If Labour were not lecturing the rest of us that we need to pay more tax people might have more sympathy with the Defence Secretary who decided paying standard Council tax was dear enough without having to pay double for a second home. Some might even think the former Housing Secretary was right that Stamp Duty is now way over the top and damaging the homes market, but not when she had told the Chancellor to hike taxes more on people like her with more than one home and a six figure income.
Ministers should learn from their own wish to pay less tax that many now feel the state is stealing too much and delivering too little with all the cash it takes. People feel squeezed because they have to pay so much tax on everyday living out of income already taxed heavily before they get what is left.
Lets take the case of someone whose average Income tax and NI rate on their Income is 40%.
If they buy petrol, taxed at 50%, their effective tax rate on the income needed for the purchase is 70%.
If they buy standard goods taxed at 20% VAT the rate is 52%
If they pay their Council tax it is 100%
If they pay any other tax or government licence fee it is 100%
If they buy a new car at 20% VAT with say 10% first year VED it is 58%
If they save the 60% they will be liable for at least 40% tax on any income they make on the savings.
No wonder we feel so badly off. If your Council tax, VED, congestion charge, government licences are expensive relative to your income the high effective tax rate is especially damaging to your standard of living.
People who work hard, take risks, set up businesses want some benefits from their efforts. Current taxes are now collectively too high leading too many to emigrate or to do less.
November 22, 2025
Tax in the UK is hugely excessive and well above the Laffer point. Worse still the UK government spend it appallingly either doing very little good, no good or vast net harms like Net Zero, HS2, Covid Lockdowns, Covid “vaccines”, £250 million sick joke Covid Enquiries, excessive red tape… Note also that the maximum tax take Laffer point is already well about the point it should be for maximum benefit for the people and the best economy! Circa 20% of GDP is about right not heading for 50% as now!
November 22, 2025
Well above (not well about) the point it should be…
November 22, 2025
One of the biggest problems with excessive taxis the shrinking base ad a percentage of the population. 500 gimmigrants a day signing up for Universal credit, millions on benefits who don’t pay income tax or council tax. Thousands with VAT free and road tax free Motorbility cars and the list goes on.
I’m 80 in a couple of weeks and my pension is taxed to pay for this largesse
Anyone who saves, pays into a pension or makes provisions for their old age is stupid because you will be rinsed by this government to finance their preferred cohort many who have no right to be here and have no intention of contributing.
See Lee Andersons quiz te the Tower Hamlets couple . £50k annually in benefits is disgusting
November 22, 2025
Happy (soon to be) Birthday Ian. You will doubtless be overjoyed to learn that you will then get an extra 25p per week (maximum 20p after tax) on your State Pension but be careful not spend it all at once.
From the government website “The age addition was introduced in 1971, in recognition of “the special claims of very elderly people who on the whole need help rather more than others”.
It has been discontinued on the current single-tier pension effective April 2016.
I don’t know how any MP can keep a straight face on this!
November 22, 2025
think big….you used to be able to save the 25p for a month and pop into your local newsagent and have the excitement of buying a lottery ticket with it. Now you have to wait 2 months.
November 22, 2025
@Lifelogic – you are suggesting budgeting, something the average household does daily, to spend you first earn.
Although the Socialist Parliaments we have seen this century want the situation, they even contrive the situation that everyone should be beholden to the State. The State is the provider and the Minions must bow down – classic WEF propaganda and indoctrination. Something those in all sections of our Parliament have knocked in to them in the annual pilgrimages.
November 22, 2025
Richard Dearlove in the Spectator:-
“Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero”
Alas the Moronic Milibrain, Anti Growth Reeves and Two Tier Kier are doing exactly this while wrecking the economy and living standards too.
Reeves complains of “Mansplaining” well dear some Man or Woman really does need to explain reality to you. If she wants growth as she says the. stop all your anti-growth policies! Reduce taxes, reduce the size of government by 50%, cut red tape, scrap net zero, ditch the tenants rights and workers rights bills, ditch the wars on the self employed, small businesses, landlords, car users, ditch Chagos…
Reply All male Chancellors got plenty of womansplaining in the run up to a budget, and rightly so. It is called democracy.
