“Tax the wealthy” (RR budget) what does this even mean?

[gggddjkki]

I don’t remember anxiously waiting for budgets like we have the last few years earlier on in my adulthood. But when you read statements like this (as I have seen in the headlines today) what do you interpret it to mean? What does taxing the wealthy look like to you? Taxing higher earners more? From what point? Higher taxes on industry?

Also about 6 months behind the curve, most insults have now moved on to "Reform or Farage" bot accusations

the three big taxes raise over three quarters of the total tax take. By ruling out a rise in these they have shot themselves in the foot. Tinkering around with IHT and property taxes isn’t going to raise the amount she needs and these are complex to implement

this government are weak - look at the WFA debacle - they made the decision and then backed down far too quickly. They’re not willing to make difficult decisions. The problem for them is that by not making the difficult decisions they are making things worse and so will lose popularity. If only they had the gumption to make the hard decisions and take the short term hit of unpopularity

It means they'll add extra tax to those wealthy enough to be able to pay more but not rich enough to employ accountants to ensure they take advantage of every loophole out there.

I'd like to see a government close the loopholes to ensure a fairer system but that will never happen because it would affect their mates and they'd not get cushy jobs and perks after they leave politics.

I never really get this argument. That a government is happy to be unpopular/voted out to "help their mates". And that most MPs specifically go into politics to do helpful things for their friends. It just seems a bit counter intuitive.

Evasion, avoidance, mitigation, cash-in-hand.

All with flourish in the face of another tax raid from these Labour thieves.

Yes they’re very low now, that poster sounds like they’re from June 2024. And look how that’s turning out.

There’s lots of people on this thread talking about rental property and measures that could be taken around that.

My only view on that is anecdotal and from my own experience. Recently I inherited a chunk of money when an elderly relative died. I had this lofty idea that I would buy a flat and be a good landlord, i.e. not charge my tenants ridiculous amount of money, fix things when they broke and generally keep the place in a good state of repair. I had plenty of terrible landlord when I was younger and I thought I could be the change!

When I looked into it, with the interest rates at the level they are, no relief on mortgages anymore and changes to taxation around rental income - it just didn’t make sense. I wasn’t trying to make a killing or anything. I just wanted to break even and hope for some capital growth over the long-term. The idea being that it would be a place for my kids to live someday.

I just couldn’t make it work. I put the money in an investment account instead.

I wonder if my story is representative of a lot of would be small landlords, who would be nicer landlords for tenants to have but can’t get into the market because it doesn’t add up financially. This means the only people that can afford to do it are the huge corporate landlords who are just in it to gouge tenants for as much as they can.

my point being, that if a system of rent control came in then wouldn’t this make this problem worse not better?

We can’t afford our current welfare bill though, so I’m not sure why we would choose to spend more for nothing to change.

What do you mean by untaxed wealth?

I don't think such a thing exists.

I am very wary. There is no definition of what wealthy actually means. From experience it sometimes means me. I have worked hard for a long period of time and will retire soon. I do not wish to pay more tax and see my living standards decline. I have paid consistently more than my fair share.

I'm not an advocate of the system as I think the can't be arsed need more of a stick to get them into work than a carrot. But we already give everyone a subsistence level of income, we would save a fortune on administration if you got rid of all the different types of benefit. I don't think many people would stop working, people like to have extras in life like holidays and netflix, a subsistence life would be dull.

What? Have I understood you correctly, that you expect the likes of, say, Tesco, to only make c£250,000 profit? (assuming the “lowest paid salary of the companies worker” would be equivalent to approx full time on min wage). On sales of £60bn?

Wow. Kiss goodbye to your pension, then, unless you are a public sector worker of course.

Whenever you ask who the ‘mates’ are you just get told Michelle Mone, then when you ask for a few more names, get accused of being a Tory bot.

Our country actually scores well on the corruption index and it’s quite rare for corruption to actually happen in higher level government. Rayner couldn’t even keep her legal-but-still-a-whoopsie SDLT quiet. We have thousands of social justice journalists out there absolutely gagging to trip them up for something. I’m far less worried about a few hundred thousand quid going missing than I am the shady influence of ultra religious MPs and their secret affiliations abroad.

They may well not go into politics with that aim but dont fool yourself that that's not where it ends the majority of the time.

There are many changes that could be made in many areas. They aren't and its not because it wouldn't benefit the general population.

And it doesn't matter which party is in power. They all act the same.

Massive companies and the extremely rich pay a fraction of their fair share and no government will tackle it.

The whole system is fucked and its not going to magically fix itself.

This point was clearly nonsense. Most companies has minimum wage employees so all companies would be limited to £250,000 profit.

Nor do I (absent those who built their wealth from say drug dealing) which is why I’m interested to know exactly what PP wants to be taxed.

Well I can well believe that of this government. They don't seem to care how their actions look. For example Lord Hermer seems to make an awful lot of decisions in China's interests rather than ours so presumably he's got some mates over there too.

But at least we are paying lots of PIP and DLA for mental health issues! And the pensioners are doing great!
hurray
/s

if the public doesn’t want to accept that first two categories of spending need to be reduced (as much wailing demonstrates), where do they think the money will be coming from? Magic money tree?

Tory opposition and Farage can shut up as they are not offering any constructive ideas (and asylum seekers cost tiny percentage of the overall welfare budget)

Trusts aren’t tax avoidance schemes. Anyone with money in a trust has to pay 6% of the whole value of the trust in tax every 10 years. In addition to that, any money taken out of the trust has income tax paid on it in exactly the same way and levels as everyone else pays.

Seriously?! My salary increases are very very much below inflation - the IFS states:

Real public sector pay at the end of 2023 was still 1% lower than its level at the beginning of 2007. Real private sector pay increased by 4% from 2007 to 2023. https://ifs.org.uk/publications/recent-trends-public-sector-pay

100% this. Hence, forced digital ids for everyone will be fast tracked while KS in power, plus, introduction of digital pound, government access to our bank accounts to monitor and control us, we all will be taxed at source. We will be cogs in a machine.

Im also worried about government fast tracking of assisted suicide bill. It’s probably will be used to cull the pensioners.

The best investment you could do right now is to
invest into your health. I decided to drop my self employment, get a WFH civil service job and go to gym more.

Salaries aren’t that much higher. The salary to house price ratio is not the same everywhere. In the north east it’s about 5 times, in the south east it’s 9 times.

I assume you have never owned your own business
Companies employ millions of people
We re-located our business out of the UK after the last budget
Jobs and tax income lost to the uk

The minimum wage has risen much faster than other salaries and now you are seeing managers being paid little more than the people they manage etc

add in all the cliff edges for benefits/tax rates and the current system disincentives ambition