After a long wait. The Autumn Budget is finally here!!! 💰

[Cosywintervibes]

https://news.sky.com/story/budget-2025-raft-of-tax-hikes-expected-today-as-more-policies-confirmed-13475413

Anyone like to join me in watching the budget today?

For anyone who hasn’t picked this up yet:

Rachel Reeves accused of misleading Britain before budget

www.thetimes.com/article/40f40949-7878-48a5-ad50-2e8dfa86a66e?shareToken=99f2dd6ee71065281275414852a306fa

Me neither actually but I'm aware some companies do.

TBH I still feel like I get an incredible deal out of the pension system. I save massive amounts of tax and have made huge gains in the last year. I'm ok with taking the small hit on the NI.

I agree with you @Kuretake but we are also then not needing support in retirement which benefits everyone so I think it’s a fair system.

It works out to be more than you think @Kuretake

Someone on another thread posted a link to widget made by the Times that works out the difference in your pension pot. It takes £92k off my final pot. I don’t know about you, but for me, this is more than a rounding error. It is significant.

That is more than I'd have guessed but it won't take anything off the final pot for me as I'm going to up the amount I pay to cover it. So it'll take some money out my monthly income rather than final pension. Does that assume paying full allowance every year?

Just did it - £26,729 for me if I don't up the contributions a bit to compensate. I pay 8% on an 160k salary and am about 10 years from retiring.

Oh, I am so angry,

My husband's monthly income will be reduced because of the removal of salary sacrifice (not a lot, but still every penny counts!), and all these extra taxes are going on people on welfare! VILE,

does that include Employers NI savings. Our co has a smart scheme and I reckon it’s more that 3k a year for me and I earn a lot less than you. For me with 12 years to go, it will be nearer 40k without taking growth into account. That is a massive chunk for me.

I don't get the employer's NI savings.

I think the Times calculator takes growth into account - pretty useless if it doesn't?

How do you know all this? Has the OBR confirmed this is what happened? Or are you quoting from a Reddit thread?

I don’t think this will get much discussion on MN as it’s quite technical.

There was a black hole and then there wasn’t. Did she deliberately mislead us or not? She still only had £4bn of headroom which is v low for the bond markets to be relaxed so may have been criticised if she hadn’t done something to improve that.

I think this budget can be summed up as appealing to two key audiences: Labour backbenchers (lifting of benefit cap) and the bond markets (increased headroom).

Does this satisfy you?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmn991pz9jo

OBR head had to come out fighting because they’re implicitly being blamed for the uncertainty created by budget, whereas in reality it was political and Reeves didn’t have the courage to say we’re doing these tax rises to fund benefits increases.

No it was discussed in the FT and financial press, which my DH subscribes to via work.

Totally agree - appeasing the backbenchers seems to be Labours primary focus (the electorate, esp the more vulnerable members of it, can join the back of the queue); and yes, I personally think she was cynically manipulating the bond markets. Tbf, the market manipulation may be what every CoEx does, though!

I wasn’t being snarky, I was simply asking if it had been confirmed or was rumour? I heard a committee member of the OBR interviewed yesterday and they were very tight lipped and saying the usual ‘let’s wait for the investigation’ so was interested to see where this information had come from.

Definitely confirmed

Yes it’s Rayner’s blame the agents again. Two had to issue statements after that. Same with the OBR.

Seems to be a strong feature of modern politics (across all parties in case I am accused of being a reform voting Brexiteer again) to take no responsibility whatsoever for your own ministerial decisions or the actions/consequences of departmental decisions.

It was a billion years ago, but I remember answering a question in my A Level politics exam on individual v. collective ministerial responsibility, and how it sat alongside parliamentary accountability. Not sure anyone seems to observe any of that any more, regardless the colour of their party rosette.

I think this is going to hurt Reeves far more than she thinks. The press and financial analysts are really pissed off about being so comprehensively lied to. I haven’t seen this much negative coverage in the financial press before. It’s one thing not to say anything about OBR forecasts, but to so heavily imply that they are negative when they actually weren’t is intentionally misleading.

And the public are I think starting to also realise how much they have been lied to. This whole budget wasn’t about “making tough choices” or “sharing the load” or anything similarly noble and patriotic. This was straightforward tax everyone who is working in order to spend more on welfare for those who don’t.

I found this graph particularly telling. Even for the poorest 10% of society this budget hurts 30% of households - those that are working.

Source: Resolution Foundation

Image might appear at some point, but it’s from here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyx4zpp0n0o

Yep well said. Starmer too on that.

I suspect that's as close to the truth as we'll ever get - not that truth's something we've come to expect from politicians

It’s sad isn’t it, they were supposed to be better. I really didn’t expect them to come in and try and blame professional economists. I see they’re trying to own it now but they’ve damaged their reputation yet further with harping on as if they were forced into it.

lets hope the new year brings better ideas….

Did anyone see Dan Neidle (Labour Party member,
tax expert) saying he knew for certain that the govt was leaking the tax stories on x?