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

Nail on the head. We really do need to stop punishing people for working harder/longer, taking promotions, growing their businesses, etc.

It’s not worth it anymore. Especially if you’re on or slightly above minimum wage!

Really? I remember living on JSA back in the day - it wasn't generous and it really limited your freedom. Also, if I didn't work, I'd never have been able to afford to buy a property and have some financial security. And as for having multiple kids in order to stay on benefits as long as possible - I'm struggling to think of any job that would be more exhausting.

Much easier to stay on benefits / have more kids than slog it as a cleaner or working as a waitress / in a fast food chain !

I personally would not do this but I can see how some of labour’s decision may incentivise staying on benefits!!

@Alexandra2001 If you're on anything less than £30000 annual salary, by the time you take out travel costs and other associated work costs you would be better off and less stressed staying at home. So where's the incentive? 9 million inactive people at the moment will get higher.
I don't care how we got in the debt situation, it's basic maths and common sense to target paying it back ASAP. If that means slashing spending and taxing companies like Starbucks who avoid paying tax then get on with it. If Labour can't make these tough decisions to fix the country then just call a general election.

Depends if you raise your kids properly or whether they're "latchkey" kids!!

Agreed. I actually hate them….

Slashing spending, unfortunately is why we have such huge debt, all Austerity gave us was more borrowing, it was a disaster and one we are still paying for, by delaying up keep on buildings road etc etc, all we done is upped the costs.

The average wage is 37k not 30k, and to get the 23k max you have to be renting, have disabled kids, its not a given but i do take your point, work needs to pay.

Making companies who HQ elsewhere to pay more tax, is very tricky.

We need Govt investment, that'll drive the private sector too, its a tried and tested formula.

Well if you want people to invest here and come here like they did in the 90s why have symbolic policies like non dom and private school VAT to cause outflows rather than inflows? And deter a whole lot of middle class people staying in this country. If you want investment, you need incentives.
Just like in the housing market - you cannot threaten a mansion tax and believe housebuilders will keep building, when you are already massively behind on your targets. Let’s hope they have a big incentive coming to get people into housing.

I don't hate Labour even though I don't agree with every decision they've made.

I do despise the Tories for underfunding public services to the point they can no longer function properly. For example, Labour inherited a justice system with such a massive backlog that many cases were collapsing and criminals were escaping justice purely due to system failures. Imagine the stress on both victims and defendants as cases were adjourned for months, or often, for years. The Tories also cut legal aid. Why aren't more people angry about this?

Only yesterday, Labour announced that they might have to end trial by jury for many offences in order to clear the backlog.

How is it that austerity caused more borrowing? I genuinely don’t understand this. It’s a comment I hear often, but I cannot connect the dots.

The main problem with big state thinking is the delusion that the state has full control and so much money. It does not, not here, it is reliant on business and foreign direct investment!

Nobody can connect the dots. How a government can slash and burn public services and increase national debt simultaneously defies logic but somehow Cameron’s government managed it. Nobody knows where the money went.

Because it costs more to fix something that fails than to prevent it in the first place.

For example: teeth. A regular check-up costs, say £100. (Private dentist). However, if you cannot get onto a dentist's waiting list because there’s no NHS practitioners who will take you, or any dentists at all with openings, you are on your own.

So, by the time someone presents themselves at a hospital, that £100 check-up now costs thousands with an abscess and decayed teeth that requires surgery and an in-patient stay.

Repeat for prisons (at capacity), court justice (endless delays due to understaffing), social services, CAMHs and schools. The need doesn't go away because you cut it. It just gets dumped on the next point in the system which is usually more expensive to maintain and not really equipped to deal with it (e g. psychotic episodes in police cells because there’s no acute beds available in the MH wards). On top of everything else, we have a growing, elderly population who need more care - most if our councils are functionally bankrupt at the moment because their funding was not set up to cover this level of need.

On top of that, you've got investor's sucking all the slack out of our utilities making them more expensive to fix and main and then Brexit cutting 6% off our GDP.

A perfect storm.

I'm really struggling with the concept that cutting Government spending = more Government debt.

Yes I can understand that lower investment in infrastructure would slow economic growth but equally increasing taxation to invest in infrastructure would slow economic growth even more.

I can also see that borrowing more money in the 2010s when interest rates were at an all time low to invest in infrastructure would have boosted economic growth at the time, but it would have pushed Government debt to higher levels than it currently is and acted as an even bigger drag on the economy today.

The current government raised taxes in the last budget which has slowed the economy (especially NI increases and removal of non dom status), this has meant that tax revenues are lower than expected. This in turn has meant that the Government will have to increase taxation even more today meaning that in 12 months the economy will have slowed even more, resulting in lower tax revenues and requiring even higher tax increases and so on in a fiscal doom loop.

You simply cannot grow the economy by increasing taxation (as Starmer himself declared), which leaves either increasing debt (which is not an option in the current market) or cutting spending on non investment expenditure.

However the Labour backbenchers will revolt as we saw against any cuts in non investment expenditure such as the PIP reform or WFA.

The top 0.1% of income earners or 30,000 people pay 25% of all income tax revenues and the top 1% (300,000 people) of income earners pay 30%.

For the first time we have recently seen a net emigration of 275k Brits leave the UK and a large number of those will be high income earners. We have also seen an exodus of very high income earners as a result of the removal of the non dom status.

The only way out of this doom loop is to cut government non investment spending and then cut taxes but this is unpalatable to the Labour Party. In short it will be an overdue lesson to the electorate on how socialism (nice as it is in theory) doesn't work in reality.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lakshmi-mittal-arcelor-switzerland-reeves-tax-b2871005.html

Looks like OBR have mistakenly released a document in ADVANCE of the budget. It looks shocking...

This is just awful, she’s come in hard it seems after the working person to give to those on benefits. The analysis is saying an average earner on 40k will pay an extra 2 grand a year.

Really? Sounds familiar. Agree btw

Chaotic and out of control. Now the OBR have sent it out in error. Makes Reeves look even more ridicilous. This isnt her fault of course but she needs to make a pitch before announcing the figures and that has been lost.

I hate to say it to all the Labour voters....but Told You So

I remember so many threads on here when Sunak debated Starmer and made the claim that Labour would increase taxes for everyone around £2k and people were in total denial and believed the lying scumbag Starmer when he said he wouldn't.

And here we are...

Yep. A complete disgrace.

How did Sunak know? It couldn’t possibly be because his government had set the bear traps that made it necessary, could it? There’s a reason he threw the election.

Oh God they will still carry on defending him and making excuses. It will still all be the Tories fault in some way, going back to Cameron or even further.

What bear traps are those? Sunak knew because it is what Labour have always done.

Labour always do this. Blossom - you are often a lone voice in defending their barmy decisions.