I do not recall MPs and constituents calling for a further reduction in National Insurance. Readers of this site will remember Ā the list of targeted tax cuts I requested, led by IR 35, VAT Threshold, and energy taxes . Others urged Income tax thresholds, Stamp duty and the tourist tax.
I have been willing to back a further NI cut as it is on offer. It does relieve some Ā pressures on working individuals and families Ā and provides a modest offset to the Bank of England recession inducing money policy. It does make it worthwhile working which is a good thing.
It does not poll very well and has not led to a big Conservative poll bounce. Many disenchanted Conservative voters are over the age to pay NI but subject to more Income tax if they wander over the tax threshold. There is some bemusement over the longer term aim of abolishing NI, which came out of nowhere. It is clearly not affordable on current policies.
Maybe they mean to abolish just employee NI, leaving in place employer NI which would remain as a tax on jobs. That makes it more affordable. I will look in more detail at the wider impacts Ā were they in due course to abolish employee (and self employed) NI.
March 11, 2024
Good morning.
As our kind host said to me in a question I posed to him many years ago, NI Insurances go into the same ‘Tax Pot’. ie they are not taxes which are used to invest in the same way we would allocate our own money to say, pensions.
On this basis I deplore Employers NI as it is an unnecessary tax which employers have to pay which does not benefit either the employer or the employee. It is better that the employer keep the money and use it to invest. That is why I and our kind host see it as a tax on jobs and, may I add, growth !!
We have seen with the Republic of Ireland the advantages of a low tax economy. But we must also accept there will need to be cuts made in State spending to pay for it. Currently we are spending too much for people to do nothing rather than rewarding those who are prepared to work.
It is high time we stopped massive borrowing and taxing those that earn to fund of our own demise.
Reply Ireland collects more tax perhead from business by setting lower rates
March 11, 2024
Indeed, lower simpler taxes collect more tax and would encourages more jobs and investments in the UK.
NI is only charged on a narrow band of earned only income. The combination of frozen allowances (income, CGT, IHTā¦) and the NI cut means most people will pay more especially pensioners and only a few working with middle incomes will be slightly better off. The long term plan seems to be to be āin effectā put NI on all income. This by slowly abolishing employees NI and increase income tax.
Tax in the UK is way too high, government far too large, government waste is massive yet public services are appalling and still declining. Many people would be better off on benefits with a bit of cash in hand or bartering and so many do this. Even my relative who is a junior doctor in central London on Ā£35k has literally negative disposable income left after rent, commuting, student loan interest, tax, NI, council tax, heat, light, waterā¦ The illegal boat arrivals get more plus driven to shopping trip too it seems.
March 11, 2024
JR, your recollection is correct.
Sunak stated he would serve with integrity and implement the 2019 manifesto. He failed both. The main thrust was to deliver Brexit. He failed and deliberately sold the nation out with his EU Windsor sell out agreement, make UK more dependent on EU energy, sign up and pay massive amounts of our taxes to EU Horizon to promote EU interests, give away N.Ireland, border down Irish Sea and force UK to act in lockstep to EU. No one voted for that quite the opposite. Sunak still implementing Labour policy of net stupid, socialist budget, highest taxes, highest debt, woke nonsense through and through, non dom nonsense to rid rich people from our country- would he have done this when his wife was a non Dom or does it confirm he is going to US?
March 12, 2024
+1
March 11, 2024
It’s certainly lost you my vote. Having a small works pension I’m now being taxed.
Removing the VAT on energy would have been good but of course we know you need permission from Brussels for that.
Reform are snapping at you heels and with the two idiots incharge they may well overtake you.
There is a God after all.
March 11, 2024
Totally agree regarding employer’s NI. It serves to stifle UK industry in favour of imports for the UK market and suppresses export competitiveness. Abolishing it must surely make the UK more attractive to foreign investment just as much as a cut in corporation tax.
Abolish it for UK industry at least, even if it is kept for domestic services and the public sector. Discouraging state job creation must be a good thing.
March 11, 2024
Irish VAT thresholds from April are: for taxable supplies of goods, it is ā¬80,000, while he threshold for services, it is ā¬40,000, as specified in Section 2 of the Irish VAT Act.
March 11, 2024
@Mark B +1 – it is solely the ‘Employers NI’ that is the unnecessary tax. It is the Employers NI that the only thing that is a true and full double taxation, the bit that is a tax on employment.
Government interference has stopped NI being a personal contribution for its intended purpose.
I would liken it to the Road Fund Tax – that now doesn’t fund roads. Governments have become the double speak enemy of us all.
What will the evolving energy levy become and so on and so on?
Keep it simple, it will cheaper more engaging and more effective.
March 11, 2024
Another reason not to vote Labour, it seems they have hired the disastrous failed BoE chap (chosen by dire IHT threshold ratter Osborne) the pusher of green crap one Mark Carney, yet another PPE Oxon I understand.
March 11, 2024
āIreland collects more tax perhead from business by setting lower ratesā even more now the foolish economic illiterate Hunt is to abolish UK Non Dom their Non Dom system is rather attractive to all non Irish people. As are many other countries similar systems.
Prof. Minford has a good article on this economic vandalism.
REPLY
March 11, 2024
So Anderson has joined Reform. Let’s hope he’s the first of many. Fishy giving Ā£170 million to protect Mosques. You couldn’t make it up.
March 11, 2024
Ian,
Giving Ā£170 million of our taxes to protect Mosques. If it was his money I would not care less.
March 14, 2024
+1
March 11, 2024
Wait for the clash of personalities.
March 12, 2024
Oh yes, Dave, this is the biggest problem for these parties and one factor that could save us from Corbyn and Galloway from joining up.
Habib doesn’t like Anderson joining. They don’t have the party discipline of the large parties that people here complain aboutāwhy doesn’t John say this or that? and so on. But discipline in the broader party is essential.
March 11, 2024
Protection rackets were a feature of the religious divisions in Northern Ireland when I worked there during the Troubles. It is a great mistake to sanction them with political gestures.
March 12, 2024
I hope it’s the first of several, but no more.
Over the last 4 years Tory MPs have allowed Johnson and Sunak to deliver the obvious clusterfcuk, in betrayal of their GE manifesto, and over the longer-term, most of them also either participated in the attempt to betray the EU Referendum or did SFA to try and stop it. I don’t want rats jumping from the Tory to Reform ship.
March 11, 2024
NI Insurances go into the same āTax Potā
No, its hypothecated.
March 11, 2024
Not according to the answer our kind host gave me quite a while back.
March 12, 2024
NI is accounted for separately. It can be used only for defined purposes, the biggest one being the state pension.
Currently the NI fund is in surplus, but even before these contribution reductions it was forecast to be exhausted by the early 2040’s. So with these changes it will presumably exhaust long before then.
So the question is, how are they going to pay the state pension ?
In reality, they have done this simply to leave Labour with an embarrassing problem. Labour will have to either reduce the state pension or increase NI back to its previous level and probably more.