November 22, 2025
Indeed, listen to mansplaining and womansplaining and take it onboard when it is rational and makes sense! I see that my spell checker thinks mansplaining is a word but for womansplaining is not. Rather sexist of it. Does it perhaps not think that women can explain?
November 22, 2025
I don’t understand what either of them means, so, gentlemen and ladies, let’s please stick to plain English and not get sucked in into the artificial language of the left.
November 22, 2025
Agreed!
How can there be ‘manslaining’ or ‘womansplaining’ if we don’t know what a man or a woman is in the first place anyway.
This Chancellor is beyond all hope.
November 22, 2025
Interestingly Economics undergraduates are about 70% men, physics, computer studies, much of engineering and higher maths are circa 80% men. Yet overall nearly 60% of undergrads are women. So I suppose it follows that in these subjects mansplaining is perhaps more likely womansplaining!
November 22, 2025
When it is women doing it, it is called nagging.
November 22, 2025
Yes. But nagging is not really explaining more just demanding.
Plus men can nag too – can they not?
November 22, 2025
When I explain thinks to women (usually my wife and daughters & often technical things, computers, printers & car things…) I am trying to help them understand better and do not make errors next time – but I often get the impression they do just think I am nagging!
November 22, 2025
hilarious Rose ..never a truer word.
November 22, 2025
“Richard Dearlove in the Spectator:-
“Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero””
The purpose of the CAGW hoax and its “solution”, Net Zero, is to sabotage our energy, economy and finally national security with expensive, chaotically intermittent energy generated by wind turbines and undersea cabling spread out over the North Sea which are undefendable from attack by cheap drones as well as disrupting our radar defence systems. At the same time transitioning to the expensive and impractical electrification of everything including heating and transport and thus putting all our energy eggs into one basket and making our national and local grids the biggest hacking target in the world. All made worse by the fact that the storage of grid-scale electrical energy is prohibitively expensive as well as being dangerous. Finally of course destroying any physical defence of the nation as electrified military equipment is no match for existing equipment using hydrocarbon fuels. The UN IPCC’s CO2 climate hoax is nothing more than a radiative model which Happer & Wijngaarden have used to show that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere produces little, if any, additional radiative warming because there is already sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all the IR radiation emitted by the planet. A phenomenon known as saturation, endorsed by The Royal Society, which is akin to adding more kitchen paper to a spill once the first few sheets have already absorbed all the liquid.
November 22, 2025
Indeed for the vast majority of people in the UK economically they are better of on benefits with a bit of bartering and perhaps even cash in hand on the side they are even better off. Some e-bay or vinted sales perhaps. Plus no commuting costs and lots of time for DIY, shopping efficiently and similar. You and you boy or girl friend can even run two homes paid for by the state.
I often think of a loop tax how much do I have to earn to make it worth paying someone to say fix my car? This with employers NI 8%, employees NI 15%, Tax 20% to 45%, then VAT 20% then commuting costs and council tax, IPT insurance tax… Brewing you own beer or making your own chip fat diesel thus avoiding alcohol duty (legal) or evading fuel duty )(illegal) even more efficient. It can work out that the garage has to do the work in about 1/5 of the times you would tax to make it only just worth while. Or you have to earn 5 times as much as your mechanic? Or your childminder, cleaner, gardener, decorator for it to make sense economically! Plus a change is as good as a rest they say? So why work that is the message the tax and benefit system send out and more amd more are working this out. Especially if you can get extra payents for sicknesses or caring for someone or both!
November 22, 2025
Interestingly you can legally brew you own wine, fruit wines, beer, cider… but conventional distilling to make spirits is illegal. But you can concentrate alcohol by freezing methods perfectly legally it seems. Freeze concentration of alcohol is not explicitly illegal in the UK for home use plus you do not risk methanol poisoning this way. You can get up to 30-40% ABV fairly easily and higher with special gear. Tax on a bottle of gin is about £14 and a bottle of wine circa £5 depending on strength duty and VAT. Plus environmental too as you can reuse the bottles! To earn the £20 for the bottle of gin you have perhaps had to earn £50 before tax and NI x 2 deductions. Collecting wood for heating and fuel is quite efficient too if in benefits. It warms you twice as they say.
