Which taxes should Burnham put up?

[Toohotforwork]

It seems pretty clear that in the Autumn we are in for another massive tax rising budget. Starmer has done of the ground work to show what we need to spend and how there isn't any money, I'm sure the "blackholes" were co-ordinated with the new team for messaging. Labour don't have it in them to cut the welfare bill and to be fair the Tories didn't either - so I can't see that changing.

Which taxes would up increase to fund the country properly?

Personally I'd go the easy route and put 1 or 2p on the basic rate of income tax. It would break the manifesto but one short sharp initiative has got to be better than death by a thousand small increases.

I think the care proposals of getting rid of inheritance tax and replacing it with a 10% charge on everyone is very sensible.

Equalising income tax and capital gains tax seems an easy win as well.

I’m intrigued, could you share what ‘medical food’ means?

I don’t think that was the main take away from what I posted but think specialist type of nutritional support. So along the lines of something like fortisip for people that can’t eat/digest normally /swallow etc. This and my consultant apps plus a few other things is quite expensive.

Thats not really the extent of my condition it’s a lot more complex than that - but it is part of it. So I need to be under a specialist team but the wait time here is months and months. And apparently I just have to keep paying until I can be seen and even then I may not get it due to the aforesaid not being straightforward aspect. No one can tell me apart from this specialist who can’t see me for some time.

The NHS should absolutely help you with that.

Well it’s not really as simple as that as it’s not a “standard” treatment (as nothing about my presentation of multiple conditions is standard) so I am very very worried they will simply refuse as on the NHS you generally have to fit in to specific criteria for a lot of treatments. I shouldn’t “need” this at this stage but my conditions interact with each other - badly.

The fact it works/helps me probably doesn’t matter all that much to them. As it is they are currently quite happy to leave me struggling to pay for it - the alternative is that I just let myself deteriorate until I am hospitalised at which point it could do even more damage to my health so I’m reluctant to allow that to happen obviously!

I wasn't using the welfare statistics to answer any of those questions though. I was using the figures to show that we are not handing out ridiculous amounts of welfare as the PP said we are and that you also can't really argue that welfare spending is putting huge breaks on growth when we've experienced much stronger growth at many points over the last 5 decades while welfare spending has been at the same relatively low levels.

Taxes need to come down after the shambles that Rachel from Accounts created with her jobs tax. No wonder there are no student or school leaver jobs because its too expensive to employ young people for a few hours a week. Coming along with the minimum wage rise that was a real own goal.

The more taxes go up the more the black economy thrives. People look for a cash in hand side hustle and self employed people put a % of their work under the counter or boost their tax deductibles. The more you squeeze people the more they will change their behaviour and not feel guilty.

I disagree.

People should be allowed two flights per year. If you fly any more than than, you pay an additional £100 per flight. There are 300 million passenger journeys per year so this could raise about 15 billion.

If it weren't for what we spent servicing our debts this year, government borrowing would have been equivalent to 0.6% of GDP (calculated by subtracting what we spent on debt interest payments (equivalent to 3.6% of GDP) from this year's government borrowing (equivalent to 4.2% of GDP). The figures for the last few years have been comparable from what I understand. We have such high levels of debt mostly due to Covid (which saw unprecedented government spending during peace time and massively reduced tax receipts pushing government borrowing to 15% of GDP in 2021) and the rise in interest rates since then due to factors such as inflation. But also due to the 2008 financial crash. The politicians may keep saying we're accruing this debt because of welfare but we're really not. They know it's a vote winner. I think most of them also know it's not true.

The OECD and IMF agree with @Friendlygingercatits just were so hooked on what’s in these threads on tax rises people keep demanding more of them. For others that is.

Does that include domestic flights? So a Penalty on people who live in/businesses based in north of the UK?

You can’t simply ignore debt repayments and say ‘if we didn’t have them then everything would be fine’. We do have debt repayments we can’t control and if the spending we can control welfare is one of the biggest spends. But the Labour government also seems determined to spend money overseas with no discernible benefit to the uk eg Chagos.

I haven't said everything would be fine, I've said that government borrowing would have been very very low in recent years if we weren't paying such high interest on our massive debt. In response to someone who was I think implying borrowing is high to pay for public services and benefits etc.

Welfare spending is not particularly high compared to countries comparable to the UK. We spent very slightly below the average of the EU countries before the pandemic and now spend very slightly more than the average. I don't think it's safe to make further cuts. There have already been many deaths as a result of previous cuts and it just increases pressure on other services like the NHS, and social care. It's false economies.

The internet tells me that the Chagos Islands are of strategic geopolitical importance to the UK in that "they provide the UK with a critical joint UK-US military facility on Diego Garcia, which projects Western power across the Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. The remote location offers strategic depth for monitoring maritime trade routes and conducting surveillance. "

I know Chagos islands are strategically important and that the Chagos Islanders want to stay part of Britain. The question is why are Labour determined to give them away and spend billions of our money doing so?

Agree. Now Starmer is out they should let his deal go with him. It’s billions we don’t have.

I’d like them to tax companies that don’t pay tax in this country. Starbucks and the like. I am sick of slogging my guys out to have it all taken off me and still not be able to afford the Aldi food shop.

UK debt shot up after the GFC, and also during Covid.

It’s better to look at the total Government budget and borrowing data. This shows an unhealthy amount of borrowing to sustain the spending we make. With no growth and fewer net contributors this will only deteriorate. In other words, we can’t continue to spend the same amount on welfare.

The IMF? Oh what a surprise.

I see. Who do you rely on?

Okay then there needs to be rent control and lifetime security of tenure.

What is the proportion of domestic flights in the UK? It must be tiny?

The sense of self entitlement is incredible.

Instead, work hard at school, get good qualifications, get a fulltime job, work fucking hard in your job, and buy your own home.

Stop looking for endless handouts.

Nail on the head. It's human behaviour. And Reeve's stupid mistakes need reversing as one of the first things that Burnham does.

A lot of people work hard and are still on their arses because housing is too expensive.

Trouble is, do all that, and you still can end up worse off than those who didn't bother, due to the housing costs, and loads of other things that workers have to pay for that the shirkers get given as freebies.