March 11, 2024
Ireland in my view levies predatory company tax rates which encourage a ‘race to the bottom’. Read ‘The Finance Curse’. The period 1944-71 was by and large a better time for the majority of voters than after the US$ crashed off the gold standard in 1971. (Some very well-off financial advisers, and some companies which use transfer payments to reduce their bill, may disagree.)
March 12, 2024
I have paid Employers NI for many years, not the employer!
March 12, 2024
? Individuals pay Employee’s NI. You pay Employer’s NI when you employ another person.
March 13, 2024
I will show you my wage slip which says employers NI . I am too old to contribute to NI but if you you really think that there are no loopholes I could take this legal impropriety to court.
March 13, 2024
Ah, you mean your employer carries on paying employerās national insurance on your earnings. It is correct, employees stop paying national insurance at retirement age, employers continue paying 13.8% over the lel of Ā£12,570 for retirement age workers. I thought you were self-employed.
March 11, 2024
Good morning.
Did the NI reductions also mean less cost of taking that tax, or did the costs remain?
If the personal allowance tax threshold had been increased instead, taking lower earners out of tax paying altogether, would that have been a more cost effective solution to achieving the slightly lower tax take?
Efficiency in government?
March 11, 2024
It is all done by payroll software, so little difference in collection costs I suspect. We still have NI anyway just a lower rate.
The real win, win would be ditching net zero and deregulating hugely on planning, employment laws (easy hire and fire), IR35. Also cut out all the many things governments do that do net harm. Road blocking, worthless degrees, HS2, net zero, the net harm vaccines, the deranged energy policiesā¦
March 11, 2024
Why not levy NI on pensioners who have a high enough income and eliminate the upper threshold, i.e. above which the marginal NI rate drops to 2%? NI is a regressive tax at the moment, rather like council tax and VAT. The situation is intolerable to anyone who believes in fairness as opposed to greed.
If NI is in theory levied to fund the NHS, as well as to pay for state pensions; well, pensioners probably use the NHS a good deal more than working-age adults. I have never been able to understand why over-66s pay less NI than younger age groups on the same income. Since some over-66s are on gold plated final-salary pensions that the young will never receive, it seems unreasonable to charge the young more NI.
March 12, 2024
Ā£300/ month for 50 ,years work. Gold Plated?
I don’t think people know the reality.We the public are being taken down by liars and the lies are supported by those who wish to do us harm.
Inner turmoil is being created by those who have little concern for the demise of the UK.
All they want is our money and to take over the country.
Wake up.
March 12, 2024
Margaret, indeed that is the State Pension, and like you I paid into the system for 50 years (although I think you only now need 40 years to qualify) my problem is that those who have paid in next to nothing, can get that with other benefits when not entitled to a Stare Pension, under I believe Pension Credit, and a host of other Benefits. Thus the entitlement only if you pay into the system, has been well and truly lost.
March 15, 2024
@ Neil
That is the most ill-informed comment I have seen for some time.
The State pension entitlement is created by paying NI in the first place.
Pensioners most certainly do NOT have a “high enough income”, the UK State is the worst in the developed world.
If you are referring to some of the baby boomer generation who benefitted from final salary pensions – those days are gone, that generation has almost died off. Those trying to retire now are struggling to create a pension pot through the modern money purchase schemes that’s big enough, so many pensioners are forced to work beyond State pension age.
Living on Ā£10k a year is simply not possible. You need to re-think this, I suspect it’s green-eyed thinking from a young person, for whom pension age seems a long way off. Be careful what you wish for.
March 11, 2024
@Peter Wood +1
March 11, 2024
Hi Peter, Kate Andrews spoke on this in the post-budget episode of the weekly Spectator TV: CrNCQXAOsBs.āShe said: a 1% employee NI cut costs less than a 1% Income Tax cut; the Office of Budget Responsibility ‘allowed’ a 2% Ee-NI cut as ‘affordable’, whereas a 2% IT cut wasn’t.āA 2% cut in something sounds better than a 1% cut so NI got picked.
Kate also argued the Government should ignore the OBR more.āShe said there are other bodies giving projections, the Government could also make its own and then tell the markets it doesn’t think the OBR are correct and time will tell who’s right.
And there is little chance of personal allowances being moved because it highlights they haven’t been moved for yonks and won’t be moved again until another election nears.āBest to avoid shining any light on them at all.
March 11, 2024
your last para – -yes what was by stealth with eyes closed is now ‘bleedin’ obvious for those who can see and note the increasing income tax on those with already meagre pay. But the ruling class of Tories are oblivious and really don’t care. The nasty party who said ‘just about managing’ — a sick joke.
March 12, 2024
Leaving thresholds unchanged stealthily undoes the benefit of taking a few million people on modest incomes out of income tax. This was a simplification of the system which the coalition government deserved credit for.
Those on ‘minimum wage’ now pay significant income tax. Perhaps it makes sense in some crazy Sunak-Hunt world. It doesn’t to me.
March 11, 2024
What on earth was Sunak doing kicking out Lea Anderson? What is he doing with the hugely unpopular Hunt as Chancellor & why on earth did he bring back the disaster of Lord Cameron of Greensill Libya?
Sunak has zero political nous. Unless that is he actually trying to bury the Conservatives & throw the election. Surely he must be doing this? Unless he is even more stupid than I think he is.
March 11, 2024
Cutting taxes on income should be driven by philosophical and moral considerations not on political and personal considerations. The former is honest, libertarian and moral. The latter is parasitic, self-serving and morally reprehensible.
The idea that Hunt should have reduced NI primarily to up the Tory poll rating is preposterous, offensive and exploitative.
Truss’s instincts were correct. Hunt’s instincts I find excruciatingly distasteful. The man’s not to be trusted. The war memorial statement was out of place, provocative and without precedent. Again, it is more evidence of a party so captured by Labour and the Left that Tory leaders endorse an act that they themselves know to be wrong.
March 11, 2024
DOM, ++++. Once more you have pungently expressed the distaste, disgust for the Conservative party as it has increasingly become since the Major and Cameron days.
Your nose for the ‘corked’ taint of what was once fine has lately been repulsed by the utter rot and putrefaction of a pointless Party.
I share your sentiment and understand your depth of feeling.
March 12, 2024
Hunt’s War Memorial statement and Ā£1 million bung of taxpayers money was the equivalent of an Agincourt Salute to the kind of voters the LibCONs find extremely distasteful …. ordinary, working class Brits, particularly ordinary, working class Brits in the Red Wall who were stupid enough to vote to be CONNED in 2019.
March 11, 2024
NI only applies to the employed and does nothing for the retired or anyone else. Any gains were immediately reduced or replace by such as local rate increases.
It was a budget for the walking dead. Boring, deck chair shuffeling a la Titanic, and offering not an ounce of encouragement to the entrepreneurial, self employed, and SMEs. The lifting in VAT threashold by Ā£5,000 was a sick joke. The ommissions of government spending and the ignoring of the defence deficit will have pleased the opposition. All in all it was a none event, that did nothing to raise our personal GDP position from 21st on the world league table.
If it was meant to usher in a pre election spurt in the economy and a sense of wellbeing among the electorate it failed miserably. Why delay the inevitable, just go soonest.