The “Good Life” on benefits can perhaps be quite tempting under the over taxes Labour, nuts, mushrooms, apples, plums, damsons, sloes, rabbits, road kill venison etc. game, fishing, wood burning stoves, a few veg. a bit of bartering and DIY… Plus no tax returns to file! I still have several to do before Jan 31st!
November 22, 2025
Thanks for the tip. I will try making Calvados, which is £37 a bottle and a very nice light spirit.
It looks like my son and little grandson will have to go abroad with his European family. He is making serious money for the first time with his AI serviced business and would have to pay enormous taxes, unlike his foreign partners. The business may not be as successful in the future because AI could copy it. They don’t pay CT here because this tax is lower in his partner’s country. I will miss them. I hope this isn’t going to upset Labour politicians for mansplaining.
November 22, 2025
I do fine men are usually more informed on tax planning than women but doubtless many women know their stuff. Alas it is like playing chess when A. they can change the rules as they wish and B. They can use GAAR to decide what was legal is later declared not to be. A Mugabe tax decided after the event. Hugely damaging to investment in the UK.
November 22, 2025
This is what the lockdowns taught people. Unfortunately, many young people are living off the bank of Mum and Dad. Many are living off generational wealth, which is fast disappearing. There is little incentive now to save for the future, as governments seem to think our hard-earned money is theirs for the taking. Our GDP per capita is sinking to third-world levels and continues to get worse. I pity future generations.
November 22, 2025
I agree Christine. The Socialist goons in the Treasury (and it started long before Rachel from Accounts became Chancellor) have destroyed any incentive for many people to work, save and invest.
They’re now ensuring that very few who are still working will have the money to save and invest, even if they want to.
November 22, 2025
Agree – We don’t need an election to change government, we need an election to change the civil service
November 22, 2025
Ctistine
The Bank of Mum and Dad is limited, as they have to survive for 7 years after the gift is made for any gifting to be tax free.
Solicitors and HMRC will trawl through historic Bank accounts to check on expenditure now.
If you do not have them, they will ask the Bank to supply them.
How do I know, a recent family members estate had all of those checks requested in order be satisfied that they had gifted nothing in the last 7 years (perhaps soon to be 10 years if the rumours are true)
You now cannot even spend your own tac paid money to help out your kids any more without the risk of further taxation. !
November 22, 2025
It must have been a very conscientious solicitor. My friend gifted the proceeds of a second home sale to her two sons. She passed away three years later and when it went for probate the sane solicitor who acted in the house sale said i won’t say anything if you don’t.
Most don’t agree with rapacios governments stealing peoples assets.
November 23, 2025
None of us agree with it Ian, but HMRC have been given more powers, they can now take money from your personal bank account without your agreement, if they feel you owe them something.
I am simply hating the way our Country is going, where officialdom and State control of all kinds is growing, at the cost of the freedom of the individual.
November 22, 2025
Indeed but they can spend it on fast cars, fast women or men, flashy holidays… Note however there is an exemption for “regular gifts from excess income” which can be useful. Also if in decent health you can take 7 years life cover to cover any death taxes on gifts within 7 years – on a sliding scale and this can be quite cheap. But all might change next week with the dire Rachel R!
Another way is to sell up move to a suitable overseas no IHT country get all your assets out of the UK so you do not need anu UK probate. They will prob. not bother chasing you as too much hassle for them and may not even notice!
November 22, 2025
Plus they prob. have to pay for their commuting costs, work clothing, lunches, dentists, prescriptions charges, child care…
November 22, 2025
Don’t forget that fines make increasing income for the government. Landlords face huge fines for allowing mould or not filling in forms, small businesses face fines for not making digital tax returns 5 times pa, I paid £450 this year for going past 3 cameras in a bus lane at night during a rain storm and another for washing my car outside my garage plus 2 for overstaying on a parking zone when I forgot to stop work.
