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

Taxing workers more won't grow the economy but they need to raise cash. They dipped their toe in with pensioners & u turned when really they should be pausing the triple lock. Same for benefit reforms.

That they will piss even more up the wall.

I just won't be voting for them again. Im not bothered about paying a bit more tax but it won't be spent wisely.

@Viviennemary which party will spend it wisely though?

B

What is the point of raising taxes if you don't address the waste in the system?

It we tax people more for having one home we are effectively saying that only those with liquid wealth will be able to own anything bigger than a matchbox. Everybody needs a home.

Both. The finances are not sustainable and I would like to see the tax system overhauled. At the moment, UC discourages people from taking more hours at the bottom of the income pile because of the cliff edge in benefits clawback. It needs to be more graduated. The same applies at the 100k mark for childcare and tax allowances, causing people to simply work less. Small businesses see the same with thr VAT on turnover. None of the tax bands have been updated at all and council tax is an archaic mess.

I also agree we should be going after the housing befits bill as a priority. Stop trying to get the private sector to deliver social houses! It's not happening. Empower councils to build stock or set up a housing department for the same. Treat it like an emergency. As we don'thave enough traditional builders, buy modular factory housing - it can be installed directly on the site. It's possible to do this in around 3 months from the date of land purchase; the key is project managing the sewage, electricity, water and stable foundations.

Finally, 50% of our welfare (NHS & social) goes on 15% of the population. That's not sustainable. We spend more on pensioners than on our children despite thr kids being the taxpayers of the future. I think the triple lock will have to be pared back and we need to look long and hard at the broken care system keeping people in hospital. At the very least, we need to reopen the geriatric and convalescent homes again for people to recover (or die) in peace. Our over-80s cohort is growing. Feels like the only thing that is!

Greedy corporates are already doing that. See call centres and shared services centres tres in India and increasingly Eastern Europe, tech and software companies listing the US, Dubai headquartered / backed firms etc. Luxembourg and other countries have always been popular.

In no particular ordrr and not an exhaustuve list. We need policies to encourage investment that creates employment in the UK. We need strategies to counter the harmful effects of PE. We need to find a way to buy back our utilities. We need to hold the water and other conpsnies to account for paying shareholders whilst not investing in their infrastructure. We definitely need to bring rents under control, not screw homeowners for having one home. We need to tackle the ballooning welfare bill and ensurle that people are able to make provison for their latter years. It's not easy but there are ways that don't involve creating a society of very rich people amd those who.are just ab6ut getting by, with nothing in between.

@Deafnotdumb agree, particularly the housing part. We spend so much of our welfare on housing, long term more council housing is a much better system.

Pensioners are too expensive with our current dependent ratios and funding models. Triple lock needs to be paused but the vast majority of the public don't get the economic liabilities & harp on about paying their stamp.

A
I don't think they have any choice.

So you agree that countries like Luxembourg and Dubai benefit hugely from investment and taxes due to their low corporate tax regimes?

As for rent control - they introduced that in Scotland and like every other country with rent control it pushed up rents overall and reduced the supply of rental properties. Housing prices (either rent or purchase) increases when demand outstrips supply and the addition of several million people to the population increases demand. Building more houses over farmland will increase the cost of food and increase our reliance on increasingly precarious imports.

A It was a daft rule to have set themselves to unnecessarily deal with the Tories campaign of ‘Labour will raise your taxes’ they could have ignored that and still got in.

Go one further and sort out proper friction free trading with the EU rather than their slightly ridiculous afraid of what brexiters think stance and we’ll be taking a step in the right direction to fixing the country.

Taxing people more does nothing to encourage people to work & grow in their career.
The Laffer curve is an interesting concept.

Ultimately, the less money people have in their pockets - the less they have to spend in the economy. You can’t tax your way to growth.

A but we are higher rate taxpayers so can afford it
if I was struggling and it was going to impact my difficult life I’d be raging

A, there was never any other option.

1. They should have listened to me when they were writing the manifesto.
2. Just get the fuck on with it.

The problem is, they’ll raise taxes and nothing will change because their spending is out of control.

Needed more last year a one off apparently. Hammer growth need more again. Same time next year then.

If they could target the keener pp who want to pay more that’d be great.

This, like the money pit of profligate spending that is the NHS. The huge amounts wasted there is a tragedy and yet those working in it just continue to cry ‘give use more money’. It needs to be fixed by proper root and branch reform - and no that doesn’t mean the American system; there are plenty of alternatives that work better than ours or theirs. Nor does it mean the sort of PFI arrangements that left the NHS paying multiple times the cost of provision for decades like Labour put in place last time.

B. They need to crack on with reducing welfare and taxing it in line with earnings. Also, stop dishing out brand new cars. Raising taxes will stop any growth and will probably up food prices.

I think it is exactly what anyone who knows about politics knew would happen

Are you saying that Labour knowingly lied to the electorate when they said they wouldn't increase taxes on working people in their manifesto and in their election campaign or that they know nothing about politics?

A - After 14 years of Tory underinvestment, our infrastructure is falling apart. More borrowing is not the solution, so increasing taxes is the only sensible course of action.

But taxes on working people won't lead to growth which is what we desperately need.

This. Should be a sticky here and a post it note next to where ever Reeves sits. Starmer too.