March 11, 2024
+many
March 11, 2024
AG – you are absolutely bang on with your description of this lacklustre budget
What a great pity but not really surprising unfortunately.
March 12, 2024
Our VAT threshold is the highest in Europe by a country mile. Would the EU let us go too high and add more competition? No, only Ireland is allowed tax concessions to damage us.
March 12, 2024
We’ve left the EU.
VAT always was an EU-inspired tax.
The UK could abolish VAT tomorrow and return to a simple sales tax.
March 13, 2024
Leaving has just been a mirage. Tax alignment with the Northern Ireland agreement we arenāt allowed to deviate too much by a higher power than our own sovereign government.
There have been savings thatās we Labour need electing to conjoin us so we start paying back in.
We would be paying in around Ā£30bn pa now.
The tax from ROW imports would be high, 80% used to go straight to the EU, they fine us for assumptions about under-declared imports with the companies that do this never found or fined!
Erasmus being funded by UK student loans would be super high, especially in Scotland where there would be Ā£0 cost for EU residents, then they leave and canāt be chased for the student loan debt.
Each Country in the EU took on covid loans and the EU on their behalf took on a massive debt to distribute we arenāt currently on the hook for that, NextGenerationEU (NGEU), this multi-year budget worth ā¬832bn ($897bn, or 5.2% of the bloc’s GDP in 2022) is funded by EU debt, previously a rare commodity.
Or the very generous pensions for all their staff and MEPs.
March 11, 2024
Any reduction in Employers NI would not be enough to offset the increases in the minimum wage that the Chancellor has generously awarded to their employees.
Stupidly I always thought budgeting was constrained by my own money. How these politicians have āexpandedā their power and brilliance.
This is a tax-raising budget in real terms and the geniuses in the Treasury/BOE think we, who create the wealth they hurl about, donāt understand that.
I thought Conservative voters were angry before, the seething anger now is unmatched by anything, even the āsackingā of Mrs T, that I have ever experienced.
March 11, 2024
+many
I used to canvass for them, that stopped long ago when they became New Labour. They have shifted further left.
March 11, 2024
It offers the excuse to say taxes are cut. In fact, as more and more now realise, they are going up. Two causes of tax raises are (1) taxes announced a year ago finally kicking in and (2) fiscal drag. This is dishonest ploy. It has been rumbled by more and more voters.
In passing I recommend Niall Ferguson’s recent Adam Smith lecture and the contrast Smith drew between the Scotland of the late 18thC and China at the time and how their relative status stands today. As he says in the q and a at the end, when he visits Scotland it looks and feels a poor country. The same could be said of the rest of the UK.
March 11, 2024
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments. I do observe that you make these points in relation to the budget, BOI bond sell off and general direction of government as if you are a bystander, and not a member of parliament. I should hope that you challenge robustly the chancellor on these matters. I find it tragic that the Conservative Party has sought to reinvent itself as a continuity Blair party of social democrats. The parliamentary party is completely disengaged from the grassroots party membership.
March 11, 2024
A very alarming article in the newspaper completely backing up what I and most of the British public believe. That Islamic extremism
is widespread in 8 large organisations. It confirms the reason the police are not clamping down is a fear of violence and intimidation.
Soft times lead to soft men.
We are about to find out
Soft men lead to hard times.
March 11, 2024
+many
Tory party has allowed and encouraged it by their actions. Furthered by monument and now protection of Mosques- divisive, undeserving. No action against hating Jewish community.
March 11, 2024
It was Hunt’s attempt to ‘pull a rabbit out of the hat’ He only pulled a hair out of his ****
March 11, 2024
The budget did little or nothing to improve people’s living standards and the latest polls showed no rise in approval for the Conservatives. Evidently, government policies are followed regardless of what voters want. It seems ordinary people in the country have understood that, even if your party has not.
March 11, 2024
Another damp squib from the Consocialist party. Another nail in their coffin.
March 11, 2024
I am a Pensioner, and I was disappointed that nothing at all was done to reduce my Income Tax bill.
I do not qualify for Pension Credit, so I pay the full whack of Council Tax, Income Tax,TV Licence etc. I did not qualify for āCost of Livingā payments , ie: up to 1200 per household. I did get an additional Ā£300 on my Fuel Allowance last year.
I am glad they cut the NI, as it gives a break to working people, who are being squeezed. I had hoped for a penny off Income Tax. I know I am getting an increase in my State Pension this year, but I am expecting it to be swiftly followed by a letter from HMRC, who will have changed my Tax Code to take 20% of it, as they did last year.
March 11, 2024
strongly agreed, but raising Personal allowance would have been more effective for the lower incomes – like us!
March 12, 2024
+1
Millions including myself, in the same boat, as you.
Indeed anyone earning less than Ā£25,000 per year, now worse off after this budget !
Those on Benefits not paying any extra tax, as it is all “Tax Free” a real incentive to get off your backside eh !
March 11, 2024
The government is going to borrow and spend about Ā£125bn this year. Most of this is going to be spent on paying the interest on the national debt, now at Ā£2.45 TRILLION, the Ā£125bn will be added to this sum. Remember what happened to the Zimbabwe dollar?
Nothing Sunak has done in the past 15 months has revived Tory fortunes in the polls. He should be replaced, he’s not going to resign. What have the party got to lose? Give Penny Mordaunt a chance
When Labour take power after the January 2025 election, inflation may well be at, or near, the 2% target. The BoE will be cutting the bank rate from 5.25%, perhaps substantially. Labour will have a great deal of fiscal leeway to invest in their Green Plan and other priorities.
March 11, 2024
The Zimbabwe base rate is 200%.
The US debt is USD 34.5 Trillion!!!
The west has abandoned western values and is now the Empire of Sodom.
March 11, 2024
Remember the values of Margaret Thatcher ….’We must live within your means’ speech to the party conference 1976
March 11, 2024
SG
When you say invest you really mean spend
March 11, 2024
I always remember the signs above the aisles of the Gigante supermarkets in Mexico with their injunction Ā”Ahorre! which means Save! but of course really meant Spend!
March 11, 2024
According to
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/timeseries/bkqk/pusf
we hit Ā£3 trillion in October.
March 11, 2024
Labour will have pretty much the same fiscal ‘leeway’ as this government has currently (eg very little). Of course, if they decide to tear up the fiscal ‘headroom’ policy then they can spend more by simply borrowing more.
I suspect they will try to be good boys (& girls) for a little while before giving in to the many siren calls from the bottomless bucket they call the Magic Money Tree (MMT). It will be hard to blame Labour for what they will do, after all it’s just in their nature. It’s not at all hard though, to blame the successive Conservative governments that have led us to this place.
To slightly mis-quote from a well known submarime movie “You arrogant asses, you’ve killed us all”
March 11, 2024
I presume it’s all designed to lead to the concomitant abolition of the State Pension on the grounds that if you haven’t paid it for the requisite number of years then you’re on benefits sunshine. Of course all incomers will be pleased not to have to join a system in their 30s or 40s which requires them to work in the real economy for x years to be part of the same gig as those born here.
