If Labour raises taxes what will you think?

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Typing on my phone so not sure I can do a poll? But, if the government raises income tax or NI at the budget, will you think:

A - let’s get real, they had no other choice
B - those duplicitous / inept bastards

I will think I made the right decision in the summer to leave the country for a while. Hopefully my move is complete before the chancellor appropriates some of my money for having the temerity to do so :)

Yep.

Why are people allowed to send unlimited amounts of money out of the country? That is money that could be spent in our economy.

Why is the govt funding political charities? They can raise their own money.

Full reform of councils. I have seen the criminal profligacy. 99% of councillors are a complete waste of money. Our council tax pays for generous allowances for minimal - extremely minimal - input.

There will be no productivity improvement.

Welfare spending will increase.

More money will be poured into the incredibly wasteful and failing NHS.

Those who work will continue to be rinsed for more and more tax.

The crazy NET ZERO policies will continue. Delivering the world’s most expensive energy prices to factories, business, and homes.

Pensioners will continue to be enriched by the younger generations through the unsustainable and decadent triple-lock.

And overall, things will get worse and worse, and worse.

This………

I agree but I also think they must have always known this was on the cards. Therefore I am going B. They knew they'd have to do this sooner or later but they lied and promised they wouldn't, because if they'd been honest they never would have got elected.

Rishi Sunak was absolutely spot on. But this is Labour, so it should never have been a surprise to anyone that this would happen.

I fully agree with your summary but for me the scariest part is the no improvement in productivity.

Tax increases discourages behaviour (eg smoking or even speeding fines are a kind of discouraging tax). Government support, benefits or subsidies encourage behaviour.

Now as we can see from this thread there are a number of posters (either in employment or small business owners) that are feeling "what's the point anymore ".

It's very easy to destroy ambition and motivation and therefore growth and increased productivity through high taxation. It is incredibly hard to recreate it again once it's gone, except through a lot of pain (eg not being able to afford to feed your family will motivate you but it's not very pleasant).

I fear that we are institutionalising low productivity not just in the public sector but also the private sector and even amongst small business owners.

This is really worrying and creates a culture of "not really giving a shit anymore ".

This is lethal. Completely predictable given pre GE messaging but just watching it unfold is still bad.

It will confirm to me that they won the election on a pack of lies.

This.

I will go further with what I stated about my business. I only set it up in July, it’s been a great success, and I know it should be expanded.
However, I do not want the extortionate costs of employing staff - I can’t even fire them now if they are shite, and I also do not want to get into the VAT threshold this year.

I meet many small business owners now and I know of many who literally close the doors before reaching the VAT threshold.

The £90k threshold is a killer. £90k turnover, so £90k minus all business running costs, is nothing. And cross that threshold and you open up a whole world of admin hell and cost, so it means many people, myself included, will close the doors before going over that.

It’s dire.

To make matters worse this government is proposing lowering the VAT threshold to £30k…. Someone further up said that this government is instituonailsing low productivity in not just the public sedor, where it has fallen again this year, but in the private sector as well because they don’t understand how business works, what motivates people or the impact of their polices. And I agree with that poster.

Yes, £30k and having to do quarterly returns

utter utter madness

Making Tax Digital is coming soon.

I don’t think people realise how brutal and irritating that will be.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/making-tax-digital-for-income-tax-for-businesses-step-by-step

I’d think they’d lied. But what can we ever expect t from politicians? They all lie.🤷‍♀️

Yes, £30k and having to do quarterly returns
And - the ultimate insult - having to buy the software to do the Returns. There are so many impositions on business. If you pass wind they want to regulate it and tax it. There is too much Red Tape!
Many people my age are just fed up with it all and are throwing in the towel. Which could, of course, be the result that 'They' want.

I just can’t see that an increase in income tax is going to be enough to sort this mess out. It needs something radical, creative and forward thinking. There’s only so much money left in middle England to be scraped from the bottom of the barrel. I would have liked to have heard a hint towards the billionaires taking a hit today but no sign.

Billionaires are always flagged as the magic way to raise money but billionaires don’t generally have a lot of cash. They mostly have shares in businesses, the sort of successful business you want to attract to the UK and keep trading here. Of course, one way you could make more money off such businesses is do what Ireland and Luxembourg do and drastically cut taxes for them.

A land tax perhaps to replace council tax was something that piqued my interest.

The reason they are going for income tax is because it is broad (it will hit everyone who works and earns above the tax free allowance). It raises the most amount of money. And it's why Reeves did her interview this morning to prepare everyone for the fact that everyone (who is working) is having to pay for the govt's economic incompetence

They raised £40 bn in tax one year ago (when the alleged black hole that the Tories left that the OBR could not find was £22 bn). When they took over dont forget inflation was 2% and growth was the highest in the G7, job vacancies were high.

Look at the situation now 16 months later. It's a disaster. She's coming for another £35-40 billion and if you work you are a target

Billionaires /millionaires have left in their droves - look at Milan and Dubai which have generally been the recipients. Read what the CEO of Revolution said when he left. Read what Charlie Mullins of Pimlico Plumbers said when he left. And read what the poster below said about the success of Ireland and Luxembourg that have super low corporation tax rates and are a magnet for businesses .

So now the rest of us have to pay

Well no one is happy about tax increases but the alternative is to cut. People cried about the winter fuel allowance being means tested, they moaned about cuts to welfare....so what's the alternative.....climb a bean stalk and steal a golden egg.

The broadest shoulders have been mercilessly milked for the last 20 years by governments of all parties. There is not much left for Rachel to squeeze. The rest of us will have to pay up.

[tries to imagine shoulders being milked]

We’re a system. It all has to work for us to live good lives. This is an incredibly rich country. A massive queue of enormous shiny new cars on a public road that is falling to pieces isn’t a sign that the shoulders are being inappropriately milked, it’s a sign that nobody is an island. A lot of taxes are dysfunctional too but when the slightest attempt to rebalance causes screams in the media, it’s bloody difficult to unpick. High tax tends to lead to higher salaries. If you just focus on your take home pay it gets easier…

Let's look at, say, Tesco, which has made about £3 billion in profit this year. Many of its employees are on low wages, so some of them will be relying on in-work benefits to make ends meet. If Tesco was forced to pay more in tax, so that it only made a profit of £2 billion next year, do we really think it would close all its stores and leave the UK?

Similarly, if Amazon was forced to pay more tax on its UK sales, would it cease trading in the UK and concentrate on its markets in Ireland and Luxembourg instead?

We have one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. I agree its a system. Perhaps so many paying so little for so long has harmed our democracy. Too many voters infantilised with no stake in balancing the books.