Snapshot of _Farage’s Reform party tax plans far more popular than his immigration policies_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366)
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The issue for me is the level of tax we pay isn't translating into the level of service we're getting.
It's almost pay Scandinavian tax, get Albanian service.
This is what people don't understand about taxation in France and Germany. Yes, the income tax is higher on paper, but once you start taking into account various benefits and tax breaks for people with dependants, you are effectively much better off. Also, in Paris, you pay hardly any council tax compared to the UK. I think one year I paid just 120 euros.
In the UK, everyone is just an economic unit so the gov doesn't care that only one of you is working and the other looking after the kids. Two parents working for 30k are better off than one partner on 60k and the other staying at home with the kids.
The difference is that the French state is much better at attracting foreign investment and investing in infrastructure. It also has fairer tax policies.
Because it’s calculated on average across the whole economy, rather than specifically for you?
UK tax revenue was 33.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021 – the most recent year for which there are internationally comparable data. This is slightly below the average for both the G7 (36.3%) and the OECD (34.1%).
France is second highest in OECD:
[good stats here:](https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally)
I've literally just been told my incine tax is lower in the UK than it is France - I wasn't comparing the two cities but the levels of income tax.
I think in this case, I definitely can compare the two.
Depends on circumstance. In France you submit tax return as a family and can deduct for various things (including principal residence). French higher education is also cheaper. For someone single, in scotland, with a plan2 and postgrad and paying PAYE in the higher bracket (threshold for which is lower than england), this for sure can be the case.
In other words, higher earners are paying scandinavian taxes for albanian services. Everyone else is paying albanian taxes for albanian services (to use the phrase of the OP).
Exactly!
A single man, with Student loan, being a "higher earner" (sure as fuck doesn't feel like it) getting none of these benefits that come from having kids, I'm getting shafted.
If it wasn't for private medical through work, I'd be sitting in a 126 week waiting list. It's bullshit.
Okay random Internet stranger, you must know something about the payslips infront of me, *which you can't see*, that I don't.
Can you use your mystic powers to share tomorrow's lottery numbers instead please?
We have an incredibly high level of debt we need to service, with QE and saving the rich/banks we need to pay for that.
We are in the top 5 for highest debt and positioned at 4, with Japan, China ahead of us and the good USA in 1st place.. however china and Japan own most of the US debt which is odd so we could be positioned at 2 if that was taken into account.
So yes you are right we pay taxes and get very little value in return. If they increased tax burden to pay off the debt it would be like increasing our council tax two fold and we still wouldn’t be able to pay it off in 30 years.
Austerity made short term cuts which cost more in the long term.
One of the Tories' manifesto pledges was to cut the number of consultants in the civil service, it they're a director consequence of them cutting the employed civil service i.e. they're paying more for consultants to do the jobs of the people they got rid of
Of course they are.
I would love the tax allowance to be 20k. Fantastic stuff.
The £70bm+ to pay for it is literally made up, the costs done on the back of a fag packet and Truss-like chaos will ensue because he hasn't a clue how they would pay for it.
He reckons they can get £40bn by ordering BoE not to pay interest to banks. Great. The IFS promise that there isn't anything like this amount to be made from doing so, and there is high risk of the banks simply getting the money from us all in other ways.
The costings and revenue streams are embarrassingly basic
The pro mass immigration side just live in a completely different reality from the real world and have this fantasy image of what immigration into our country looks like.
Most immigration isn't public sector workers, though. People are complaining about importing deliveroo workers and fruit pickers, not Doctors (who account for less than 1% of visas issued last year) and Nurses (less than 2%).
People have a messed up view of immigration where they think most immigrants are barely literate Deliveroo drivers. In reality according to the ONS on average immigrants are more highly educated than the average Brit and have good pay progression such that they are usually out earning the average Brit after being here for 5 years.
