What other ways could Rachel Reeves have raised more money?

[Katypp]

As a former small business owner (thankfully former!), the additional costs would have crippled our company.
But according to some posters on MN, we should just have sucked them up from our profits and if we could not afford to do so, should not have been running a business in the first place. If only life were as simple as some (who clearly have never run a business) seem to think it is.

Anyway, I wondered if any other posters would like to contribute to a thread of suggestions of alternative ways money could have been raised. Specifics if possible, not general Tax The Rich type posts.

I'll go first ...

1. Restore employees' NI to the level it was before Jeremy Hunt tinkered with it last Budget. We've only had the uplift a few months so the pain would be minimal
2. Get rid of the pension triple lock and put pensioners on a level footing with other benefits increases.

Perhaps their "TOTAL" remuneration packages should be flexible then. I.e. allow them to sacrifice some or all of their enhanced pension benefits and increase their gross wage accordingly. That would put them on more of a level playing field with the private sector and allow for better comparison when people are comparing roles or applicants deciding which job route to take.

As it stands, with pension benefits being mostly compulsory and the public sector rarely having the same flexibility re choice of benefits etc as often available in large private sector organisations, applicants find it incredibly difficult to understand the "hidden" benefits they get from being in the public sector, not just pensions, but also enhanced sick and maternity leave, paid sabbaticals, flexibility to work elsewhere at the same time or have their own sideline self employment (usually banned in the private sector), etc.

On a more practical level, almost nothing on your list could be completed within five years anyway.

That is not true, at all.

Agreed.

Perhaps if people are incapable of understanding the implications of a public sector package they’re unsuitable to work there. The capacity to comprehend something so basic isn’t exactly genius level.

Well that's me out then.
I can't understand why public sector workers are paid broadly the same as their private sector counterparts (in comparable jobs, not the usual 'I could earn more in the private sector if I went up several rungs of the ladder and moved' type posts), have superior perks while working, then a pension far superior to most workers when they retire early.
Call me thick.

Yes. And likely it'll get even worse after this Parliament because if we have more of the same policies that Reeves and Starmer are now implementing things will get even worse. The Conservatives have become an absolute joke in terms of economic management as well. And all other options we're presented with are even more extreme, less balanced, more ideological and hence even less focused on the obvious, well-evidenced and practical economic reforms that need to take place so that the UK PPP doesn't continue to drop against our peers year on year, trade deficit spiralling, ever-increasing reliance on raising FDI to plug the hole in the budget, import more inflation on essential imports devaluing the currency further, and with no productivity growth have no way for living standards to ever rise without it being a charade built on higher inflation, just nonsense redustributing ever-smaller slices of cake between people instead.

It really is quite pathetic that we have supposed "leaders" flailing around rather than taking any of the many obvious measures to start to improve things that are staring them in the face and deliberately ignoring all of the evidence from robust, long-term studies that demonstrate measures of the kind I suggested would do a great deal to improve overall living standards. Meanwhile all of them bleating on about their political obsessions with various ideological nonsense and squabbling about this like toddlers while the country burns. We simply do not have anybody competent in the HoC for whom anybody sensible can vote.

I would have liked for her to have started to bring about the end of paying $8 million pounds per day to house asylum seekers in hotels.
(But I totally confess that I have no realistic achievable alternatives to suggest atm).
And this would be a drop in the ocean, but I very much resent Peers being able to claim £342 per day just for turning up in the House of Lords, and that's not including additional expenses.
And abolish their dining subsidies - if I have to pay the going rate for lunch, etc when working, why can't they?
Or take a packed lunch ffs?

Again, mostly trivialities in comparison to the overall UK GDP and tax revenues and spending commitments.

I understand why some of these things irritate people, but do you really think thatif what you've suggested was implemented tomorrow it would make any significant difference to the UK economic outlook, tax revenues, funding available for public services, and therefore raise living standards?

I can assure you that it wouldn't. This is really the problem: people preoccupied with perceived unfairnesses (which may or may not be the case) but that are pretty much irrelevant from an economic perspective and our politicians or media distracting these economic irrelevancies while the country burns. This is the whole purpose of the ideological rhetoric from both of our major political parties (espousing "value" - ahem - that you'll note vanishingly few of them comply with themselves).

Look! A squirrel!!