November 22, 2025
Mould is usually caused by the tenants, unless there is some roof leak or similar that needs fixing. Tenants, thanks to Ed Miliband and May’s moronic net zero, v. often cannot afford to heat the place properly. To keep warm they often do not open windows, block up ventilation bricks and vents, dry wet clothes and towels on radiators, have lots of showers, often over crowded (often people not one the tenancy) so condensation which causes the mould. What is usually needed is a bit of bleach, more heating and some ventilation or open windows in dry days.
Any tenant can easily make their home as mouldy as they wish too and the. complain about it. The dope Gove (a Greta disciple) being an english graduate perhaps did not grasp this. He made a huge fuss over this a while back, so perhaps he just did not understand or just wanted to sound pro tenant for political reasons.. Or perhaps in this particular case their actually was building leak or issue!
November 22, 2025
Sir John,
It all comes down to what we want the state to do for us. The more we expect, the more we will be taxed.
Other countries have lower taxes but they have little done for them by the state.
At the moment, we pay far too much tax, but get less and less for that tax paid.
We need a national conversation as to just what we want the state to do for us.
Reply Agreed, and a review of why the public sector costs so much and achieves so little
November 22, 2025
I want defence, law and order with real deterrents, border control and very little more. 20% of GDP is plenty for this. Yet we pay nearly 50% and still do not get the latter two and even our defence systems are very poor and inefficient.
November 22, 2025
I agree. I spend 50% of my time in Spain, where the welfare culture is very different. There are very few social security benefits, compensation for accidents is non-existent, they don’t pander to illegal immigrants, and one month’s council tax in the UK pays for the year here. The UK NHS pays for the medical bills of expatriate pensioners living here, but also covers the healthcare costs of vast numbers of foreign nationals who receive a British state pension. However, Spanish nationals living in the UK are entitled to free NHS treatment. My Spanish neighbour here even sent her mother to live in a UK nursing home (pre-Brexit), paid for by the council.
The UK Government is too generous and wasteful of taxpayers’ money.
November 22, 2025
@Christine – the UK State doesn’t see money as coming from a taxpayer, they see it is something that they own to use. Hence the phrase ‘Government Grants/Subsidies’ etc the money is not from the Government it is from the taxpayer, you could even suggest it is Parliament that is stealing this money from the Country to support their personal electioneering – the Norman Conquest all over again
November 22, 2025
Good, they can do without money from the taxpayer then.
November 22, 2025
Cliff.. Wokingham. – some of that is also indoctrination. The concept that only the State provides and it is only the State that should provide. Surely the State should get involved as a matter of course, before all other considerations. Time and time again it is proven that those closest and most able, the ones subject to competition, are the ones that provide a better more cost effective service
November 22, 2025
Best question ever ….what is our government for
November 22, 2025
What you say is true. The problem with your summary is that most of what you say was already true under the recent Conservative led Government.
November 22, 2025
+ 1
Johnson and Sunak landed us with £400 billion of debt to pay for the Covid Tyranny.
They taught:
1. The Public Sector that they could doss around at home and still be paid their full salaries.
2. Older people approaching retirement that life without working can be very pleasant if you can access your public sector or private pension a few years early …. so you might as well chuck it in now.
3. A great many lazy lumps that gaming the welfare system is (a) much easier and (b) quite lucrative and definitely preferable to a low-status, minimum wage job
4. A generation of Under-Graduates and school children that “education” isn’t really that important
5. Small business owners and the self-employed that THEIR businesses and jobs weren’t considered important and could be sacrificed, in favour of boosting Corporate profits and the public sector.
The lockdowns/restrictions were the most destructive policy in our history.
November 22, 2025
Johnson the worst PM in our history, especially when you see the opportunity he had when he walked into Downing Street. We will be paying for him for generations.
Unbelievably, Rees Mogg, one of the best Conservatives and therefore one of the handful of last hopes, thinks we did not want to be rid of Johnson! He still thinks that!
November 22, 2025
I know. It’s why I pay little attention to whatever Rees-Mogg has to say. He is fully implicated in the failure of the Johnson Government.
November 22, 2025
Since Mrs.T. the Party chose to have clowns lead as PM. end of.
November 22, 2025
JM
That is why they got kicked out, sadly only a few of them have learn’t something from the last election, there are still too many Socialist minded Mp’s in the Party to trust them again.
November 22, 2025
Who? I can’t name one!
