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.

Who said the person living in the house is on benefits and not working hard?

Many countries have controlled rent and secure tenancies.

Germany - Open-ended tenancies, controlled rent increases.

Austria - Strong tenant security, regulated rents in many properties.

Sweden - Secure tenancies, rents negotiated collectively.

Denmark - Strong tenant protections, rent regulation for many homes.

Netherlands - Indefinite tenancies, rent controls for many properties.

France - Rent controls in some cities, good tenant protections.

Switzerland - Rent increases regulated, strong legal protections.

Belgium - Rent increases linked to inflation, secure tenancies.

Finland - Good security of tenure, fewer rent controls.

Pensioners are living longer with more complex needs. There aren’t enough workers to pay for the massive pension bill.

We didn’t have so many people either and those needing benefits

Yes, and they were/are a particularly big cohort who were young in the 70s and this cohort will sadly start diminishing at the end of the decade as the late silent generation approach their mid-late 80s and 90s.

Maybe because a lot of the bigger employers pay their staff a pittance, so they need benefits to survive, while the CEO gets a massive bonus for loading the company up with debt that it will never be able to pay off.

Less than 5% of UC claimants work more than 30 hours a week. So no, we do not have masses of benefit claimants on a “pittance” from bigger employers where they need benefits to survive.

Because rather than all immigrants contributing to the economy, 46% live in poverty which means on benefits.

Perhaps I am wrong and I don’t know the statistics, but it feels like the migration figures are being manipulated? People with money, net contributors, are leaving and being replaced by people who are not net contributors?

I would much rather cut welfare, than cut education or defence funding. Remember half of welfare is on triple locked baby boomers many of whom do not need it, or WFA.

As for whom have benefited over recent years; it’s low and middle incomes! Wage compression is very real.

That may well be the case. This statistic refers to those born outside the UK. Of course many will also be net recipients of benefits without living in poverty.

This exactly. And those paying those high tax rates are leaving. We’ve had quite a few friends and family go, and not to the Middle East. To Europe, Canada, USA, Australia, Singapore etc. If we lose a lot more net contributors, we’ll be in trouble

Remember half of welfare is on triple locked baby boomers many of whom do not need it, or WFA.

I can buy a couple of extra years of NI - loads of my friends who missed out years for various reasons have done so. In doing so I am explicitly being told it will increase my pension entitlement. Is this a contract that the government is entitled to break?

The Triple lock can be changed and winter fuel allowance can be means tested without breaking the agreed terms of the state pension, so yes this is an area where cuts should happen.

I have also bought my top-ups.

Lovely. This doesn’t entitle you to the triple lock.

I’d like him to massively tax Labour MPs. Something like 80p in the pound once they earn over 34k.

I know. I support getting rid of it and means testing the winter fuel payment. Something has to give. Many of my contemporaries just under state pension claim age of 67 are the ones with decent private pensions alongside.

Yup, I've got several clients who've emigrated over the past couple of years, and yes, they were high earners, typically £250k p.a. That's a lot of tax/nic lost to the UK. That's after several more IT contractor clients left a few years ago due to IR35 and they became "digital nomads" still doing work for UK firms but doing that work from outside the UK jurisdictions, so not paying any UK taxes. And I've only a small client base (less than a 100 clients) so although the numbers are small, it's still a significant percentage of clients. From talking to others, it's a common thing over the past few years.

Yes

So you are saying that the state pension should be split into two tiers; a higher pension for people who haven’t contributed to their pension, and a lower value pension that reduces in value in real terms for those who have worked, contributed and paid for extra years? (Remembering of course that the first lot will also be entitled to pension credits).

For too long, we in Westminster have been lying to you. We say we're here to serve you, when in fact, we're serving ourselves. And why? We are driven by our own desire to get reelected. Our need to stay in power eclipses our duty to govern. That ends tonight. Tonight, I give you the truth. And the truth is this:

The UK has failed you. Work hard? Play by the rules? You aren't guaranteed success. Your children will not have a better life than you did. millions of you can't even get a job, even though you desperately want one. We've been crippled by Welfare, Pensions, the NHS, by entitlements. And that is the root of the problem: entitlements.

Let me be clear. You are entitled to nothing — You Are Entitled to Nothing.The UK was built on the spirit of industry. You build your future, it isn't handed to you. And the problem with Westminster is that we haven't given you the tools to build it. The only way for us to serve you is to give you the means to serve yourselves. Well, that's exactly what I intend to do. Not handouts, jobs. Real paying jobs.

This is what should happen.

I don't think we do - it's just measured differently. A third of the population lived in council housing in the 70s (even more in Scotland - at it's peak it was 54% of the population!) which was heavily subsidised back then whereas (according to AI anyway - which tells me it had to derive the data from various government datasets - not looked into this yet), only around 13% of households or 5% of the adult population overall are eligible for housing benefit/universal credit housing allowance today. So a far lower percentage. If you take the third of the population in council housing (or 54% in Scotland) in the 70s then add in everyone else on every other benefit I think you'd find numbers that are at least as high as they are today, if not higher.

Sorry, and to add, apparently there are a further small percentage of the population still in actual council housing (that the council still own). The cost of these houses have been paid off now from what I understand (they hadn't been in the 70s) so the extent to which people living in them are being subsidised is debatable. They obviously provide accommodation at well below the market rate in some areas at least.

And to answer your question about sustainability - there's no reason to conclude that it isn't sustainable if income inequality keeps rising and a section of the population at the top continues to massively out-earn the average person. It's not impossible that we end up in a situation where a smaller number of people earning vastly more than everyone else are able to pay enough in taxes to subsidise a larger number of people while still being able to live in luxury themselves. However, the government is aggressively cutting costs wherever it can, sometimes with loud fanfare and sometimes while pretending it isn't doing so. Pension age keeps going up for example to keep pension spending sustainable and disability benefits are becoming harder to claim in some places at least even if the criteria haven't officially changed. The percentage of people successfully claiming ADP - equivalent to PIP in Scotland for example, has dropped dramatically suggesting unofficial rule changes that claimants aren't being made aware of or some other slight of hand.

I would be ok with cutting pension welfare for the wealthiest pensioners but it would have to be done in a way that was fair.

And yes, I agree, low and middle earners are taxed a relatively low amount compared to other countries. We do have higher costs in many ways though. Small tax increases should be considered in my opinion.