Official Summer 2015 Budget Thread

[AtW]

AFAIC, this budget isn't even particularly good for the economy.

It's good budget for the country, and even better for Osborne to become PM...

[PerfectStorm]

LOL @ all the people here upset by todays budget. Contractors go from having a great deal to 98% of the same great deal.

[Zero Liability]

How do you figure 98%? The new tax structure for dividends alone will make significant (negative) changes to how contractors (or pretty much anyone drawing dividends) remunerate themselves.

It's good budget for the country, and even better for Osborne to become PM...

I'm sure it's well suited to the latter. The former is a lot more ambiguous.

[expat]

The bit that I find funny is how many contractors feel hurt because
a) the Tories are the party of small business
b) we are small business

Neither is true.

[d000hg]

I bet many people who voted Tory will be wanting a refund. I know I would.

It's safe to say I shan't be voting for them (or Labour, or the LDs), come 2020. Even if the rhetoric sounds good, you can't really stop them from just doing whatever they feel like in the end, other than by not voting them back in.

I don't know why you thought the Tories were the party for contractors. We're a highly paid niche and politics is about the masses.

There is fundamentally no reason why contractors should be able to pay less tax per £ earned than permies, this is a perk of the system not an entitlement.

If you voted for who you thought would enable you to best line your pocket, serves you right.

[AtW]

I'm sure it's well suited to the latter. The former is a lot more ambiguous.

It's a very good budget.

Apart from the bit that will hit me personally.

[electronicfur]

LOL @ all the people here upset by todays budget. Contractors go from having a great deal to 98% of the same great deal.

You say that now, but in the future you may well come to be upset by today's budget.

Because now that the principle of a separate dividend tax charge is here, it is sure to be a target in future budgets for further increases...

Particularly under any future government with an ideological preference to earned income over investment income. If you doubt this look at 1960s and 1970s were that was at it's most fanatical, with a top tax rate on dividends at 98%! indeed

[electronicfur]

The bit that I find funny is how many contractors feel hurt because
a) the Tories are the party of small business
b) we are small business

Neither is true.

b) may not be true for you, but it is for me. I am a small business.

[mudskipper]

You say that now, but in the future you may well come to be upset by today's budget.

Because now that the principle of a separate dividend tax charge is here, it is sure to be a target in future budgets for further increases...

Particularly under any future government with an ideological preference to earned income over investment income. If you doubt this look at 1960s and 1970s were that was at it's most fanatical, with a top tax rate on dividends at 98%! indeed

There is an upper limit - i.e. that point at which we're all better off on PAYE.

[Zero Liability]

I don't know why you thought the Tories were the party for contractors. We're a highly paid niche and politics is about the masses.

There is fundamentally no reason why contractors should be able to pay less tax per £ earned than permies, this is a perk of the system not an entitlement.

There is fundamentally no reason why permies should pay as much tax as they do, no reason why PAYE and NI cannot be harmonised, no reason why spending cannot be pared back and taxes lowered commensurately. I guess the lack of employment rights is also a "perk".

If you voted for who you thought would enable you to best line your pocket, serves you right.

Well who knows really what you're voting for given how vague their manifestos are and how often they just toss them by the wayside? But I didn't vote for them and won't be in the future, either.