November 22, 2025
This comment is in the wrong place!
November 22, 2025
It’s been going on at least since the end of WW2. My Dad was a farm worker, who had one day off a month and earned about £7 a week (or may be less, plus tied accommodation). He used to say, the Government give with one hand and take it back with the other. Much was achieved in those faltering days after the war, but its got steadily worse since the days of Atlee, Bevan, Bevin and Cripps! What a dangerous world, which, by God’s grace, our wise and noble Queen provided such a steadying hand.
November 22, 2025
Good morning.
You would not mind such levels of tax if you lived similar levels to that of Norway, but we do not. We are paying more and just giving it away to those who have never earned it.
November 22, 2025
I would still object. This as I spend my own money far more efficiently than governments do even in Norway. How do they know what I, my family, my businesses and my buildings want or need? But true we have the worst of all worlds very high taxes and truly appalling public services too. The incentives to life off benefits or to leave the UK are huge. The tax to death Reeves, Miliband (rip off intermittent energy), Lammy (Chagos), Mahmood (open door immigration hotels and benefits) Two Tier justice Kier… the doom loop keeps accelerating!
November 22, 2025
@Lifelogic +1
how things become distorted by the UK Parliament, Chagos is now defence spending
November 22, 2025
It is….China’s defence strategy.
November 22, 2025
@Mark B – even more galling is the amount of hard earned tax income that is being forced out of the Country by Parliament to prop up foreign State owned industries. This is not only money that leaves our shores, never to return, it is money removed from the economy that stops moving around the economy ‘causing’ the economy to happen.
Some may say, that’s only those in the UK Parliament, they have no choice but to buy from others. But they forget to consider that those they send UK hard earned Taxpayer money would block any reciprocity, they refuse the same happening to their taxpayer money. UK wealth removal is seemingly a UK Parliament objective.
November 22, 2025
We have seen this situation on our doorstep in recent weeks, The EU wants the UK Taxpayer to give them 5billion before they can bid(just bid) for defence contracts in their lands. Yet the EU supplies the Royal Navy with ships, steel for its submarines the electronics and control of our defence system even the famous ‘Strom Shadow’ missile. Most of this is coming for EU State controlled industries and the UK didn’t demand one penny from them before they were allowed to sell us our vital defence capability.
If only Parliament wasn’t so keen to rid these shores of our industrial base
November 22, 2025
Norway has now volunteered its Sovereign Wealth Fund (Norwegian tax payers money) to take legal responsibility for stealing the frozen Russian Assets in the EU (and Britain?), a risk the EU refuses to take.
Why would you want them in control of your earnings?
Sweden of course is irrecoverable.
November 22, 2025
Sorry, but first, both the Statens Pensjonsfond and the Statens Pensjonsfond Utland are what, starting in the ‘70s, the Norwegian state put aside from the surplus revenues of the Norwegian state oil sector and are therefore not direct Norwegian taxpayers’ money.
Moreover
reuters.com 12/11/2025 ‘Norway won’t provide $160 billion guarantee for frozen Russian funds, finance minister says’
informat.ro 12/11/2025 ‘Norway could support the EU plan to use frozen Russian assets for Ukraine, but will not provide official guarantees through its sovereign fund’
theparliamentmagazine.eu 18/11/2025 ‘Could oil-rich Norway save Ukraine?’
For background information europarl.europa.eu 09/2025 ‘Confiscation of immobilised Russian sovereign assets’, 7 pp.
So where is LA’s comment coming from?
November 22, 2025
Why start with “sorry” as your first word hefner, when every subsequent word is the opposite of your intentions.
ps
Are you actually claiming that the people of Norway who have a vote, have no involvement or control over their own State.
Seems you have a very odd idea about democracy.