March 11, 2024
Thatās the answer in a nutshell. Also allows them to ditch the NI number – all of them.
March 11, 2024
For me and many I know, raising the income tax threshold would have been a lot better. That goes for those in work and those semi/-retired.
I can’t believe the polling will change by tweaking a few taxes. Out in the barren wasteland beyond Westminster we want to see boatloads of illegals leaving the UK, radically less green crap, to have affordable, relatively decent healthcare (something not provided by the NHS) etc.
March 11, 2024
Currently years of NI contributions are used to calculate the entitlement to a state pension. If NI is abolished then what will replace that ? The idea that benefits are contingent on contributions is one that is useful. I suppose the Conservatives are concerned that all the immigrants they have invited in won’t get a pension and so want to make it a universal benefit not contingent on anything – a bit like a universal basic income which they and other left-wing parties are keen on.
March 12, 2024
Ahhh, thatās what it is. The useless eegits have twigged that millions of the people they have āinvitedā will not have the 35 years of NI contributions necessary for a pension so, as you say, they want to abolish that little inconvenience. So, one rule for people born here who paid NO all their lives (48 years in my case) and another, new, rule for late arrivals. The contempt the governing class have for us is palpable.
March 12, 2024
Agreed, the idea that benefits are dependent on contributions is an important one. That link needs strengthening not weakening.
Without NI, the state pension would be funded from taxes, like other benefits. It’s only a short step from that to make it means-tested.
March 11, 2024
Annabel Denham today in the Telegraph.
We must scrap net zero, before itās too late.
The current path threatens our economy, society and democracy. We urgently need a change of direction.
Political obituaries will not be kind to Theresa May. But there is one unwritten law of modern British politics the former prime minister understood: you can be wrong on climate change, provided you are wrong in the right way. Whisper that net zero by 2050 will have deleterious social and economic costs, and accusations of ādenialismā will swiftly follow. Yet warn that the āhouse is on fireā and the end time is at hand, and youāll probably be given a book deal.
May was an appalling disaster in so many ways – but nearly all the mainly art graduate, virtue signalling & moronic MPs waved it all through.
also āThe Tories must strike a pact with Reform ā or be obliterated
The upstart party is flying the Thatcherite banner, attracting voters who feel betrayed by years of Tory incompetenceā
SIMON HEFFER
Last time with no change, no chance, John ERM fiasco Major (still he has not said sorry) the MPs chose obliteration for 3 plus terms. The election could be won but I suspect the daft fake Tory MPs will again chose not to.
The people want sensible immigration controls, tax cuts, net zero fully cancelled, a sensible energy policy, no woke lunacy, more houses, lower taxes, less government, real incentives to work and invest, a state sector that delivers value, drill, frack, mine… so U turns on everything Sunak and Hunt have done.
The Voter do not want Labour policies they just hate the very similar Tory ones.
March 11, 2024
LL, ++++++++
March 11, 2024
Abolishing National Insurance would mean there is no metric for deciding who is eligible for the state pension at what rate.
With the mandating of workplace pension schemes and these being whole working life contributions for many in 30 years’ time is abolishing National Insurance the first step in abolishing the state pension?
Far better to cut state spending and then use an additional national insurance tax to set up a sovereign fund for contributors to claim unemployment benefit and state pension commensurate with the amount they have paid in. Instead of cutting National Insurance we could start to hypothecate that tax now to build up entitlements. The taper of reducing benefits payments would reduce spending by itself.
March 11, 2024
Cutting National Insurance is less likely to be some doctrinal campaign by the Chancellor and Prime Minister, more likely that as this is a tax only on earner income and those below 65 it was cheaper to implement.
Bit of an own goal though, while they have protected pensioners from inflation by increasing state pension (and unearned benefits to others) by 10% from April, the messaging to pensioners who don’t get this tax cut is stark. Pensioners will remember the latest announced measure not the one announced in October.
March 11, 2024
The increase in State Pension Ā£s to me went nowhere near the increase in my Bills Ā£s.
I’ve been worse off year by year under this last 5 years of government and no sign of help.
March 12, 2024
Join the club – at least your increase reflected inflation.
March 11, 2024
Far better to raise the Personal Tax threshold for everyone rather than mess about with anything else.
Correct me if I am wrong, but do we have a situation now where benefits over the tax threshold are not taxed, but the State Pension is ?
If that is the case, why are Benefits not treated the same way, as it is income over the tax threshold !
More tax complication, millions more now got to fill in a tax return, many more people who do not understand the complex forms being fined, many more staff required to process a few pennies of extra tax.
Bloody daft and a smack in the face for those who are really struggling.
Give with one hand, take with the other, and I said it before Starmer !.
March 11, 2024
@Berkshire Alan – seemingly so, just crazy. The virtue signal is all that matters, dont look after those forced to contribute but give-aways to those that don’t. Criminal boat people gain more than a contributing pensioner. Then again if you didn’t contribute the Government gives you the money any way
March 11, 2024
Kwasi Karteng spot on just copying labour ātrying to be cleverā, letās take the cowards way out through stealth taxes.
Letās spin that we are being prudent by hammering the pensioners who have, Err been prudent.
Letās ālieā that taxes are going down when overall they are increasing to some of the highest ever..
Well I might as well vote for them at least they do not have the baggage of recent years.
Surprised that NI cuts are not getting traction in the polls? Only the āchildren not living in the real world with Sunak who is completely out of touchā
listen to us, they would have quickly known, but then we are āswivel eyed voting fodderā to be ignored as much as possible.
We read the ex independent āBorder Inspectorā tell us what we all know that the Home Office not fit for purpose, goodness knows what he would say if not subject to gagging clause.
What did Cleverley do, cave in to the Blob, sacked the whistle blower. You really lack courage.
March 11, 2024
“Many disenchanted Conservative voters are over the age to pay NI but subject to more Income tax if they wander over the tax threshold.”
That includes me, and as a result I will be jacking-in my “little job” later this year instead of keeping going for another year or two as I had intended. I will be joining the ranks of the not economically active because I refuse to work just to pay additional tax to this Not-a-Conservative-Junta to squander on its lunatic policies.
March 11, 2024
Well done glad you join us. I will not pay extra tax for 1.395 welfare immigrant claimants or the 63,000 illegal criminals entering our country given an amnesty by Sunak and Hunt. Pensions decide heat or eat, criminals get four star hotels and benefits, care homes and pension credits. They do not need to pay Tax or NI, welcome to the Tory party open border system of the land of the free.
March 11, 2024
I am over retirement age and therefore exempt from paying NI (though my employer is not), and my reaction to the Chancellor’s reduction in NI contributions is ‘Thanks for Nothing’.
March 12, 2024
I have to pay Employers NI
March 11, 2024
Sir John, You spoilt it by your rather quaint use of ‘but subject to more Income tax if they wander over the tax threshold’! Politic speak of the worst kind. ‘Wander’ indeed.!
Just say it as it is – nobody can survive on their own to live on the State Retirement income without additional pension or benefits.
But your priorities are ‘IR 35, VAT Threshold, and energy taxes’. Shame on you.
