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Can't imagine they'd scrap the income tax relief on pension contributions, defeats the point of making them.
Same could be said of NI though?
This change will mean that 'middle' earners will pay 8% NI on their pension contributions. But 'high' earners still only pay 2%?
It makes sense that it's only taxed once, I absolutely agree. But then NI shouldn't be effectively capped* once you're earning £50k. Make it a flat 8% for all earning and reduce the higher rate to 32% so everyone's paying proportionally the same.
*you pay £3.2k on the first 50k, then only £1k on the next £50k.
As a fairly low earner (by STW standards) on a bit more than minimum wage it's not helped me one little bit. So much for helping 'working people'.
The simple answer is that everyone else paying more tax should lead to improved public services. And 11%/£1.35 rise on the minimum wage will inevitably filter through similarly to other low wages .
Looking at the pension change. 2029, the next GE is in 2029. Does this indicate they will run the election late 2028, and thus assuming they lose, it won't be there fault when people take the hit?
If the average mileage is say 10,000 a year why not just add £300 to EV road tax?
And how do you encourage people not to drive? Which surely is a more sensible approach. With the tech in modern cars i am sure it wouldn't be that hard to record mileage offload to a gov server and be billed accordingly. You drive under licence anyway, so if you are worried about big brother then stop driving.
what happened to parental responsibility when choosing how big a family to have? Are you suggesting parents should just have as many kids as they like and the taxpayer should pay for them?
Punishing parents and the kids after the fact is a pretty appalling way to approach this issue. This isn't Victorian times, thankfully.
i am sure it wouldn't be that hard to record mileage offload to a gov server and be billed accordingly
It would actually be extremely difficult without putting mandates in place for how it might work now and giving manufacturers years to implement. Who pays for the data connection? Do you track journeys or just total distance. Why aren’t short journeys penalised more?
There is an attitude from the general public that major changes to how things worked are a simple software change and the reality is that it’s the opposite.
Every time a car is MOTd the mileage is recorded in the system, so that dataset generally exists
ok theres the first 3 years and ownership changes to account for, but nothing impossible to overcome.
The simple answer is that everyone else paying more tax should lead to improved public services. And 11%/£1.35 rise on the minimum wage will inevitably filter through similarly to other low wages .
That's all right then - I'll wait a couple of years for it to filter through. Or increasingly the minimum wage just becomes the default wage for companies to pay.
Or they could increase the tax thresholds, put money directly in peoples pockets. Let people spend it and collect the tax revenue through increased high street and service industry spend.
...but we've got a black hole to fill first!
I really don’t understand why you should get a state handout for choosing to have more than 2 kids. Why should your lifestyle choice be subsidised by the rest of the population.
If you look at the data most of these instances happen when families join together (eg. divorced families remarrying, creating bigger families) or when a family had the means to support 3+ children but their situations have changed (eg. redundancy)
Very little of the benefit is paid to people popping out babies for another £100 per month
Looking at the pension change. 2029, the next GE is in 2029. Does this indicate they will run the election late 2028, and thus assuming they lose, it won't be there fault when people take the hit?
or they are gambling on an improved economic outlook so they can magnanimously scrap the plans just b4 the election, whilst still keeping the bond markets happy in the now to spare us from higher inflation
That's all right then - I'll wait a couple of years for it to filter through. Or increasingly the minimum wage just becomes the default wage for companies to pay.
Well in principle it doesn't work like that.
Lots of things factor into the supply and demand for labour but broadly you can look at them as a variety of costs.
If a job requires no skills or physicality, no anti social hours, isn't morally or otherwise objectionable, etc then it becomes the benchmark for the minimum. You add something to that, like night shifts, physical labour, objectionable work, etc then fewer people want to do it and it maintains a premium over the baseline. People generally don't want to work night shifts in an abattoir (anti social, physical, morally objectionable), so it has to pay more otherwise they'd go do something far easier.
Raising the min wage will inflate all those wages that are £minimum+ otherwise people tend to just move jobs. By the time it's upto mid £30,000's (the UK average) it probably doesn't have much impact.
So "those with the broadest shoulders" means everyone who pays income tax, workers contributing more than £2k to a pension via salary sacrifice, and people driving EV's.
Yet there's money in the pot for a giveaway on some benefits and for pensioners to keep their ISA perks.
Weird optics for a labour government that came into power on the promise of helping working people. If there is a political strategy here I don't understand it.
I wish she would stop lying about “everyone making a contribution”. They’re not. The lazy and ****less are getting big rises at the expense of the hard working and prudent. That’s hardly fair.
Yet there's money in the pot for a giveaway on some benefits and for pensioners to keep their ISA perks.
Weird optics for a labour government that came into power on the promise of helping working people. If there is a political strategy here I don't understand it.
We all have ISA perks still. Well, in theory... I have nothing to put in one myself. What looks to be happening is a push from cash to shares ISAs for those of working age. This push isn't happening for retired folk for lots of reasons... the most obvious being the length of term of ISAs for older folk often needs to be shorter.
