Care Minister Stephen Kinnock was asked a pretty simple question ahead of the budget this morning: “Are six-figure earners working people?” No response – six times in a row…
Kinnock eventually said Labour hadn’t worked out what a “working person” was yet: “Obviously the definitions have to be seen in the round and that’s what’s going to be put on the table.” Rachel Reeves made it clear, though, what the party’s definition of working people was during the election campaign: “Working people are people who get their income from going out to work everyday, and also pensioners that have worked all their lives and are now in retirement.” Which obviously includes those who receive a large salary…
Kinnock just said: “our manifesto made it absolutely clear that we will not be raising National Insurance income tax or VAT on working people.” A cynical combination of two entirely different sentences in the manifesto…
Streeting said yesterday that Labour’s “focus” when it came to not hiking taxes was on “people who are on lower or middle incomes.” It only took a hundred days for Labour to give up its growth-friendly façade…
Amid the flurry of pre-budget briefing the FT now reports that Reeves will extend Sunak’s 2021 income tax threshold freeze beyond 2028, when it was due to end. The current threshold freeze will raise more than £33.5bn by 2029 and will drag 3.8 million more taxpayers into the additional rate band….
The stealth tax was a big focus for Labour’s attack operation before the election. Reeves said last year “Labour aims to lift a freeze on tax thresholds that is on track to cost workers on the basic 20% rate of income tax £750 a year each.” The party’s assault on the “25 Tory Tax Rises” singled out thresholds in particular: “Labour has found that Tory stealth tax rises over the next two years have hit the average sales assistant with a £660 tax bombshell.” Not only will Reeves not reverse the tresholds – she is specifically set to make the “bombshell” worse for longer…
Labour claims that the manifesto pledges won’t be broken with this because Labour only pledged to keep rates at the same level. The public are sure to be sympathetic…
Capital is fleeing the country at breakneck speed thanks to Reeves’ looming “painful” budget. According to Begbies Traynor, a corporate restructuring specialist, the number of British firms facing “significant” financial distress has skyrocketed by nearly a third compared to last year, reaching a staggering 632,756 between July and September—the highest figure since records began back in 2004. Meanwhile, a survey by Evelyn Partners reveals hundreds of business owners are threatening to flee Britain if Rachel Thieves goes ahead with her tax raid. Labour’s scaremongering and relentless chatter of tax hikes has entrepreneurs running for the hills…
A flurry of budget briefings splashing across the headlines ahead of 30th October will make for grim reading for British businesses and investors. Along with inheritance tax and stamp duty hikes for first-time buyers, Reeves is set to cut business asset disposal relief, which allows business owners to sell their assets at just a 10% tax on the profits of a sale. Guido’s old enough to remember when Sir Keir insisted Britain was open for business…
New data today from HMRC shows that inheritance tax revenue is soaring to new heights thanks to the Tories’ threshold freeze, which continues to drag increasing numbers of estates into payment. Receipts have jumped to £2.8 billion, £200 million up from the year before…
Rumours abound in industry circles that Reeves is drawing up plans to eliminate “loopholes” in IHT which allow for productive investment, including a relief on shares held in the junior Alternative Investment Market which allows them to be passed on tax free as long as they’ve been held for at least two years. AIM has already been riddled with delistings – experts say scrapping the relief will cause “irrecoverable damage”…
Meanwhile the leftist Resolution Foundation is now lobbying Reeves to remove the £175,000 additional inheritance tax allowance for families with children, which it claims “costs” the Treasury £2 billion and is “complex and distortionary.” Dragging everyone into payment – no wonder consumers are dreading the budget…
Labour’s latest brainstorming session for how to raise taxes whilst blaming the Conservatives has produced a new scapegoat: the NHS. No prizes for originality…
A major report commissioned by Health Secretary Wes Streeting is set to find NHS progress has declined for the first time in 50 years. Waiting lists, which have increased across all areas of the service, will be highlighted as a Tory failure, adding to the growing arsenal of Labour excuses to raise taxes. Streeting will be hoping no one looks to Wales’ Labour run NHS where 20.1% of people wait more than a year for treatment, compared with 5.2% in England…
Many will see the report as the latest development in Labour’s doom-mongering approach to government, clearly a ruse to prepare the country for tax rises in the imminent October budget. The phrase ‘progress has declined’ feels very Labour…
Rachel Reeves has done a rare media appearance today on a visit to manufacturers in Glasgow before a CBI roundtable with Scottish businesses. She was asked three times whether she would rule out raising Capital Gains Tax or Inheritance Tax in the budget. Thrice came a non-denial…
The Treasury’s latest projection is that a CGT hike will lose billions in tax revenue per annum. At the current thresholds 1 in 8 people will pay IHT on their or their spouse’s death within 10 years. These tax hikes will hammer the middle class hard…