March 11, 2024
And in other news an article about CO2 emissions featuring the Leeds Uni data base highlights what is mentioned regularly on this blog, namely that U.K. politicians from Sunak down crowing about the speed of reduction deliberately mislead us by ignoring those emissions that we have āoff shoredā through the deliberate run down of home grown industry.
Sir John should run a āwe do not believe you/donāt treat as as stupidā line on his blog with the main topic.
March 11, 2024
From the information I’ve been reading, our personal tax-free threshold is one of the largest in Europe. I don’t really agree with people not paying a contribution to their State Pension and the NHS, and I regret that the link is being destroyed. That means testing State pensions so that future governments don’t have to pay them to folks who have made extra savings provisions, which started under a Conservative Government.
What they take away today from NI will be put back into Income Tax in the future because we’re told we’re broke.
If NI isn’t for your employee’s specific healthcare and the contribution to pension, we thought we were making, why are you punishing people who hire people to help them to grow? Businesses are already paying 16.8% over Ā£12,570 on every Ā£1, with no reduction in the higher rate and 3% into the workplace pension from Ā£6240. Perhaps take 3% from the employer’s NI rate and put it onto the individual workplace pension from Ā£12570.
March 11, 2024
āHelping individuals lead healthier lives calls for new models of financing and delivery systems to reduce disease burden and the rising cost of healthcare.ā WEF
They are mulling over theā¦.
āBeveridge Modelā
ā The National Health Insurance Modelā
āThe Bismarck Modelā
āThe Out of Pocket Modelā
āHelping individuals lead healthier lives calls for new models of financing and delivery systems to reduce disease burden and the rising cost of healthcare.ā Which one they ponderā¦will be best for us?
Sorry but I know NI was an insurance system. I have original documents.
They made people give up the insurances they had been paying as āObama Careā wanted to do.
And we have been double cheated out of those insurance payments and out of ancestral and personal payments. We now have NO health care āsystemā.
The envy of the bl**dy world indeed!
March 11, 2024
āProblemā, Reaction, Solutionā¦.
Mass immigration has certainly crashed our health system.
Leaving the door wide open for politicians to follow global orders and adopt a more EQUAL system.
Poor old leftiesā¦.they so LOVE the NHS!
And their worst fear was that the tories would privatise it!
March 11, 2024
Over decades of work as a clinician I employed only one assistant/receptionist because of the cost and complexity of the NI system. Many a small business and tradesmen have done likewise.
I deliberately reduced and capped my income when Gordon Brown increased top tax rate. I had no intention of funding or encouraging his grab.
The advent of the Quango, the CQC, has increased the burden of management for zero improvement in anything that can be measured in relation to actual provision of healthcare to the patients. If such a measure could show any benefit then I am sure that we would have been told of it, seen it, and banged our pots for more of it. Fat chance !
Any further interference from that quarter will see me take instant retirement from my Profession.
March 11, 2024
+++
Donāt blame you.
I remember GPs tearing out their hair over various reforms in the 90s
I just wish that they could quit the NHS and set up independently ā¦couldnāt happen I know!
Anyway..it looks now as if the govt. has been instructed ( from on high) to totally change the way the health system is funded (?)ā¦possibly hence the move towards abandoning NI?
March 11, 2024
This government makes decisions based on guesswork and is usually wrong. It claims to have a plan.
Either there is no plan, or it is a plan to build a Tower of Babel on Play-Doh clay.
March 11, 2024
There was a sort of traditional view that National Insurance was used to pay for the NHS and pensions. It seems only right to abolish NI as the NHS seems to have decided not to be available to people.
March 11, 2024
NI had a whiff of true entitlement about it. We paid and we got care.
Do away with that and goodness knows what could happen.
We will all be supplicants.
An insurance policy. Easily understood concept.
And it was WORKING until mass immigration and the plandemic were forced on us.
Working like a dream ( comparatively) until recent years.
So will they be paying back our insurance policies?
They are uber keen on historic recompense!
March 11, 2024
Face it your party is on course for the kind of electoral wipeout that the Progressive Conservatives in Canada suffered in 1993. We have been conned for too long by Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems – we need a thorough cleansing of the Augean stables.
March 11, 2024
Sir John
‘VAT Threshold’ changes are not permitted your leader the PM Rishi has tied us deeper to EU Control and rule, this Conservative Government can now only do what the EU Commission permits it to do. Or in plain English they have rolled back Brexit even further
March 11, 2024
NI changes break the connection between contributions and provision. If anything, it is one area that should have increased, a way has to be found to stop governments running the Worlds biggest Ponzi scheme. The removal of NI permits government of which ever completion to muck around with peopleās life through fiscal manipulation more than they do now.
That said making all health and pensions provisions 100% done via private schemes, you get to use private providers for health, you get to own your own pension pot.
Those individuals that are wishing to change NI have a conflict of interest, already have invested in their own pension pots and private health provision ā so as with all things from this Conservative Government those doing the manipulation have themselves protected.
March 11, 2024
If there was any sensibility in government the whole UK tax regime would be scrapped and started over. Having subsidies on top of subsidies and allowances on top of allowances go to the demonstrate the system has warped into being unfair and unreasonable for everyone. It is also top heavy in bureaucracy and administration suggesting the bulk of what in the end collected is just to fund itself
March 11, 2024
“I have been willing to back a further NI cut as it is on offer.”
Yep
Whilst a cut in National Insurance is of no benefit to me… many of my young working friends and family will find the extra money useful.
___
“It does not poll very well and has not led to a big Conservative poll bounce.”
Maybe the voters feel that total tax/NI is far too high and they are looking for something more imaginative than a few quid in their pockets every week/month ?
March 12, 2024
oldwulf, someone on the average wage, will save Ā£75 pcm from April 2024 compared to December 2023. It is not just a few quid. People will be sorry when Labour think people don’t care about that amount of reduction and they can just put it right back up again. If no one appreciates the saving on the way down, they can’t then complaint on the way back up, it’s just pocket money, after all.
March 11, 2024
It seems obvious to me that the feeling was non-working pensioners have already had a “bumper” pay rise and were thus excluded, having had enough already. Pensioners who have even a modest private pension will now pay more relative income tax thus reducing the effect of the increased pension. Perhaps utilising the old Labour trope “they’ll vote for us anyway”.
March 11, 2024
I donāt see any fiscal nor monetary policy or plan ā¦I see a Keynesian economics with command directives from the EU and WEF (we canāt change VAT) ā¦.long gone are the days of democracy when the people voted for parties to follow certain economic strategy ….altering NI is now the only economic tool of this government
March 12, 2024
The Junta is following the Orders of the OBR and Treasury Blob which, in turn, are following the Orders of the IMF/WEF and are shadowing the EU. We are not allowed to do anything which might further destabilise the Eurozone.
Brexit has never really taken place. We are, in effect, an Associate Member of the EU and as soon as the Ukraine war is over I predict the new two-tier EU will be rolled out and Associate Membership will be made official.
March 11, 2024
Any decrease in NI is off-set by Council Tax increase ……just stop spending on net-zero, foreign aid, immigration and wokeness
March 11, 2024
The government has demonstrated once again, that it has a complete disconnect with te electorate.
