crammed together, built as cheaply and quickly as possible, with no infrastructure. Building on green fields and farmland is much cheaper and easier for developers than building on existing brownfield sites. We need our farmland and green spaces.

Yet you avoid the point that MPs can claim energy bills as expenses on their second homes. And you witter on about how ordinary working taxpayers ahould be means tested whilst those in power don't

This!! Everyone is banging on about Tories and their cronies wasting money but we’ve conveniently forgotten about furlough and the benefits it brought. There is no magic money tree to pay that back. It’s going to take years to recover from this and people have extremely short memories.

It's such a knee jerk reaction I agree

Absolutely!
The government want to aim for 300,000 new homes built per year. And yet developers across the country are sitting on 1.5m permissions that haven’t been built!

If they were prevented from land banking and forced to build out those permissions already granted, it wouldn’t be necessary to give ANY more permissions for around 6yrs!

How do you force a company to build?

100% this. We’re in the same situation and it’s exhausting. Easy to target people and this income scale but not so easy to replace highly skilled people if we all get fed up and either leave or cut down hours/responsibility.

No one is making you do the job you are doing or work the hours you are working. Change it if it does not work for you.

And how is that good for anybody? Or perhaps that is what we are now reduced to. Work less if you don’t want to be constantly raided by taxes that are both unfair and not pragmatic.
as if it’s that easy to unpick anyway 🤷‍♀️

DH will and that means less income tax to treasury plus no VAT on school fees + a skills gap to do his job. He will take a much lower skilled job away from someone else. Multiply that by many others in the same boat and then where does the money come from for public services?

Pension relief reduction, reduction in inheritance tax allowances and the maintaining of personal tax allowance, pushing millions into paying tax on pension ... that's my guess

Some people will want to work longer hours in higher paid jobs. They did when the tax rate was higher than it currently is.
If you do not, then that is fine.