November 22, 2025
Sam, you’re rather amusing with your lack of information. The Norwegian state fund (Government Pension Fund Global) started his first fund in the ‘70s, the second in the ‘90s. It appears now to be worth $1.6 tn and since their creation they have been used to finance some of the various governments’ projects using about 3% of the funds’ annual revenues. So obviously the Norwegian electors vote for their government but I could not find any information how the voters have any ‘involvement or control’ over those funds (a bit like in the UK, isn’t it?). Decisions wrt the funds are taken by Parliament (Reuters.com 13/11/2025 ‘Norway wealth fund may invest in top defence firms after 21-year ban’)
And Lynn, you don’t have to provide an excuse, you either misread or didn’t understand, or read BS info … as from the start of the Norway-EU discussions in August 2025 Jens Stoltenberg now Norway’s Finance Minister had clearly said the Norwegian sovereign fund could not be used as financial backstop for any EU action against Russian assets. But it might be involved in investing in defence firms, not exactly what you had written in your original comment?
November 23, 2025
So as you have amusingly said hefner I am right.
The Norway fund belongs to the people of Norway.
They vote for their representatives in elections in their democracy and those people have administrative control over the fund.
Thanks for making that clear.
November 23, 2025
sites.duke.edu 06/06/2025 ‘The portfolio construction of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund: Strategy, structure, and stewardship’.
“Governance and implementation: The GPFG is owned by the Norwegian people but managed operationally by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), a branch of the central bank. The separation of roles – the Ministry of Finance sets the investment framework; NBIM implements it – is a pillar of its success.
Features of Governance:
High transparency: All holdings, voting records, and performance reports are published.
Low-cost operation: Management costs are about 0.05% of assets under management, among the lowest for funds of its size.
Annual review: The fund’s performance, risk management, and ethical adherence are reviewed by Parliament.
This governance structure ensures public accountability and protects the fund from political interference.”
Also worth a look …
nbim.no ‘Voting’ and ‘Our voting’ … in particular ‘who is voting?’
ft.com 27/02/2025 ‘Norway’s sovereign wealth fund should be open to everyone’.
teslarati.com 04/11/2025 ‘Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund votes against Elon Musk’s 2025 performance award’.
November 24, 2025
Glad to you agree with me.
November 22, 2025
Who do you think owns Norway Hefner? The politicians?
In a democracy the People are the Sovereigns and OWN everything including the Sovereign wealth fund.
Anyway their about face proves what I said was true. They had intended to guarantee the theft of the Russian Assets.
That is ‘where my comment came from’ – I had misuse the retraction. I wonder who objected causing the volte face? The Norwegian People?
November 22, 2025
Government has managed to pull off a remarkable trick since WW2 by persuading us that paying tax is a high moral duty and not a necessary evil.
Our freedom-loving ancestors, who hated taxation and mistrusted government, would have been ashamed of us.
November 22, 2025
Taxpayers are overtaxed with tax.
November 22, 2025
overtaxation overtaxes our mental state.
November 22, 2025
We are well over the peak of the Laffer curve. The refusal to cut wasteful Government spending is destroying the economy and the life chances of future generations.
And they’re doing it deliberately. None of this is “a mistake;” the policies which are causing it were previously being enthusiastically implemented by the Not-a-Conservative-Party: the Net Zero lunacy; mass immigration of low-wage/low skill workers; participation in foreign “adventures” leading to even more parasitic immigration; expansion of the Quangocracy; wasting £billions on ridiculous foreign “aid” policies; the HS2 debacle.
The list is endless.
I am personally doing all I can to (legally) deprive the Government of as much of my money as possible. It has required a bit of adjustment to my lifestyle but I’m quite enjoying having a quieter life. I will not spend and pay tax so they can lavish a “free everything” lifestyle on hundreds of thousands of foreign criminals and all the other parasites they deem to be deserving of my money.
November 22, 2025
ditto. Additionally I have sold a couple of properties at a loss. No CGT for Rachel.
November 22, 2025
Lynn. My wife passed away last year and it had to do probate with my solicitor warning me that if I got knocked over by a bus as u left her office there would be an instant £100k tax bill.
She said when you spend a pound off our capital just see it as depriving the government of 40p.
This is my sole mantra now as I enjoy several holidays abroad, buy a new car and gift money to my relatives.
I intend taking equity out of my generous property to fund my lifestyle.
November 22, 2025
Ian, you are not alone. We old ‘uns looking at our mortality view the condoned and voted for taxation of what we obtained during our working lives as nothing but robbery to hand out to the fraudsters and foreigners here or abroad.
