Tax rises?

[WTFH]

They should put additional taxes on MPs who don't turn up to do their job those of us who pay tax are paying for, because they are "too busy" doing other jobs.

[ladymuck]

Oh, I don't know, the Treasury can be spectacularly ignorant. For example, they are briefing about targeting LLPs specifically, seemingly without any understanding of the wider landscape of partnerships and how they operate, which is why they briefed shortly afterwards that this wouldn't target traditional partnerships (e.g., GPs), again without understanding the implications of that (anyone who does understand will be chucking at this point). Honestly, many who work in the Treasury are as thick as mince and hence perfectly fair game for criticism. The Thick of It was not merely comedy, it was commentary.

Nice article/opinion piece on it here:
https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/10/21/...r-nics-reform/

[malvolio]

They should put additional taxes on MPs who don't turn up to do their job those of us who pay tax are paying for, because they are "too busy" doing other jobs.

Yeah, good plan. A few percent on a proportion of the 650 sitting MPs. less the ones with actual or shadow ministerial posts, will make a huge differrence.

Same as the hysteria on cancelling IR35. Split the UK contractors across all the constituencies and we barely register. Since MPs are only there to win seats, we can be ignored in all but a handful of marginals.

[WTFH]

Yeah, good plan. A few percent on a proportion of the 650 sitting MPs. less the ones with actual or shadow ministerial posts, will make a huge differrence.

Same as the hysteria on cancelling IR35. Split the UK contractors across all the constituencies and we barely register. Since MPs are only there to win seats, we can be ignored in all but a handful of marginals.

Histeria is what the populists rely on. Maybe we tax people who eat swans, since there are about 20,000,000 of them arriving in the country every day.

[jamesbrown]

Nice article/opinion piece on it here:
https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/10/21/...r-nics-reform/

Yes, good article. The Treasury has (let's face it) annual form on failing to grasp how their policy balloons/policies will land in the real world. They may have resources, but they don't necessarily have the right people or allow ideas to develop properly under scrutiny before blurting them out to the national press as a policy balloon (which, incidentally, causes a tremendous amount of economic damage in the run up to budgets). That said, I wouldn't expect any final policy to be much better developed, which is why they end up walking back policies far more often than they should.

[willendure]

It is a measure of Reeves' ignorance that she thinks this will release money for her to spend.

Interesting. I always think of tax the other way around - it destroys money.

Government spends money, it does so right away on its current account. At period end, that overdrawn account is sold as bonds, creating money. When tax revenue comes in, some is used to pay off expiring bonds, and therefore money is destroyed.

[willendure]

2p on basic income tax apparently and broken election promise too.

[sadkingbilly]

2p on basic income tax apparently and broken election promise too.

yeh, shame the Torys got all the money offshore before this govmnt got at it. otherwise they wouldn't have to raise anything.

[malvolio]

yeh, shame the Torys got all the money offshore before this govmnt got at it. otherwise they wouldn't have to raise anything.

I suppose we should ignore the fact that the economy was improving measurably, if slowly, before the last election and is now a complete basket case?

Also, if money is to be shipped offshore, first you have to have some. Labour don't have money, all they have is debts. Most of which are self-imposed.

[sadkingbilly]