March 11, 2024
Spot on
March 11, 2024
Why cut NI again?
I suspect it is to legitimise the idea that the State Pension is a benefit rather than an entitlement. They have been pushing the benefit argument for some time even though your State Pension is calculated partly on the number of years that you have paid National Insurance.
Sweep away NI and the State Pension becomes a means tested benefit. More poverty and more state control, just as the Globalists like it.
March 11, 2024
Are there gremlins in the works? So much of government policy and actions seem quite bizarre! Are they trying to destroy the country? If so, they’re doing quite well.
March 11, 2024
The NI emphasis in the budget was the wrong approach and the disenchantment with Conservative voters was inevitable . It is interesting that China with all its present difficulties has adopted a cost cutting method as a stimulus to its industry and commerce . Sunak/Hunt seem to think that it is right to drive the wealth makers away ; they have completely lost the plot . There are a few truly Conservatives left – not many I agree , but I do rely on them to act and restore our way ahead .
March 11, 2024
NI receipts was forecast to be circa Ā£177 bn for 23/24. Roughly 60% paid by the employer; 37% by employees and 3% by self-employed. I assume that will be circa Ā£10 bn less for 24/25. All government tax receipts and spending go into the “Consolidated Fund Account” (a very enlightening read), the government’s current account at the BoE. A slice of NI used to go directly to the NHS, I don’t know if that still happens. Welfare spending circa Ā£300 bn including Ā£124 bn state pension, in 22/23.
March 12, 2024
acorn, does that Ā£124bn state pension bill in 22/23 include all the pension credits to people who haven’t worked enough for a full workers pension? Does it include the pension paid to public sector workers?
March 11, 2024
Thank you for this article Mr Redwood. Speaking as someone who was personally affected by IR35, once this is abolished the business world will begin to breath once more. I was working on a UK government / MoD contract in Barrow in Furness when IR35 was inflicted as a blanket measure. The exodus was so bad that the recruitment agency that placed us there had to make in excess of 50 staff redundant.
So the reality was:
1) The project we were working on stalled due to the mass exit of contract staff (these people are very hard to find) – ergo costs and delays were made worse
2) There was no revenue generated for HMRC due to the exit of these contractors
3) HMRC lost the revenue from the permanent staff employed at the recruitment agancies that lost their jobs
4) The hospitality industry in the local area lost the revenue and had to take in illegal immigrants to make up for the shortfall – rather than generating revenue for HMRC, they now have to pay out more.
I could go on – but safe to say, when Rishi Sunak waved the Labour Party’s tax policy IR35 through in 2021 without thinking of the consequences he failed to acknowledge the damage he was causing to all areas of the economy.
Why he thought IR35 was a good idea is beyond me. For our economy to stand any chance of recovery he needs to abolish it immediately.
March 11, 2024
IR35 was a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The Revenue believed (wrongly) that it was losing vast amounts of tax due to people not paying ENIC and full tax. They forgot that those people went on to spend the extra money in the wider economy creating jobs. ie The money was not handed over to be wasted, it just went around a few more time.
If the State was doing a proper job of managing we would not have to borrow (see above) Ā£125bn just to service a debt they, the State, have created.
March 11, 2024
Sir John,
I suspect, at some point, National Insurance will be phased out altogether, but it will leave a gaping hole in the coffers. I predict that, NI will be combined with income tax and will make the new income tax set at about thirty percent.
This could, in theory, reduce the administration costs and thus, reduce the size of the state.
I agree that employers NI is a tax on jobs but, again it’s removal will leave a hole in the coffers. I don’t know what the answer is.
In reality, the state is too big and still expanding. We need a grown up debate about just what we want the state to do for us. Sadly, political tribalism is unlikely to let that happen. We’re all doomed.
March 12, 2024
As you said āin theoryā – in practice this never happens. The state is like a cancer- it grows and grows until it kills its host – us.
March 11, 2024
The NI reduction did not give any bounce for the bucks spent because a majority of voters don’t really understand NI. Had Hunt spent an equal amount in reducing income tax, either by a rate cut, or restoring the damage done by Hunt and Sunak in refusing to increase thresholds in line with inflation, they may well have seen a small positive effect in the polls.
Clearly, the idea of abolishing NI has not been thought through at all.
The full cost would be Ā£48bn a year, according to Labour. That could only be paid for by increasing income tax further and that would have a very serious impact on those over pension age who pay income tax, but no longer pay NI. It would, in effect be a transfer of taxation from employees to the retired.
The PM and Chancellor could give all the assurances they can think up in an attempt to assure the retired that they will not lose out, but, frankly, nobody would believe them. As night follows day, as soon as finances become even more difficult, any extra tax allowance or rate reduction for pensioners would be reduced and eventually eliminated.
Another view could be that this could be a cynical move to reduce the benefit of the triple lock by the back door.
Most pensioners, including me, will switch their vote to Reform if this were to be in the next Conservative manifesto.
March 11, 2024
I thought the point was that the Chancellor doesnāt believe in Naional Insurance in principle. Originally, its function was to fund the NHS etc., but the money all goes into the same Treasury pocket so Hunt thinks that it should be amalgamated with income tax to make the whole tax system simpler. If he were to continue as Chancellor after the next election, my understanding is that he would continue to reduce it, aiming for nil in due course.
At a time like this, when prices of basics are rocketting, he would probably have been better advised to do something to help pensioners. I know some people say that pensioners have done well out of the triple lock, but it would not be difficult to take back any āoverkillā through the tax system. Pensioners with an income of less than, say, Ā£15,000 p.a. could perhaps be given blanket Pension Credit. A lot of pensioners are not currently eligible for Pension Credit for technical reasons, e.g. notionally ādisposable assetsā which they are unable to sell for some reason, and are consequently in danger of hypothermia or malnutrition.
March 11, 2024
I see that Lee Anderson has finally crossed the floor of the house and joined Reform.
A vast majority of Conservative voters supported what Mr Anderson said about the London Mayor and he rightly refused to apologise. The One Nation Conservatives have been leading the assault on Mr Anderson and Sunak was very unwise to go along with them and suspend the whip.
It was obvious that, unlike the PM, and the leader of the opposition, Mr Anderson is a genuine “Conviction Politician,” In other words, he says what he thinks, and he’s prepared to stand by his words. In this case, he was right and he was never going to apologise.
How many seats in the Red Wall will Sunak lose as a result of his misguided and stupid attack on Mr Anderson ?
March 11, 2024
The red wall and most of the blue wall has gone already. The Chairman of the Conservative Party could come 4th in his contest.
March 11, 2024
answer is very likely all the red-wall seats will switch to non-Tory.
March 12, 2024
None. Most people arenāt interested in politics. āTheyāre all the sameā.
March 12, 2024
Wrong, every one will be lost to non-Tories.
March 11, 2024
Forget Kate’s photo editing skill, topic of the day ought to be:
(from BBC website).
Reform have a parliamentary figurehead for the first time, Mr Anderson may make it harder for the Conservatives to reunite the right. There are some important caveats. Most importantly, Mr Anderson is not making his defection from a position of strength. He is currently suspended from the Conservative ranks at Westminster after accusing Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, of being controlled by Islamists.