November 22, 2025
Live it up Ian. Nobody deserves your money more than you do yourself.
November 23, 2025
Ian I now regard any spending as me getting a 40% discount.
The kids have already said spend it, and enjoy it, you have earn’t it.
What our stupid Government does not understand is that when we purchase a new car, most of the money goes abroad, because that is where they are made.
When we go on holidays the money usually goes abroad, because that is where the better weather is.
If you go on a cruise, the Cruise Company is usually based abroad, so again the money goes abroad.
If you spend big as above little is retained in the UK to help our economy.
Totally against my character and past thoughts and plans, but I would now sooner waste my own money, rather than give it to the Government to waste, appalling thinking I know, but if you cannot now legally help your own children and family because of IHT, and the 7 year rule on gifting, then what do politicians expect.
November 22, 2025
What really anoys people is that many civil servants are living an easy life. Some are sitting on the sofa at home (or even in a holiday villa) when they are supposed to be working and getting paid a lot of money with a generous pension in a job it is almost impossible to be dismissed from.
Working people are being asked to pay ever higher amounts of money to these people. They are also being asked to payt large sums to people who do work at all or people who are new arrivals and have never paid in.
We are sick of it.
November 22, 2025
Never was a truer word printed.
Never mind that we are excessively over-taxed because this socialist government is unable to manage the economy, their proliferate spending is breaking the bank, but the tax system is still unfit for purpose. Politicians talked a lot about this back in 2015 but have subsequently done nothing to provide a workable and honest tax bible.
Yes, basic living should be cheap, but taxes make just surviving too expensive. We need changes to VAT to make this possible, while expensive luxury items should attract a higher rate of tax. Meaning those that have more money will pay more tax. Personal taxation is an attack on individuals – PAYE should be replaced by making it a company tax.
The UK tax system needs a drastic overhaul because tax shouldn’t be so taxing, so painful!
November 22, 2025
Start to alter the balance by creating an import tax on everything and reduce Corp tax on registered/owned UK companies.
November 22, 2025
Agreed John
After a life time of working, I thought I would be financially comfortable, although certainly not wealthy.
Big Mistake, Like many others I am regarded by this Government as wealthy, as I am Asset rich (own Home, Sipp Pension Fund) but income poor, and am currently subsidising present day living costs from savings.
They are now going to tax what is left of my unused Pension fund at 40% when I die, plus at least 20% again when my children inherit and draw from it. Now it looks like my house (which I designed and Built myself) is also to be taxed because I live in Wokingham, which is a costly place to purchase property, as is most of the South east, although no where near to London Prices.
I will be paying for being Prudent so that the Government can fund those who have not bothered !
November 22, 2025
Me too! Are you ready to face a doubling of Council tax on your home?
November 22, 2025
and half the bins emptied
November 22, 2025
MT
Band F so probably will get hit, a so called wealth tax by disguise.
Nothing whatsoever ever to do with what services I use.
November 22, 2025
An excellent example of the tax rates people pay today. Is it any wonder the economy is flatlining when the greedy Government has its hand constantly in your pocket? You don’t mention Inheritance tax, which is equally evil.
It is frightening when your PM and Chancellor don’t have a clue what impact their decisions have on the UK.
It is frightening that we have a majority of MPs who don’t have a clue either. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband blithely continues to make energy dearer and destroy the UK’s industrial base. Again, no MP seems to challenge the nonsense he spouts as he tries to solve a non-existent problem!
It is now a question of when, not if, we go bankrupt as a nation.
November 22, 2025
The aim is that the peasants should not have more money than they need to buy a weekly bottle of vodka. They can forage for their own firewood and grow their own potatoes for free. Everything else they need will be provided by the state and it the state doesn’t provide it, they don’t need it.
Let’s call it what it is: communism, or as the communists called it, socialism.
November 22, 2025
Yup. You will own nothing …. and they don’t give a 4X whether you’re happy or not.
November 22, 2025
Hang on the council tax figure of 100% is surely incorrect. It is a tax paid out of already-taxed income so the figure is about 142% for someone in the 40% tax band.
November 22, 2025
The carbon tax that is paid on gas then gets VAT on it with domestic bills, so it is a tax on a tax.
