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.

How can you turn thermostat down when can't afford to switch heating on?

They meant the thermostat in hospitals! I will edit my post

I’d have added a flat 10p charge to all upf sweets biscuits cakes etc.

Reform of IHT to make all inheritances under current thresholds taxable at 10%. Would raise 70bn per year and the amount inherited would be materially the same. I would have changed the farms allowance but made the allowance a bit larger.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Cut the defence budget significantly. Be the adults and stop the grandiose willy wagging that the nuclear deterrent and defence spending is.

It needs to hit the ones without UK shareholders, the corporate engineering that means millions in profits go overseas.

Which other stores? High streets and small businesses are closing down day by day.

In the spirit of MN posts on taxation how about:

Really increase income tax on the rich with rich being defined as anyone earning 25% more than I do.

Basically increase taxation on everyone else but most definitely not me.

It needs to hit the ones without UK shareholders

which global sites don’t have UK shareholders?

Which other stores? High streets and small businesses are closing down day by day.

There are shops that aren’t Amazon that still exist…

Basically increase taxation on everyone else but most definitely not me.

yep

Absolutely, I remember helping on a COVID ward and it was so hot, the windows only opened 3 inches.

Bonuses are taxed. My DH gets his bonus notification then mentally halves it. Don't get me wrong he earns well and does not begrudge paying the amount of tax he does.

Cutting overseas aid will mean more people coming here on small boats to escape the awful places they live in.

What, France?!

Plenty of tax evasion and benefit fraud going on with bank payments too, it's certainly not just cash. The trouble is that HMRC are largely absent these days - the chances of a business being investigated are pretty much zero and the dodgy business owners know it!

Well, there is the scope to properly charge NIC on bonuses by changing the NIC rules to allign with income tax in that NIC worked on total wages for the year (like tax) rather than "per payslip" which means that full NIC isn't charged on big bonuses etc.

Most of the chain stores and restaurants are now owned by hedge funds and overseas investors, so moving from, say Amazon to another chain store really makes no difference. The only difference you could make would be moving from Amazon to a genuinely local/independently owned small business.

The only difference you could make would be moving from Amazon to a genuinely local/independently owned small business.

But people want cheap…

At the moment I'm pretty sure IhT is only due on something like 5% of estates. (But above the threshold at 40%)

Agree there could be a lower threshold with a lower tax burden.

I agree that the penny off a pint was stupid. Not enough to make any noticeable difference to individual drinkers, but lots of combined revenue thrown away.

Petrol is different, as you have to buy 50, 60 or more litres at a time - not a pint or two like with beer - and a lot of travel is essential and not a social luxury. Plus, the tax on petrol was effectively already increased permanently by 5% with the introduction of E10 as standard, but most people never noticed.

A 1% property value tax would cost us the same as the interest on our mortgage for our quite average house in a not-expensive town. As PP said, this would basically make everybody permanent renters, if you're paying the same amount to the bank for 25 years to buy the house and then the same again to the council/government until the day that you die.

I think, with discussions like this, there are often suggestions as to how you could get more in subtly without actually acknowledging the impact on those who will thus lose that money.

It reminds me of those stupid regular New Year 'articles' in the tabloids that tell you how you can supposedly amass a fortune by putting aside 'just' 5p a day for a year, which you won't miss - but the gimmick is that it's an extra 5p for every day: day 1, 5p; day 2, 10p; day 3, 15p etc. Before long, it's very clearly a noticeable sum - but you also have the pointless faff with getting/saving all of those 5p coins - and then having your resulting 'fortune' made up of them!

You can only dismiss reality for so long.

Well since no one in the cabinet has run a business, what do people expect.

So true. Efficiency savings and stop fleecing tax payers.

Small independents can often be just as cheap, especially for smaller things like motor accessories, DIY tools, etc because of there being no costs of postage and order processing/handling. I happily drive 10-15 miles to a very old established DIY store who basically have everything you'd ever want. Constantly cheaper than ebay or Amazon and a lot cheaper than Homebase or B&Q.

Not just that, Starmer and Reeves actively hate small businesses. It's not just the employers NIC tax grab. They were useless during covid at challenging Sunak excluding 3 million self employed, freelancers and casuals from the covid support schemes. They showed themselves to either be incapable of understanding the problem or that they just couldn't care less.

The only difference you could make would be moving from Amazon to a genuinely local/independently owned small business.

Why can Labour not start to make that difference? Tax breaks for small business owners, eco businesses and start ups, Tax hikes for unsustainably greedy multinationals.

Self employed weren’t excluded from the Covid support schemes they had their own support scheme called the Seiss (self employed income support scheme)

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-a-grant-through-the-coronavirus-covid-19-self-employment-income-support-scheme

Why crack down on money laundering? Money laundering is the opposite of tax evasion. It’s a way of actually paying tax on the money.

I mean, crack down on crime. But this is a conversation on how to raise taxes, so allowing money laundering brings in tax revenue. The City of London is a hub for finances for this very reason. We are lax and allow vast sums of money into our systems to be cleaned and pay tax.

I sort of feel on this thread people are ill informed about economics.