Mr Anderson refused to apologise for his comments, making his suspension all but inevitable. There was grumbling from some Conservatives who wanted Mr Anderson to be handed a clear path back into the fold – but any such route would almost certainly have required him to apologise, which he again refused to do today.
It’s also worth noting that while Mr Anderson is well-known in Westminster for his pugnacious style, and has a show on GB News, he is not exactly a major national figure. Arguably a more worrying announcement for the Conservatives would have been the return of Nigel Farage to active campaigning duties.
Yet one person who definitely does rate Mr Anderson’s ability to connect with a slice of the British public is the prime minister himself. Mr Sunak appointed Mr Anderson a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in February last year. And as recently as January Mr Anderson starred with him in a campaign video about how “we should be so proud of our country”. Mr Sunak clearly thought Mr Anderson could prove an electoral asset. We will now find out whether he was right.
March 11, 2024
hammer nail coffin
March 11, 2024
It is not correct to say that cuts to NI “benefit workers”. Many people over 66 still work, so they are workers who do not benefit from this bizarre decision.
The idea of abolishing NI is equally bizarre. As you say, employers NI is the one to get rid of – it would all but eliminate the need for IR35 in the first place.
But the big consultancies like IR35 and its hobbling effect on their one man band competitors, so they keep it – and lobbying by such groups is the key thing in this arena.
The elephant in the room is what they propose to do about the reasons EE NI is separate to income tax:
– How will pension entitlement be determined? EE NI was a levy, not a tax, one of its purposes is/was entitlement to the State pension.
– Will income tax simply be increased in proportion? If so, that has eroded to zero the benefit for pensioners of not paying NI past retirement age.
If income tax is used for entitlement purposes, it is also paid on “unearned” income, will the pension be given to people based on unearned income now?
I often wonder if the current government intends to completely alienate its core vote. Sunak’s dense response when asked about pensioners not benefitting from the NI cut was “Pensioners don’t need it after getting an 8.5% increase”.
WHAT??? That’s to keep the pension worth the same – it’s a stand-still measure. And that’s on top of NOT providing the full increase the year before. Are these people really that incompetent? It’s as if they don’t want to be re-elected.
March 11, 2024
But Hunt’s sound bite tried to suggest he wants to give tax back in general …..yeah right.
How come he did the reverse.
March 12, 2024
Workers over 66 don’t pay any NI Ā£0; a younger person in that job would thus generate extra tax for the exchequer; there was a suggestion by lots of online forums for them to carry on paying NI if they’re working as their employers carry on paying employers NI.
March 15, 2024
The point is that removing employees NI will not mean that the government will simply collect income tax at 19% alone. They will *of course* increase income tax and pensioners will pay that extra tax.
So essentially, it’s a stealth tax method – instead of legislating to abolish pensioners not having to pay EE NI, they abolish NI itself, increase income tax and lo and behold, they *effectively* abolished the exemption for pensioners.
Low and utterly disgraceful. As if our pensioners didn’t have enough trouble trying to live on Ā£10k a year.
March 11, 2024
The N.I. Cuts are useful for those who benefit, but Pensioners, for example, don’t. The scandal is that this Chancellor, and all the Chancellors before him since 2010, don’t ever think of cutting Government spending so we live within our means. Do MPs run their personal finances the same way they happily let the Government run the economy? Do MPs borrow money to give away as the Government does? If you don’t make tough decisions while you have room for manoeuvre, they will be forced on you.
We have a PM and Chancellor so thick they did not even allow tourists to reclaim VAT in the budget.
The freezing of income tax thresholds is an absolute disgrace. Adjusting them would have been much more sensible than a 2% cut in N.I.
March 11, 2024
It again appears this Government has not thought things through. If they really wanted to set their electoral fightback alight, they should have abandoned the dreaded, fiscal freeze. This is nowt but a damaging and heavy tax on the lower paid, but those closeted in the corridors of Whitehall cannot see outside their own perfected world of splendid isolation from the real world of the real workers.
If you want to get reelected, you’d better start listening to the electorate, for it’s not too late to do the right thing for us voters and our country.
March 11, 2024
The state pension entitlement is currently based on number of years of National Insurance contributions. If the Chancellor intends to abolish NI, will he be creating a new method of calculating state pension entitlement?
March 12, 2024
People who get public sector pensions, like the MPs voting on these things and the judge I read of yesterday who gets Ā£70k per year after 15 years as a judge, don’t give a monkey about the basic State pension. Starmer if you listen carefully wants to give public sector high earners like himself, doctors and judges even more pension protection by not having capped pots just for them.
March 12, 2024
They would love the idea and be very grateful, unfortunately several million will be very pissed off!
March 11, 2024
I take it that its not affordable because of those pension debts that are hidden off the balance sheet.
It’s that Bernie Maddoff School of accounting.
Nothing will change until they are reported. People will still believe in fairy stories, that a tweak here, a tweak there makes things better.
March 11, 2024
No one believes that this Conservative Government are Conservatives. As time marches on and the GE looms it is also the Conservative MPās and the Conservative Party that are confirming the are not Conservatives. So, we are now getting to the situation not only has the PM, his so-called Government it is also the Conservative Party that have all deserted the Conservative Voters in the UK, – it is not the Conservative voter deserting them as with everything they do the truth is the reverse
March 11, 2024
From today’s media ā a quote from a Minster
“made a real mistake” in defecting from the Conservatives. ā my question would be who is the defector? It is clear to everyone that in pursuing personal self-gratification and the ideals of socialist dogma it is those that arrived in our government that are the defectors ā hell-bent on destruction of a once great party
March 11, 2024
exactly! he is jumping off the boat and hoping to swim away before it goes over the rapids.
March 11, 2024
Dear Sir John,
In the nature of things, politicians soliciting votes dare not tell us that the average household is about Ā£1,000 a year worse off just as a result of interest on the extra public debt accumulated over the emergencies of the past three years – and that there is nothing they can do about it.
Likewise, they dare not tell us that governments cannot do an awful lot to raise the sustainable rate of per capita growth apart from providing a stable and orderly playing field, making public services more cost effective, keeping out of the way and arranging taxes to cause the least damaging economic distortions.
In a zero-sum tax environment, axing employees’ NI is like raising the minimum wage but forcing all income tax payers rather than employers to foot the bill. At the margin, that is a net gain by lessening disincentives to work. But the main effect is on income distribution, most obviously at the expense of pensioners above the poverty line. And that would be unsustainable if employees NI was axed altogether without a step change in per capita growth.
March 11, 2024
Iāve just thought of a really good āHealthcare Modelā
Wouldnāt need any NI at all.
Let the billionaires of the world do what19th century industrialists and philanthropic aristocrats did.
Build state of the art hospitals and this time commit to financing them for 100 years.
Not just in places where they want to buy land at knock down prices or mine rarities either!
After all the NHS requisitioned, subsumed and squandered donated buildings, land and assets.
Said benevolence was meant to be for, by and of the people.
