Labour are looking at massive tax hikes
This is one of those posts I’ll have to revisit in a few weeks time to compare and contrast and see if it’s as bad as predicted – or even worse!
Labour need to find another £20Bn to £50Bn this year (alone) and rather than booting out all the illegal migrants and overstayers on universal credit (their voters and potential voters) they are going after everyone else in the country to protect and ringfence all the hostile freeloaders. What joy.
Bastards!
Anyway, yesterday the Daily Express ran this article, pointing to the architect behind them, Torsten Bell, who is Reeves likely replacement. The Express also called the guy a “nut job”, so that’s hardly inspiring!
Rachel Reeve’s budget guru wants 20 brutal last hikes – see which ones will hit YOU.
If you are wondering, Torsten Bell, MP for Swansea West, is the Parliamentary Secretary for the Treasury and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions and, as you might expect is yet another Oxford educated PPE clone. Like so many of his kind, he’s not some Welsh activist from the Rhonda, just another easy path rider, parachuted into a safe seat from his posh Greenwich roots.
Needless to say, he’s another of those people that rose up rise the coat tails of the likes of Ed Milliband and worked for a think tank – but apparently has never had a real job in his life, so has zero “lived experience” or understanding for the lives of the people he is planning on shitting on from up high!
Setting the narrative, and hardly surprising, the likes of The Observer, Rory Stewart and Emily Maitlis seem to look at him with adoring eyes, slavishly following his every utterance and pouring praise on his work. 
You can just see the headlines following his meteoric rise and following crash: “Bell end!“, screams The Sun’s frontpage headline. Emojis may be involved.
Sans my sarcastic irreverence, needless to see the rest of the mainstream press are looking at this with the same mix of trepidation and abject horror:
Financial Times: Torsten Bell’s manifesto: how could UK pensions minister shape tax reform?
Rachel Reeves has given the former chief of a left-leaning think-tank a key role in preparing her Autumn Budget
The FT add that “Reeves’ allies stress that Bell’s previous ideas are not government policy, and that the chancellor will not make any tax decisions until much closer to the Budget.” – but word is the he is next chancellor in waiting and Rachel from accounts is going to be sidelined shortly. We shall see.
Supporting this, perhaps, Pensions Expert notes that pensions minister Torsten Bell has been given a leading role in advising chancellor Rachel Reeves on the next Budget, and that Reeves has given Bell responsibility for economic policy, alongside his pensions remit.
The Telegraph went with Torsten Bell’s fingerprints are all over Britain’s debt disaster. The UK’s fiscal calamity is familiar territory for Reeves’s sidekick.
Blame is placed on him (and by extension Rachel from the complaints desk) for the trainwreck econmy we are currently experiencing – and this “nut job” is taking the reins and intent on supercharging it!
Tax hikes break down, my take
The list is out there, so this is just my take. This horror show is just suggested but, apparently, has been pushed for years as “the way ahead” by Bell. Basically:
“We are putting this out there to gauge the reaction. Also, we need to fill the the £22Bn black hole the Tories left us (but not the £50Bn one we added to it in our first year). PS Starmer said to remind you his dad was a tool too. Sorry, Toolmaker.”
Tax the rich!
At first glance it’s just “LOL, just stick it to the man, take it from the rich”…
e.g: “Cap tax-free ISAs at £100,000.”
e.g: “Lift CGT to 37% on shares and 53% on second homes. Yet another attack on savers, investors and small business owners.”
e.g: Hike taxes on second homes. Another Bell idea that’s already happening, with mixed results.
Charge 8% National Insurance on rental income. This will hammer buy-to-let landlords, who will pass on the cost to tenants by hiking rents.”
As the Express points out, landlords will just pass the cost on, making rent skyrocket. I imagine all those signing up to migrant HMO’s will come to rue their decision as the goverrnment gives with one hand and takes with the other. In their unbridled greed they have signed up to 7 year deals, but when you make a deal with the devil, he eventually claims your soul, eh.
On which note – and I’m both astonished and completely unsurprised that nobody in MSM seems to be taking this on! The government – who absolutely will not survive the next 4 years – are handing out iron clad 7 years contracts to the likes of SERCO, forcing a nightmare upon the next government left to clean up Labour’s shit!
Then you continue reading, as they go after pensioners, again.
Then may they take away the state pension triple lock.