All the add-ons and taxes to our electricity bills then get VAT put on the whole bill, so again a tax on a tax.
Fuel duty also has VAT on it, another tax on a tax.
November 22, 2025
I am not drifting off topic but highlighting where views of the enlightened are deemed of no consequence.
I was watching the TV program called Grand Designs the other evening, it was one of those that went right and as planned. My memory was jogged by the efficiency of one of the suppliers, owned at the time by someone I know at a business level. That reminded me of his Father also a great entrepreneur, who in a book he wrote, exposed the fault line of how the UK and its people are being punished due to the ineptitude of Parliament.
To paraphrase what was said in this book (names omitted but easy to figure out). Back in what we call the noughties (A party leader aspiring to be the next PM sat down to dinner with a collection of his contributors. He (the aspiring hopeful) said directly to this guy. “What would you have us do when we get into power?”– “This opportunity alone must be worth my 50K contribution, so I replied: ‘Three things. Stop immigration dead in its tracks, outlaw more political correctness being inflicted upon us, and thirdly – come out of the EU and let’s get back to the common market concept.’ There was a general, ‘Hear, hear!’ from those assembled”. His retort to me was to the effect of: ‘But we can’t reverse these things.’”
From that retort the only conclusion ‘Well, what’s the point of getting you elected if you can’t influence these areas of concern to many of the citizens?’ methinks.”
What is the point of any Parliament any MP if things, costly mistakes, blunders etc can’t be changed by Parliament, if Parliament won’t take responsibility for even its own ineptitude?
On that basis alone high tax and borrowing that see no return for the Nation and the people the money is taken from – what is the point of Parliament. Clearly the encounter I mentioned was around 15 year ago and not one single thing has changed.
November 23, 2025
The book I was paraphrasing from is the ‘The Business Builder’ – by Gary Dutton MBE.
November 22, 2025
The grey economy is surging due to excessive tax imposition on legitimate trading.
Maybe that is intentional? Maybe Labour want their newly acquired voting support to feel right at home here in the U.K.?
The principle’s defining tax revenue are not complicated. If you levy too much people will find ways to avoid it.
November 22, 2025
Excessive tax under the tories, which continues under labour, let hope reform can do better ….all parties need to stop spending
November 22, 2025
Hi sir john
I am 78 years old i thought I had saved over my working life the best I could but the last two years it’s become very difficult to make my finances cover the cost of every day life .
I see people driving around in a new car every three years with no running costs
going abroad for their holidays
getting free glasses dental treatment council tax reduce or completely free and housing allowance.
discounted phone and power and money paid into their banks every week that don’t go to work
many doing jobs on the side all cash in hand paying No tax fiddling the system
of cause there are genuine people who need help and should be given help
Thank you sir john
November 22, 2025
You point out what hundreds of thousands, probably now millions think. The country has drifted under so many governments, culminating when not just the workshy, benefit fraudsters and cheaters are handsomely rewarded for the straight faced lying, but we provide 5-star treatment and financial support for criminals arriving in small boats as well as the claimed refugees. Support far exceeding the millions of honest state pensioner income who are shockingly taxed on the small additional savings or pensions they paid in for.
The successive governments have the whole structure of welfare and support arse about face and think they deserve praise for handing out money to the totally undeserving.
November 22, 2025
According to the OBR
“Taxes on different forms of personal income provide the biggest source of revenue for government. In 2025-26 we estimate that income tax will raise £330.7 billion. This represents 26.9 per cent of all receipts and is equivalent to around £11,500 per household and 11.0 per cent of national income.”
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/income-tax/
November 22, 2025
There’s little point in berating any ministers. Parliament has handed control over to the Civil Service, quangos and the judiciary, all of whom have gold plated pensions BTW, who no longer believe that their first priority is to look after the interests of the UK and its people. Gus O’Donnell who, when Cabinet Secretary, said in 2011: “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration … I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare”. This also explains why the CCC/DESNZ/Mission Zero/Ofgem etc. are so desperate for the UK to set an example to the rest of the world by net zeroing our CO2 emissions even if it means we destroy our energy security, economy and national security.