Some of the things you mention might be worth looking at simply as a matter of fairness once all of the major pressing economic issues have been addressed, but it is a question of priorities. If you don't want to get poorer year after year then you're focusing your attention in very sillly areas that won't make any difference even if your wish list was enacted in full.

I agree, a few million here and there may irk people but in the big scheme of things it's small change down the back of the sofa. Especially when the country is over a trillion in debt and paying a hundred billion in interest on that debt (more than the annual education budget!).

I think the problem is that people just can't comprehend "big" numbers, so what seems to the average Joe Public to be "big" is actually trivial. That's also when the politics of envy come into play, i.e. the whoops of delight when VAT is added to private school fees which, again, is absolutely trivial and won't make a jot of difference to anyone nor anything.

Same with all the frothing about, say, Tesco making millions in profit. Again, small fry. Divide that by the number of stores, the number of customers or the number of staff and it's a tiny number. No one would bat an eyelid if, instead of Tesco, there were 100 smaller "chains" of supermarkets as each chain would declare a profit of one hundredth of Tesco which would look a more palatable number to Joe Public!

It's ALL a numbers game, but unfortunately, "numbers" isn't something that the majority of the population are fluent enough to work with nor analyse!

Divide the numbers down into population size and all the things that get people frothing and hot under the collar are pretty trivial.

I wouldn’t call you thick, that would be incredibly rude but it’s a false premise. A number of people I know professionally moved sectors and virtually doubled their salary. Quite a lot of them moved back again because they found their values were compromised not (before you say it) because they didn’t meet their new employers’ expectations.

5% transaction tax on any online companies operating in the UK and declaring a non UK head office for tax purposes and thereby avoiding corporation tax etc - you can't get away with this in many other country's and no Amazon hasn't left all these other country's!!

This suggestion isn't entirely silly. I would address is rather through a minimum % charge on UK-generated revenues for multi-nationals and a review of transfer pricing tax law.

Factoring in maintenance for calculation of UC payments after 12 months of consistent payments. At the moment 'some ' women are getting pretty large payments as well as full UC and rent paid etc and are better off than many women working a lot of hours on modest salaries with low or no UC or maintenance and I find it hugely unfair on these women and unfair on tax payers too.

Again, another ridiculously trivial and vindictive post, presumably driven by some jealousy of someone and perceived personal unfairness - as most such posts are - rather than that you genuinely believe this is the biggest econ

@TheWildRobot it most certainly isn't jealousy - I'm not in that position at all- I personally think it unfair on those not in that position and yet working full time and getting sod all help and the 2 people I know in that position work as little as they can get away with and are costing the state close on £900 a month each that counts as free cash- .multiply it by some fair old numbers of people and that's some fair old wedge. It all adds up.

@TheWildRobot maybe a better compromise is 'ignoring' the first £350 or so for benefit calculations- above that I think it's nuts and a disincentive to working too. If someone doesn't claim benefits then I don't give a monkeys if they get £1500 a month maintenance .

Posted too soon!

... biggest economic issue facing the country? Surely you can't genuinely think that.

Single parent households are more likely to be in poverty for obvious reasons and already penalised by our tax system. Sensible measures in respect of this would be:

1. Properly enforced CMS deducted at source like tax and student loan payments

2. Pursuit of non-payment (for those who aren't PAYE) with the same vigour as non-payment of tax. The best way to achieve this would be for HMRC to make the determined maintenance payments automatically then recoup them from the non-resident parent so they have an incentive to do so.

3. Set the rates of maintenance at 50% of the cost of raising the child, including childcare expenses. "Oh, that's so expensive and will leave me poor" isn't an excuse. Tough. The resident parent has no such choice when the child needs a roof/ heating/ clothes/ food. The current percentages are a disgrace.

4. like tax evasion punish non-payment properly. Initially removal of passports or driving licences and then imprisonment for persistent evaders.

5. Perhaps once such a system where resident parents received 50% of the costs of actually housing and raising a child was enforced, received reliably via HMRC and appropriate penalities enforced for non-payment, you might have a case for taking them into account in UC payments.

Once the tax system has been reformed as stated earlier as well, so that single-adult households aren't unduly penalised with more tax than other households with the same income.

Until then perhaps you should focus on the things actually messing up our economy which are trashed exports and trade relationships and have quadrupled the trade deficit, irrational tax regimes with huge cliff-edges from some of our most productive workers, a total lack of appropriate investment in infrastructure and a very punative regime against business growth and SMEs who often also struggle to access finance, a broken and totally unsustainable healthcare and social care model, ditto with pensions, and terrible standards of education due to vastly insufficient funding of schools.

