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.

By giving people approaching the end of life or with a devastating diagnosis a clear sighted right to choose, and not keeping patients existing, suffering prolonged, undignified lives in care homes, with repeated hospital admissions.

I have gone through this with both my parents, and I can assure you, if I had a dementia diagnosis ( even an early one) I would put my affairs in order and be gone. Unfortunately the law does not yet allow that. We treat our animals better.

That's the moral point. The hard headed truth is that it would also save money.

Ultimately, if something happened overnight and the UK turned into some utopia where we all did everything to live a perfect life, e.g en mass everyone stopped drinking, smoking, ate a perfect diet free of sugar, switched to energy efficient EVs, the government would be absolutely fucked.

they need people to drink. Smoke. Eat sugary food. Drive gas guzzling cars. Without that, they will lose billions in tax revenue.

@itsnotabouthepasta

"they need people to drink. Smoke. Eat sugary food. Drive gas guzzling cars. Without that, they will lose billions in tax revenue."

Nor really taxes on alcohol, tobacco
,and vehicles raises bugger all in the grand scheme of things. VAT, NI and income tax raises way more.

Plus you need to look at the cost savings for example alcohol raises £13 billion pa in taxes but costs the NHS £28 billion pa.

If the NhS switched to preventative care they’d be much better off.

i struggle to lose weight. I’m considered obese but I eat a healthy diet and go to the gym 3 times a week doing a mix of hiit, strength and cardio. I also get 12k steps a day. When I’ve worked with a PT, we tracked my macros for two years but I still couldn’t lose anything. I asked the NhS for help. The nurse referred me to the hormone clinic whose response was “perhaps your patient could try going to the gym”. At that time I was working out 6 days a week and deadlifting 80-100kg. But they won’t help anyone who is overweight / obese - they’d rather wait til it becomes a bigger issue and costs them more money.

similarly my daughter was needing grommets. They decided to wait for a year and pay for SLT instead. After a year they ended up doing the operation anyway. So all that money they could have saved…

The NHS does need reform. GP’s should be salaried and work in community clinics where care from a multidisciplinary team is provided. Why should District Nurses be salaried and GP’s run private businesses? You would not create that model today. Also consultants should be in hospitals full time. Most other jobs don’t let their staff moonlight on their time.

Spot on.

I would rather we had a smaller state than raised even more money. Reeves/ Starmer apparently are going to move on to cuts next and waste in bodies like the NHS but I will believe that when I see it.

I would end defined benefit pensions for the public sector for starters. I would reform BTL tax (not popular but where we are now is worse than where we were before), and I would also increase income tax. I wouldn't mind paying 1/2p more (which spreads the burden depending on how much you earn) rather than this very polarising tax policy they seem to have implemented.

Things that might help growth, get rid of the 2 child benefits cap, do more to fund childcare, remove the child benefit cap, do more to chase absent parents, get rid of the cliff edge that occurs at 100k (do we really want to discourage people from aiming high in life?) and raise the income tax thresholds. People can't spend what they don't have.

I agree with you about public sector pensions, although I believe things have changed for new entrants now.
I moved onto my estate 20 years ago and there were lots of young families around the same age as me. We are all still here, and I am the only one (57) who is still working. I am surrounded by retired teachers, nurses and prison officers who all retired at 55, all drive better cars than me and have more holidays.
I think it's an absolute disgrace, tbh.

Reading that back, I have to add that I am not a hypocrite and I would definitely do the same if I could, so there is probably an element of that in my feelings.
However, given that we have to suffer endless whingeing about pay and conditions in the public sector, it's funny how the fact that they - at the moment - only have to work until they are 55 never seems to be mentioned.

Maybe that’s because public sector workers take such a pension hit if they retire at 55 that virtually nobody does. In this house there’s a combined 76 years of public service, both of us were well over 60 when we retired because the pension reduction was unaffordable.

I agree with you about public sector pensions, although I believe things have changed for new entrants now.

They have

Maybe, I don't know. I do know that - off the top of my head - I share an estate with six public sector workers who all retired at 56 maximum. Maybe they were just lucky.
Over 60 is still below standard retirement age though

And so they should.

I didn’t say how much over 60. 🤷‍♀️ They were less lucky than financially illiterate, the pension hit is massive.

I'm not being argumentative here, but that being the case, their salary before retirement must have been pretty generous.
One of my early retired neighbours drives a brand-new BMW and his wife the same, another a new Land Rover. Both are replaced every couple of years. All take at least one holiday abroad and quite a few weekends away in the UK.
If this is life on a 'massive pension hit' I'm in!

You’re assuming their pensions are their only source of money. They’re at the age when people bank big inheritances.

True. But statistically unlikely, I would have thought.

My pension isn’t going to be great as a public sector worker. I think they changed in about 2014. I won’t be retiring at 55. I think the police still do. You could retire at 55 if you had worked in mental health.

Yes I don't think they are anywhere as generous as they were, which is only right tbh.
There is something fundamentally unfair about the Government ploughing much more taxpayers' money into the pensions of public sector workers than anyone in the private sector could expect.
And before anyone says it, I am aware public sector workers are taxpayers too.
I roll my eyes when I hear about the Government trying to get 'economically inactive' people back into the workplace, when their generous pensions have created some of them!

But are you aware that the pensions are to compensate for salaries being lower? Both of us could have earned far more in the private sector.

I’m not sure the lower pay thing is true on average. I’m public sector too.

But wages are pretty shit for all with years of stagnation regardless what sector you are in

I agree @Mlanket
A lot of public sector jobs don't have direct comparisons in the private sector anyway and those that do are pretty much on a par, especially when you take into account perks such as generous sick pay, flexitime etc.
A lot of the 'I could make more in the private sector' posts are not directly comparable work - I am thinking of one I saw on here who worked as a LA planning solicitor earning £30k who claimed she could earn £100k+ in the private sector (this was a few years ago by the way). Of course she could, if she changed the course of her career and worked in a big corporate law firm doing an entirely different type of job.
. Or she could stay doing the same thing and work in a small town legal practice and probably earn about the same as she was in the LA.

Depends on the circumstances. It used to be a thing a few years ago that if you were made redundant you could use the redundancy payment to buy out your pension reduction. And some schemes had a lower pension age anyway.