(We know Labour HATE pensioners).
Reeves is like, “We’ll never do that”, but it seems Bell wants this and we know Starmer and his circus lie. They are, certainly in public opinion, pathological liars (pseudologia fantastica).
Not satisfied with this, they want to “Slash the tax-free 25% pension lump sum.
[Bell has] suggested capping it at just £40,000. Anybody with more than £160,000 in their pension would lose out.”
You will own nothing and be happy
You parents die and leave you the house – the government wants up to seize a hefty chunk of the value!
“Scrap £325,000 inheritance tax nil-rate band. This would drag all but the poorest into paying 40% IHT.”
“Remove main residence relief. Incredibly, they would love us all to pay 28% capital gains tax (CGT) when we sell our homes. This would destroy house prices, mobility, and make every homeowner feel poorer.
Assuming you’ve done the maths and can just afford a new house with all the above…
“Scrap the Lifetime ISA. This would axe up to £1,000 a year in bonuses aimed at helping young buyers get on the property ladder”
Despite poll tax rises of up to 10% this year, they want more, more, MORE:
“Big council tax rises for band E, F, G, and H properties. This wallops family homes, especially in London and the South East, and hits pensioners hardest.”
So, they plan to slap a ANOTHER huge poll tax rise on you, pushing you so sell and downsize (so larges homes can be converted to HMOs for illegal migrants, I guess) – and the minute tax hikes force you out of your home they make a grab on the sale of your house, leaving you even less in the budget for your planned downsizing. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t!
SME’s will save the day?
You own or want to start your own business? Forget it, you are about to be fooked so hard…
They’ll start gently, so:
“Hike basic-rate dividend tax from 8.75% to 20%. Yet another attack on small investors and owner-managers.”
It doesn’t end there for businesses:
“Scrap business and agricultural property reliefs. Reeves has already capped both, with disastrous results. Bell would like her to go the whole hog.”
Still more pain for businesses:
Reports today suggest this one is going to happen.
Quadruple the higher-band NI rate for the self-employed. Bell wants it lifted from 2% to 8%. Another blow for self-starting contractors, tradesmen and professionals. Why is the public sector never hit?
And just when you think it can’t keep getting worse, they do a suckerpunch to the groin, and they are wearing a brass knuckeduster! Right in the feelies!
“Cut VAT registration threshold to £30,000. Today, only companies earning more than £90,000 must register for VAT. This would pull a huge number of smaller firms into the net.”
By way of example, back when VAT was ‘only’ 15%, I used to be a computer dealer, so obviously I was VAT registered as it made sense. But now, if I felt like starting about business I’d do web design. The idea of getting slapped with 20% tax on top of regular business tax and overheads… You just wouldn’t be bothered. At such a low ceiling the minute you pass £30,000 you have to make another £6,000 to stand still!
Minimum wage in the UK is roughly £23,800, – you just wouldn’t bother.
But it gets worse. If you are hands on type (e.g. plumber, tiler, plaster, painter) you are most likely to consider risky, tax evading, cash in hand work after approaching the ceiling, so no tax generated there.
Or, if you are like me, you can set up in another country. So again, no tax for the UK.
Two examples:
We had the bathroom fixed. Took a week and set us back over £8,000! These guys would only be able to work three weeks before hitting the ceiling. And as it was a two-man business, they would be forced to reduce their prices, only work 1 month in 12, and earn well under £15,000 a year. Why bother?
In contrast, a neighbour had work done, and used travellers (I know!). Needless to say the government won’t be seeing a penny from them!
For me, for many, the VAT ceiling would have to be closer to double its current amount to make it worth bothering with. These lunatics instead want to reduce to a third its current level!
What you thought I’d finshed? No, there’s worse to come!
You work on minimum wage, barely hanging on by your fingernails – on top of the previous devastating tax hike they want to:
“Add 1p to income tax. An instant pay cut for workers and pensioners with taxable income, feeding wage demands and costs.”
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse:
“Scrap the 5p fuel-duty cut and add 2% a year. Petrol prices will jump at once, followed by a ratchet that squeezes every motorist. Will also drive up inflation.”
If petrol prices go up, delivery prices go up and supermarket pass the cost on again, pushing food prices up even more.
We can’t surive this!
Next general election: Wed, 15th August, 2029
1,447 days to go.
