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.

Agree

And mines 84 with Alzheimer’s and needs a letter

The equalisation of CGT with income tax makes no financial sense.

The difference between income tax and Capital Gains is risk.

If I say invest £10,000 in some shares that over 5 years goes up to say £25,000 and then I sell them for a £15k then why should I be taxed at the same rate as income which is much less risky.

If I get taxed on the upside then I should get a tax rebate if my shares went down in value and I sold at a loss.

You can't just tax the upside otherwise there's no point in investing.

Exactly. Let’s get letters sent out in a timely manner to those that need them. Would be ideal if we received post more frequently then once every 10 days.

Yet the NHS needs better IT systems. If it hadn't been cancelled maybe people wouldn't still be getting letters!

Are a minority. But with the money wasted on sending what must be many millions of appointment letters if you moved the vast majority to text/email then the efficiencies could facilitate a phone call to the elderly/vulnerable at least? And I’m not sure it’s any better for the elderly or vulnerable to receive letters with appointment dates after the date has passed?

He shouldn’t. He should cut taxes for ordinary working people & small businesses instead. My preferred way of doing this would be to increase the basic rate tax allowance to £20k and reverse Reeves’ taxes on employment.

This should be paid for by cuts in welfare, particularly sickness benefits paid to the millions of people claiming to have anxiety & depression. Working for a living & contributing to society would massively benefit them, the economy and the country.

I'd go for equalising CGT and income tax.

I'd abolish national insurance and put up income tax by an equivalent %.

I would stop the removal of the nil rate band but increase the income tax rate over that value.

I'd get rid of the triple lock on pensions.

You'd have to work out some way of stopping inheritance tax being optional (not literally but in the sense you can just tax plan your way out of it with a moderate amount of care) and then probably cut the % rate at which it's levied. At the moment it's so high above the thresholds that the incentive to avoid it is extraordinarily high.

Look at options for care provision for the elderly and disabled to become not for profit. Same for SEN schools and children's homes/fostering.

Completely reform the public procurement regulations which would in turn massively cut public expenditure due to making it easier to spend money in a sensible manner rather than being overburdened by regulations making it impossible to procure anything without it taking forever.

Fiddle round with the fiscal rules to allow preventative revenue expenditure to increase. At the moment we're stuck because preventative spend (e.g. obesity avoidance or early years interventions) pay off in 5-25 years, just like capital spending does. They reduce spend in the future but require a doubling up of spend now while you're still righting the historic failures to put preventative spending in place.

Change the random cliff edge extra car tax they brought in so it scales with car cost rather than being an abrupt edge that creates perverse behaviours.

Deal with the fact the planning regs focus solely on harms generated by the thing being planned instead of also accounting for the harms of failing to build that thing (i.e. that you'll get a housing crisis twenty years down the line...oh look?!).

And then once you've done that, I'd probably shift new build homes so they weren't VATable at 0% any more - currently house building firms reclaim VAT on all their costs and don't charge any on the houses.

Reform the VAT system as a whole because it's currently mind bogglingly complicated, especially in the public sector where there's a whole industry of paying public sector cash out to VAT advisors to help public sector organisations avoid paying more VAT back to the treasury (because this makes sense to each individual organisation and indeed is essential to enable them to maximise the good they do, but perversely leads to less money overall being used for the public good).

Council tax also needs reform, preferably levelling out country wide or even better pegging to local average wages.

Probably increase air passenger duty. I love being able to fly for £50 each way but ultimately it's mental and shouldn't be possible.

Those are the ones that I would do off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more in reality.

Actually I think the other one would be to cancel the student loans and switch them out for a graduate tax. Certainly for new students. Not sure what you'd do for current loan holders tbh, or indeed for students whose parents paid the fees at the time.

You can net CGT losses off against gains and carry forward any losses to future tax bills.

But surely the paper value of £25,000 is irrelevant. You made a gain of £5k. You already get a rebate if you make capital losses in time.

Why should investing time be taxed at a higher rate than investing money?

He shouldn’t. Labour can’t keep doing as McFadden said, where every meeting is on who to tax more.

Maybe you should be chancellor!

Rather than raising taxes , he needs to put able bodied people on benefits to work. If I look around my community there are loads of jobs that need doing. Get a bus to turn up at the job centre and pick up all those on benefits and drop them off at community service jobs. That would improve their mental health too.

What should they do? Invest in growth. Support entrepreneurs, encourage businesses to grow and employ people. Invest massively in infrastructure and building. Encourage modernisation, investment and productivity.

Spend money on education, childcare, mental health and physical health. Make training and self improvement easy and affordable.

Reform the taxation system by closing loopholes, simplifying taxes and ensuring multinationals pay sufficient tax. Simple increases to income tax would be helpful.

Building, training, modernisation and maximisation of return on spending. Stop governmental wastage as well as duplication and ridiculous admin. Raising productivity has to be a focus.

Completely agree, but that would cause apoplexy in many!!

Discretionary private healthcare. I don’t think health related private healthcare, such as cancer treatments, knee operations, fibroid removal, etc. should be taxed because they’re taking the strain from the NHS, but private elective treatments like boob jobs, facelifts, butt lifts, and that sort of thing are definitely luxuries and as such should be taxed.

I thought cosmetic surgery was already standard rated.

I think the government should make itself redundant and cut taxes.

I think he should use it as an opportunity to do away with the promise of no tax rises. We all know something needs to pay for the years of Conservative neglect, and the money only comes from one place.

What is the rationale of a graduate tax?

We don't introduce a special "benefits tax" once someone gets back on their feet to pay back what they received in benefits. So why should graduates face a lifelong tax just because they went to university, especially when a fixed-term loan on reasonable terms is more than enough?

University is an investment in both the individual and the country. Graduates often earn more over their working lives, so they already pay more tax through the existing tax system. Why hit them with another tax just because they chose to improve themselves? Sometimes it feels as though this country is more interested in taxing aspiration than encouraging it.

I’m not prepared to pay more income tax unless they cut the welfare bill. More for those that can’t work such as the disabled, and much much less for those who can.
Maintenance needs to be taken into consideration for UC and absent parents made to pay for their children. It’s not the responsibility of taxpayers.
If he does things like this I’d be happy to pay more tax.

However he’s already said he won’t raise income tax. Let’s see.

Equalise dividend tax and CGT with income tax.

Put 1 penny on income tax across the board.

Reintroduce the 2 child benefit cap.

They should just put 1p on the rate of income tax - I don’t know why they didn’t do that before rather than fiddling around with the WFA, Employer’s NIC, Student Loans etc!
No one sticks to the Manifesto, it would have been much more palatable than all the messing around they did!

Not saying they don’t need to start getting people back to work though but I’d rather carrot rather than stick!

Andy Burnham’s plan to build more Council houses rather than pay private landlords is a great idea - and I say that as a private land lord!

Maintenance loans for university are woeful for the majority of students, lack of available funding to pay for day to day living at university is massively off putting. Yes, if your parents earn under £25k you’ll get £10k but the majority of students are offered around £5k. With the cost of living and lack of student jobs it makes attending university prohibitive or push students to only going to local universities. We need a thriving university sector to attract foreign students, investment, employers and to enable growth and aspiration.

What should they do? Invest in growth. Support entrepreneurs, encourage businesses to grow and employ people..

Yes this!

And tax wealth, not work. I'll never understand how people are allowed to build up vast sums in S&S ISAs and pay no tax on it.

Of course there's a benefit to encouraging investors but sticking some cash in the S&P 500 is not the same as angel investing in a startup. Especially when that money is all being ploughed into giant American corporates.