Tax

It is been a familiar story in recent years: a Budget that sounded reasonably good when delivered, but that unravels in subsequent days. Rishi Sunak’s spring statement was no exception. When he delivered it a fortnight ago, he said he was going to compensate low-earners by raising the primary threshold for National Insurance, bringing it into line with income tax and relieving people who earn less than £12,500 from having to pay NI at all. But as the 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance kicks in today, it turns out that the rise in the threshold for NI will not take effect for another three months, on 6 July.

A war is raging in Ukraine. Inflation has risen to a 30-year high and may have started to spiral out of control. The country is on the brink of recession, and a gaffe-prone leadership is under increasing fire. You could be forgiven for thinking that President Biden has more than enough problems right now. But he is about to make his already miserable term in the White House a whole lot worse. How? By adding a stock market crash, and the destruction of America’s best companies, to the already worryingly long list of self-inflicted disasters. It is hard to think of a single tax that could be worse for growth

The biggest surprise of Rishi Sunak’s spring statement was the announcement that the basic rate of income tax will be cut by one penny come 2024. This is the first cut in the basic rate since the cut to 20p announced by Gordon Brown in his last Budget in 2007, which was of course partly paid for by abolishing the 10p starting rate of tax. Cynics will be quick to suggest that there is a long way to go before 2024 and so the tax cut might not happen. But this is to ignore the politics. The most likely date for the next election is May 2024. It would be bizarre,

When Rishi Sunak first envisaged this year’s spring statement, the idea was that it would be policy light. Instead, it would serve as an economic update on the latest forecast and give him a chance to lay out his broad tax aspirations for the year ahead. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine means that the goalposts have moved. The Chancellor has had to adjust to the fact that he has come to the end of one crisis only to be greeted by the next. With the economic fallout from Ukraine only exacerbating the cost of living crisis, Sunak is under pressure to announce measures to ease the pressure on households. So, what

Before the pandemic hit, NHS England waiting lists were at a record high of 4.4 million. Three lockdowns later, they’ve risen to six million: an unacceptable figure for a Tory government that has spent years trying to rebrand itself as the ‘party of the NHS’. Boris Johnson’s decision to break his manifesto pledge and raise taxes was directly linked to the idea that the money would first be funnelled into the health service to fix the backlog. So can he now deliver for patients? When Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced his ‘elective recovery plan’ in the House of Commons on Tuesday, he said that the waiting list would start shrinking

Forget the desirability (or lack thereof) of tax hikes: can Britain survive them? That’s the economic question that kicked off the new year in cabinet this week when Jacob Rees-Mogg was reported to have encouraged the Prime Minister and his colleagues to roll back plans to bring in the new National Insurance levy this April. A recap on the proposals: the 1.25 per cent National Insurance hike will be paid by both employers and employees, and will eventually be funnelled into social care, we’re told. But for the first few years, most of the tax revenue it raises (roughly £12 billion) will go to addressing the NHS backlog and the millions

For once, yesterday’s Downing Street press conference included a worthwhile question, and not of the ‘why aren’t you locking us down?’ variety. In fact, it had nothing to do with Covid at all. Harry Cole of the Sun asked why, given that the Prime Minister had once cited the ability to remove VAT from fuel bills as a tangible benefit of leaving the EU, he was not now taking advantage of his new-found freedom, especially as bills are heading sharply upwards. Boris Johnson mumbled something about not wanting to help people who could easily afford their energy bills and that the government might consider more targeted help instead. The VAT

Given the enthusiasm for tax cuts usually shown by Conservative MPs it is remarkable how few of them have, in public, raised objections to the government’s loose fiscal policy. True, the Prime Minister’s announcement of a hike in National Insurance ostensibly to pay for social care, elicited squeals from the back benches, yet last month’s Budget drew only muted objections. This was in spite of claims by the Resolution Foundation that the Budget will cost an average household £3000 a year – if you take into account the effect of higher prices as businesses seek to pass on their higher tax bills to consumers. Today, however, Mel Stride, former Treasury

International cooperation is alive and well – at least when it comes to raising taxes. One hundred and thirty six countries have now signed up to a global minimum corporation tax of 15 per cent, proposed by G7 countries in June and pushed heavily by the UK Treasury. This is another step forward for what is thought to be the biggest overhaul to the international tax system in a century. The installation of a corporate tax floor is part of a comprehensive effort to reform how multinational companies are taxed: that is, to more precisely target where profits are being made (instead of where products are being created). ​​Firms with

There is about to be a two-phase onslaught on the living standards of those on low-to-middling incomes. On 1 October the energy price cap, for dual fuel, rises from £1,150 to £1,277. This is a rise of 11 per cent, at a time when furlough is ending and just a few days before the £1,000 a year uplift to Universal Credit is removed (which presumably Boris Johnson will not be swanking about in his big speech to Tory conference). That’s the first hit to living standards. There’ll then be a gradual further erosion of living standards with rising food inflation (of around five per cent, as per what Tesco’s chairman John