NOT scattered to the four winds.
March 12, 2024
‘ industrialists and philanthropic aristocrats’ !
I look around and don’t see any – care to help me out?
March 11, 2024
OT but I see some Conservative MPs saying a vote for Reform will let Labour in. What they donāt realise is that we donāt care – Sunak/Hunt would be literally no different to Starmer/Reeves economically and Wes Streeting would be an improvement on any Conservative health minister. So Project Fear wonāt make us vote for you.
March 12, 2024
+1
March 11, 2024
I was reading that the German state pension is also a pay-as-you-go plan. Traditionally, retirees in Germany received a generous statutory pension. However, an ageing population and a system where the workforce pays for the retired often force people to take a different approach to retirement beyond the German state pension. They seem to get 70% of their working net income!
State Pension 18.6% contribution (going up to 20% by 2025) ceiling Ā£6010 per month, 9.3% employer – 9.3% employee.
Unemployment insurance 2.4% (1.2% employee, 1.2% employer) to a ceiling of 84600 EUR pa.
Health insurance 14.6% to an income ceiling of 58,050 EUR pa. 7.3% each.
Long Term care insurance 3.05% (childless individuals 3.4% from age 23) 58,050 ceiling
1.525% each. [This was put in place in the UK called the Health & Social Care Levy by Boris from Apr 2022 – repealed by Truss in July 2022, 1.25% each employee,er]
So Germany Social Security Employee 18.125% / Employer 18.125%
UK National Insurance (>LEL) Employee 13% / Employer 16.8% inc workplace pension.
Does anyone know what the comparative personal allowances are (in Germany it says if you earn a sum of money above a certain limit, what is the current limit? I wonder if its the same as the income tax 11,604 euros or Ā£9891)
This matters because it seems we need to stay aligned to European levels of income taxes and social taxes. They do have a combined tax-free rate for couples of 23,208 Euros. They also have tax-free child allowances, which, in 2023, was 6,024 Euros.
March 11, 2024
the whole tax and benefits system needs a massive simplification, so that it can be managed with far simpler software and business processes, and far fewer admin staff.
there is little reason for the massive amount of complexity, other than to make politicians who suggest endless modification fell better.
the simpler the better.
I would abolish NI completely and uprate income tax accordingly to balance out that change.
we need massive spending cuts in allsorts of obvious places, like subsidising illegal immigrants, to fund proper large scale tax cuts.
March 12, 2024
Payroll software is pretty basic. You have more problem processing student loans especially if an error is made and an employer can’t get the student loan overpayment back, attachment of earning orders with several different schemes in operation that the payroll software has problems with, some schemes just take a % with no outstanding balance and that causes the program not to take the premium.
There is workplace pension provisions at a lower personal allowance,
The Germany payroll systems cope with three extra lines of deductions.
March 13, 2024
payroll software could be simpler.
and benefits could easily be paid by payroll software too, if you tweaked tax due figures to trigger payments to the end citizen. rather than the mass of extremely complex software currently used for benefits.
March 11, 2024
It would have cost about 8 billion pounds more which is under 1% of public expenditure to have cut Income Tax rather than National Insurance by 4p in the Ā£. That would have benefited far more people, especially pensioners and unlike cutting National Insurance would be memorable and notable for electors, so much so that anybody with political ability would have done that rather than cutting National Insurance even if that meant holding back NHS expenditure (as the Conservatives will never get any credit or much result from catering to the voracious appetite the NHS has for our money), let alone easier spending cuts.
This is symptomatic of Sunak’s complete lack of political ability and his kow-towing to officials. The problem is he and most current Conservative M.Ps are snowflakes who would rather not greatly offend people in their social circles than win re-election. So they got rid of Boris Johnson as he was embarrassing in ‘polite society’ though he was very popular with most (now erstwhile) Conservative voters; they got rid of Truss as she was embarrassing and giving them a rough ride in polite society and though unsuited to be Prime Minister would have given them a much better election result than Sunak will and they won’t make Suella Braverman Leader now because she too would embarrass them in polite society even though she is now their best prospect for the general election and would win them many more votes and many more seats than Sunak. Politics is not for snowflakes and as American President Harry Truman said if you can’t stand the heat you should get out of the political kitchen.
March 11, 2024
Off topic but well done Lee Anderson. Hopefully we now have someone to stand up in parliament and speak up against mass immigration and net zero, something not one of the 650 Consocialists/Labour/Lib Dum and SNP MPs are prepared to do because they are not in tune with the public mood. You are in the wrong party John. You and the handful of true Tories left in this pathetic Government should join him.
March 11, 2024
Reform are just the Tory Party of the 50s 60s 70s 80s & 90s ….note the left woke tories of the 00s 10s 20s
March 12, 2024
glen – don’t get your hopes up just yet!
March 11, 2024
Forget cutting NI, cut net-zero …..I just read a paper showing that climate change doesn’t exist, evidence shows that nothing has changed in 300 years – Carolina Tree-Ring Science Laboratory, Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27412, USA https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/16/4/513 –
March 11, 2024
Go and look at the receding glaciers in the alps
March 11, 2024
Hannibal did.
March 12, 2024
Go and look at the expanding ice in the Arctic. Oh, and the polar bears are thriving.
March 12, 2024
…and the great barrier reef ….the the tree growth lines say ‘no weather change’ in 300 years
March 11, 2024
A desperate attempt by weak conservatives to paper over the cracks and real gap between the voters and themselves. Fiddle, fudge, forget core values.
March 12, 2024
Why not do what Australia does and charge a flat rate on top of income tax to fund medical provision? Too simple for the multitude of special interest groups in UK?
March 12, 2024
You need to look at the deliberate destruction of the NHS ,the destruction of all British owned companies, and witnessed like I have ,the contempt for British people for 20 or more years.You need to wake up to the fact that our history doesn’t teach us anything because it is not about our culture anymore.
Twitter has professional people writing about how the union jack makes them sick and many more insults about our country.Apparently it’s anybody’s country where we have slaved
to build it up,accepted the views of all who want to bring us down as democratic speech and stupidly allowed this country to be taken over.
March 12, 2024
We don’t need hair brained schemes now, we need action on matters that are going on all around us. I think Sunak is from another planet and the sooner he goes and works for Bill Gates and the like, the better. What a terrible Chancellor and unelected PM he has been. However, I bet this puts him in the league for a super paid job with the lot who are trying to take over our country from afar? What these people have done is very worrying for us the general public who have worked for this country and are now reaching the end and leaving nothing behind that we can be proud of.
March 12, 2024
‘There is some bemusement over the longer term aim of abolishing NI, which came out of nowhere.’ Was it even run past a focus group or two? I think that the government has conjured this policy up on the hoof. I’ll suggest, again, that the priority, for personal taxtion, should have been a lifting of tax thresholds. The benefit of that? A partial restoring of trust, which is currently in very short supply.
March 12, 2024
He was prior reading his Budget speech and suddenly thought ‘ I need to sound kind and generous here’.
A flash of inspiration ‘I could make it sound like I’m on their side, but being held captive against my better nature’.
Hey presto! VoilĆ .