As for working people... I'm glad that the young are slowly being treated more as working adults, rather than fobbing them off with "wages for kids" with a low pocket money level of minimum wage. I hope this is a long term move towards equalising minimum wage levels for young adults.
Oh, and remember two things... many people in receipt of benefits are either in work, or are carers, or have worked and are now either old or broken. Excluding all of those groups from "working people" is very selective. Imagine the life of a carer, or a worker with a disability, before discounting them.
I wish she would stop lying about “everyone making a contribution”. They’re not. The lazy and ****less are getting big rises at the expense of the hard working and prudent. That’s hardly fair.
Yup they should've definitely gone further on the wealth tax & things like 2nd homes.
I wish she would stop lying about “everyone making a contribution”. They’re not. The lazy and ****less are getting big rises at the expense of the hard working and prudent. That’s hardly fair.
surely your kind of nonsense sells well in the daily mail, but posters on here are grown up enough to see through it?
scarpping the 2 child benefit cap is about a ridiculously cruel policy that ends up pushing kids even further into society and costing us much more in the long run as their life prospects never recover
weve had a tory experiment to see what happens when it was cut its not been shown to increase the humber of kids people have on benefits , but it has been shown to be damaging and pointless
and a below inflation rise in disability benefits and halving the limited capability for work and work-related activity top up is going to hit some hard
Well I'm surprised no end by the good people of STW, well at least some of their bile and anger at the "lazy" "disabled" et all because they might have to pay a bit more tax than they'd like, it's like PH NP&E in here!
As always... wait for the details... but this, so far, looks like a Labour budget. And it needed to be.
As in 'current' Labour being particularly economically clueless? I'd agree.
The EV charge will almost certainly kill any green credentials Labour may have had - 3ppm might not be much but it will be another nail in the coffin for the take up of those.
I like the removal of the 2CBc - (wouldn't have happened without pressure from the greens.) And the reduction on energy bills - but that's going up early next year.
It's a tinkering 'typical' lack of ambition and investment budget that will not save them from Reform
Medium term growth forecasts down from the absolutely right-on OBR. Good christ they need to be sent packing.
Labour are the party of growth right?
This budget is damage limitation for the chaos that they've caused. It's not anything like the scale that is needed to put the country on good footing.
But agree might keep Reeves in a job until May.
I absolutely am never on the same page as Ian Dunt.
But he's managed to hit the sweet spot here.
https://bsky.app/profile/iandunt.bsky.social/post/3m6k7pjejks25
Yes Rich. Agree.
3ppm might not be much but it will be another nail in the coffin for the take up of those
“Nail in the coffin”… how dramatic. While running costs, including tax on fuel, remains higher for fossil fuel cars, the financial benefits of buying electric (if you’re fortunate enough to be in a position to be buying new) remains. The choice and availability of electric cars has matured, and car buying will soon become a matter of needing a very good reason not to go electric. 3ppm isn’t that reason… if cost per a mile is your priority, and you can charge at home, electric remains attractive.
Maturing energy generation and distribution is where the government needs to do more to prepare for more electric vehicles. Tax breaks for car owners need to be tapered off.
Yes Rich. Agree.
Short version… tax the asset rich at much higher rates… agreed.
Plenty of his other words there are just media messaging fluff.
I wish she would stop lying about “everyone making a contribution”. They’re not. The lazy and ****less are getting big rises at the expense of the hard working and prudent. That’s hardly fair.
****ING right on, those work shy landed wealth billionaires need to actually get grafting proper and paying taxes instead of buying out media and drip feeding hate so they cop as little blame as possible for their poisonous divisive bile.
Tax breaks for car owners need to be tapered off
I've not seen what on offer yet, but I'd be perfectly happy with big electric cars losing most of the government incentives and small and "affordable" EVs retaining, or getting boosted incentives.
I'm not expecting that to happen anytime soon in the UK admittedly.
No mention of a crackdown on the Royal benefit fraudsters either.The leper colony rolls on
I agree, taxes had to rise for ordinary folks.With FTSE 100 companies only managing 39 Billion of share buybacks last year savings have to be made
Here we go again. Reeves is claiming freezing the thresholds doesn't break the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax. Does she think voters are ****ing idiots? by 2031 I'll be paying approx £1300 more per year (assuming inflation linked pay rises) than I would if she hadn't frozen them. That looks and feels like an income tax rise to me, despite her semantic gymnastics. TBH I don't really care much about the tax rise, I can afford it just like many other high-rate taxpayers can, but she should at least be honest and stop taking the voters for fools and idiots.
Just NI paid after the first £2K I believe, income tax relief still applies for the full amount.
Yeah, that's what I thought initially (after reading the OBR leak), but then she said this
"I am introducing a £2,000 cap on salary sacrifice into a pension with contributions above that taxed in the same way as other employee pension contributions,"
...which made me sit up a little, cos that's very different.
BBC reporting on this was terrible - but it is changing to the same way others are taxed, because, if you pay into a private pension from your net pay, the government only refunds the income tax you paid on the gross, it doesn't refund NI.
The way the BBX was reporting it, they were going to tax anything above the £2k as normal income which would have been a disaster for pension contributions everywhere!
