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.

Water companies, the super rich

Thinking further on the potential tenner per private visit - £130m pa, he could kill 2 birds by using that to pay for 3k extra midwives and begin to resolve some of these terrible outcomes we have in maternity care.

Closing the loopholes would be good but when it come to the NHS the general public need to do their bit too. They need to be as healthy as they can for as long as they can.

I’d rather see people charged for NHS appointments they don’t turn up for. My GP practice has hundreds every month. And then people can’t get appointments. I don’t know the answer but many people have no respect for things they perceive as being free.

I do see that changing as people live longer but the social care support isn't there these days as it was in the 90s, so if people have one issue it will impact them more than it used to and result in worse health for longer. Falls for eg which usually lead to isolation. Prior to this, upstream there are too few DEXA scans, resulting in osteoperosis not being diagnosed until too late as a prime example of science not being used for preventative care where it easily could and should. For a start they should be getting everyone who was on depo-provera and other meds that cause it when taken for years in for scans in their 40's.

I don’t know anyone who uses private health who has “offshore accounts” etc. they all either get it through work as a taxable benefit, or are self employed and prioritise access to rapid, effective treatment because they don’t get sick pay.
I would bet the NHS could save £130m a year by not posting letters!

The issue there is if the person has fallen ill and ended up in hospital while waiting. If they just forgot then fine, add a tenner for them to pay.
£260mil for the maternity trusts pa sounds good to me.

id increase fuel tax for commercial industry / airline etc

I’ve just googled. The NHS spend £102m per year on sending letters. Plus an additional £230m per year on maintaining physical paper records for patients. Like I said, there is room for efficiencies!!!

I also think the charge for missed NHS appointments is a good idea .

Stop letting healthcare staff from Cameroon each bring in 15 family members with them…

But they'd have more missed appointments from the elderly who don't see emails or worry they are scams.

Farage, Boris, probably more bankers than people would believe, plenty of Londoners in other professions no doubt, all have ways of hiding income. We need to get other countries involved in taking a stand against countries allowing themselves to be paid off to conceal it.

Agree on the prevention. But I think the person changes should start now.

And it works like this in other countries.

So if Russia or any other rouge element target the NHS app, you'd be happy to potentially have you and your families health records wiped, say in an act of warfare? I don't want to rely on it to the point that we have no information generator, so to speak.

It is, the youth aren't drinking or smoking or going out as much as they used to. Long term health effects of that alone will eventually mean many more will live to 110 if born in the last decade. If they get proper support along the way before certain issues become untreatable, they can have a longer healthier life. If they don't get that they potentially sit being ill and in pain with no quality of life for longer, which is where we are currently.

basically we need a new type of economy,

Slash foreigners benefits

You think for £230m per year they keep EVERYONES records on paper? I can absolutely assure you, they don’t. And if a “rouge” element wants to attack us, they have far more appealing options (transport links, the power network etc)…..

emp on the banking system etc

Whilst a lot of these ideas have value I do think they are all utterly pointless unless something is done about the huge under paying of tax by the super rich. I know people have various opinions on him but Gary Stevenson has a documentary on Channel 4 tomorrow night that covers the massive issue with the growing wealth gap that will be worth watching if you haven’t seen or heard him discuss this. I really think this is the fundamental underlying issue that needs to be tackled and no amount of fiddling of taxes for middle income earners or cutting benefits or anything else will make any difference to the path we are on as a country unless the government is brave enough to tackle this.

I think you misread my post. £230m was to employ midwives to help the maternity crisis. That was from a tenner per private appt and a tenner per missed appt where the person was able to physically attend but forgot/poor planning etc.

Maybe there can be an opt out system for families like yours who don't want paper records of their health to be kept. Might save a few million I suppose.

but thats the thing realistically the rich are rich for a reason and basically there is nothing realistically they can do

Along the same lines, NI is very specifically a tax on workers and jobs. Why scrap the outdated idea and raise the tax rate across the board to compensate? (Note: I retired last year so this would not benefit me!)

Raising employers NI contributions especially on low paid workers has been very obviously damaging to people seeking work, especially young people, and harmful to businesses and growth.

My DB is self employed with private health insurance - as a result he was seen and operated upon and back to work within 8 weeks last year. Without it he would have had to stop work as he would still be waiting for the outpatient appointment, never mind the surgery’. Over the last year he has paid over £150,000 in tax and employed staff who all paid tax too as well as adding to the local economy. None of that tax would have been paid if he were still waiting on an NHS appointment.

As for £130 million raised for the NHS. That is chicken feed to them and more than that could be raised by doing away with NHS DEI ‘consultants’ without even taking into account the money they are costing the NHS in court fees through directing NHS trusts to break the law and discriminate against women.