@TheWildRobot yes it most certainly isn't the biggest economic issue but the question wasn't biggest economic issue- it was how could she raise more money ?

To be frank if they sorted out building or converting a shit ton of decent emergency accommodation for homeless people currently being held in vastly overpriced B&B hovels, that would probably save a ton of cash too but in the first instance requires spend.

The problem is a lot of things that would save a great deal of money require a fair bit of up front spending.

Yes, but you don't go hunting for change down the back of the sofa cushions when you are burning £50s, you stop burning the £50s.

As was discussed earlier in the thread, these things you mention are trivialities in terms of the overall budget.

That is the problem that people seem to be unable to grasp.

They get a bee in their bonnet about some perceived unfairness (true or not) that they've observed in their own life and don't seem to be able to grasp that even if the things they are stating they want were all done it would be not much more than a rounding error in terms of public services/ tax revenue/ overall GDP.

My understanding of the thread that it wasn't just about trivial ways to raise insignificant amounts of additional revenue. It was about "what would you have done instead?" i.e. if you are critical of Reeves' actions (or indeed those of the previous Government) what measures you would have taken instead that would actually improve the UK's fiscal and economic situation (raise sufficient revenue to compensate for not doing the idiotic things she has done, or the Government before her has done) and fund public services properly and not leave people poorer and poorer year after year. Therefore, I thought the OP was asking for suggestions that would actually have a significant impact, not people's trivial complaints that are so small from an economic point of view that (even if valid) would make no difference whatsoever to the outlook for UK living standards.

indeed, that’s so silly. Probably increase nhs bill for alcohol issues down the line.

I just hate all of these pointless attacks immigrants/ single parents/ disabled people/ landlords/ entrepreneurs/ <insert otherchated group of people> nonsense rather than anybody pushing their MPs to make any of the changed that would actually improve IK productivity and therefore wealth and living standards.

Every thread on this here is always the same, the same tired old tropes and nonsense about things that would never make any difference in terms of the UK budget, raising household income or being able to reduce taxes, and funding to public services adequately.

Uuugh. It's just so depressing.

I shouldn't waste time bashing my head on this wall because nobody ever listens or bothers to look at the data or numbers like @taxguru said.

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Profession
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1. Commercial manager
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2. Taxation expert
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4. Product manager
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7. IT manager
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8. Electrician
48
9. Programmer Analyst
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10. Financial Analyst
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None of them public sector where the minimum retirement age to receive pension is 60 rising to 65.

You also have to consider the practicalities - do you really want a 65year old police/firefighter/paramedic attending an emergency?

Who is more valuable to society, risks their life and mental health? A taxation expert or a public sector worker. And you resent them retiring early and getting a pubic sector pension? Because the taxation expert will retire earlier with the DC pension due to high salary.

Definitely politics of envy. Envious of pensioners, disabled, public sector workers, the unemployed or partially employed, immigrants, single parents etc because they receive state support and you've lost the notion of society. You just see how much it costs you and not how much it benefits you. If you don't need society go live off grid. Otherwise pay your way and stop moaning.

There are many of today's pensioners in receipt of final salary pensions far higher than many peoples salaries. The tax take from them is far lower as they don't pay any national insurance. That's before all the freebies like free travel and free prescriptions. Its time to combine NI and income tax and then those wealthier pensioners would pay their fair share.

We ourselves are some of them and would be prepared to increase our contribution to society.

Tax the royal family!

This is insane. Doctors are the most expensive people in a hospital. They should be spending all their time helping sick people. Why on earth would you want them doing the cleaning rota or scheduling laundry? What do you think NHS managers do and how much do you think they are paid?

Unless I can't read properly, OP's opening post was asking for other ways in which Rachel Reeves could have raised more money.
Please tell me where OP asked what should RR have done to make a significant difference in the UK's economic outlook?
They are two very different questions, are they not?
And I did acknowledge that raising money by changing the structure of the House of Lords funding model and taking an axe to their laish expenses would
be a "drop in the ocean", or maybe you missed that?
And the comment about packed lunches was designed to inject a bit of satire into the issue - I probably should have made that clearer, so sorry..........😊

Welfare needs to be looked into. We can’t afford it. Debt is worrying as we just had more debt.