I'd be perfectly happy with big electric cars losing most of the government incentives and small and "affordable" EVs retaining, or getting boosted incentives.
We need people out of ICEs and into EVs for a fair few reasons. I mean really, we need them out of cars altogether, but that's not going to happen for a long time if ever.
Agreed, but people who own cars should be taxed more than people who don’t. And, pertinent to today’s announcement, people who use their cars more should pay more tax than those who use them less. That needs to happen in the EV car future. Advantages for going EV are still needed… but you should receive still more advantage if you manage (or have to) either live car free, or use you car rarely. This all points to taxes on owning and using EVs, but with higher taxes still on fossil fuel car use.
what happened to parental responsibility when choosing how big a family to have? Are you suggesting parents should just have as many kids as they like and the taxpayer should pay for them?
Probably lost in the same corner as my crystal ball which can tell me that I will be free from relationship breakdown, redundancy, ill health etc for the next 20 years.
Had I a family, it would have been a responsible choice in 1990 - 2003. 2004 however I would have been dirt poor and struggling.
I find the as many kids as they like argument pretty disgusting and the stupidity of predicating a policy on the responsibility of a citizen to be clairvoyant breathtaking. And that's before punishing children.
Forget 2 child cap or no cap, the basis of the threshold needs to change surely.
Seems madness to have the policy based on the highest earner in the household, not the joint income. So a couple both earning £55k each get the full allowance, yet a single earner household of £80k has to repay some of the allowance.
Not sure how you'd police that though - you'd have to financially link the couple 🤔
Agreed, but people who own cars should be taxed more than people who don’t. And, pertinent to today’s announcement, people who use their cars more should pay more tax than those who use them less. That needs to happen in the EV car future. Advantages for going EV are still needed… but you should receive still more advantage if you manage (or have to) either live car free, or use you car rarely. This all points to taxes on owning and using EVs, but with higher taxes still on fossil fuel car use.
You a city dweller? A lot of rural folk are poor and a car is essential not a luxury. What’s your plan for more rural public transport so they can enjoy all this advantage you speak of, I’m all ears?
Or move to an area where you can afford travel costs.
Or move to an area where you can afford travel costs.
All the serfs should live in the towns. It keeps them in their place.
Well if as some here have argued that the benefits should be capped to 2 kids, I am not sure why I should be too bothered that those living in the nicest places can't afford cars.
Or move to an area where you can afford travel costs.
Damn right brother....keep the countryside and rural areas clear of plebs so that Tarquin, Farquin and Forbes can run around in tweeds whilst shooting the reared peasants pheasants
Tory backbenchers and Nigel Farage are supporting the lifting of the two child cap.Famous socialists them guys.
Not a fan of those pension changes.
If you retired 5 years ago you are probably laughing, you have your state pension and most probably a very nice public or private one to boot
Meanwhile anyone aged under 55 is destined to be skint in retirement, unless they are lucky enough to inherit a vast amount of cash to live off
Strikes me that yet again those folks in the middle, folks not getting minimum wage but still struggling to get by, get reemed, whilst the uber wealthy and large corporations barely get touched
2 child benefit cap is going?
The mouth breathers aren't going to like that.
I better start breathing through my mouth then. I really don’t understand why you should get a state handout for choosing to have more than 2 kids. Why should your lifestyle choice be subsidised by the rest of the population.
As someone who breathes through both nose and mouth (try riding up Winnats Pass on a normal bike without opening yer gob !!) Id prefer if the £££ found down the sofa to pay for this was instead directed ... ahem... directly... into primary and secondary school education. Part of the long term answer to child poverty is in education - give them a decent education and in turn to be able to actually doing something useful and productive in society. Hand outs to some are needed. To other families though its spaffed away and not used to better feed and clothe the kids.
Or move to an area where you can afford travel costs.
...only if we can shoot peasants instead of pheasants!
Well if as some here have argued that the benefits should be capped to 2 kids, I am not sure why I should be too bothered that those living in the nicest places can't afford cars
The nicest places aren’t necessarily those with the worst public transport.
I had better access to public transport in a posh Berkshire village, than a suburb of a nearby town, which incidentally was cheap enough for me to afford to live in.
So those here in favour of the 2-child cap are also anti-immigration if my memory serves me right. With a birth rate of 1.41. Does not compute. 🙃
We had decades and decades of no limit on child benefit (old "family allowance") and society didn't collapse. Reversing the cap is one of the few good things to come out of this budget.
Did I miss something!? A few grand a year on £2m+ properties isn't targeting the UK's wealthiest!... 🤬 🤬
You a city dweller? A lot of rural folk are poor and a car is essential not a luxury.
I grew up in Herefordshire, and didn’t drive while I was there. It’s where my love of cycling started. I learnt to drive when my first kid was on the way years later. I am fully aware that for some people driving is not a luxury. The taxation system still needs the be used to discourage driving and incentivise other options. Even if you can only get to the shops by car, then pricing per a mile will encourage fewer shopping trips (the big shop) rather than regular smaller ones. For example.