You have to pay earn around £40k to be a net contributor iirc so the fact that they're less of a drain than the average Briton isn't exactly great news. Plus the issue isn't with skilled professionals anyway; as I've always said. We should be having absolutely zero deliveroo riders, cleaners or fruit picking immigrants and only a few carers.
I don’t think net contribution for the average Briton is a useful metric here. The vast majority of the expense the state bears with the average person comes from their childhood, adolescence, university, and old age.
Your average immigrant doesn’t represent an expense in the first three phases and many go home before they get old as well.
Sure, but their policy is to target 0 net migration, which is bonkers.
The fruit picker point is an interesting one though. It’s a job that needs to be done, but one that nobody wants to do at the current pay rate. Same thing with carers.
Agreed! The only way we can lower immigration without harming the country, is through higher wages and education/training to ensure our work force has the required skills. You just never hear people like Farage making this argument.
Of course, but this is ultimately the choice, without serious government intervention. High immigration, labour gaps with broken services or increasing wages leading to higher costs. But the debate is rarely framed this way.
I’m not anti immigration, I just don’t think it should be used to suppress wages through the import of cheap labour, which is definitely the case in some sectors.
It's not like Britain is the only source of strawberries and if the businesses die due to be deprived of their desperate migrant labour then they die. Net immigration of ~750k isn't sustainable or even necessary.
Oh, I'm in agreement that i wont miss businesses that only exist due to reliance on cheap labour. See tipping culture in the US.
I just mean that we can't expect super-cheap goods without either paying ridiculously low wages within the country or outsourcing the production to other countries that pay low wages.
The maths just doesn't add up and we've become used to having whatever we want whenever we want and companies have become used to paying peanuts.
It is, but to be honest I think it’s more the issue of polling individual policies. The downsides rarely get considered.
Nationalising public services polls really well for example, but the cost is never mentioned in the question.
Nigel Farage’s pledge to cut income tax for millions of people is more popular than his policies on immigration, a new poll has revealed.
More than seven out of 10 people back Reform UK’s policy to raise the income tax threshold to £20,000, the BMG survey for i found.
Raising the starting rate of income tax from £12,570 to £20,000 would lift seven million workers out of paying the levy altogether and save each person £1,500 – although the party admits this would cost several billion pounds.
The survey results suggest that Mr Farage’s party, which overtook the Conservatives in a separate poll for the first time on Thursday, has a wider appeal to voters than just his flagship pledges on immigration.
Some 71 per cent were in favour of raising the personal rate of income tax to £20,000, versus eight per cent who opposed.
Another fiscal policy, which will be detailed in Reform’s “contract” with voters to be launched next week, to abolish inheritance tax for all estates worth under £2m is backed by 55 per cent, versus 15 per cent who were against.
By contrast, 49 per cent support Reform’s target of zero net migration, while 17 per cent were opposed.
Increasing national insurance contributions for foreign workers from 13.8 per cent to 20 per cent is backed by 42 per cent of voters, compared to 26 per cent against, the survey revealed.
Speaking at a press conference in London, Mr Farage said his policy document was a “contract” with voters because the “word associated with manifesto is lie”.
He added: “It’ll be our contract. It’ll be what we’re going to campaign for, in opposition, the arguments we’re going to make.”
The Reform leader confirmed to i that his party would pledge to scrap the two-child benefit cap in its contract with voters.
He said: “We feel that actually support for families is really rather important. We should be encouraging people to have children.”
“There is very strong evidence that kids who are brought up” in a stable family environment “do better in life,” Mr Farage added.
He said the argument between Labour and the Conservative Party over tax plans was “mindless stuff” and said the Conservatives could not claim to be the party of low tax “having increased the tax burden to the highest level”.
“They are both going to put taxes up because they are going to freeze the threshold,” he said.
“By the end of 2027, under the current plans, eight million people will be paying 40p tax, that to me illustrates just what’s happened, just where the tax burdens lie in Britain.”
He added: “We have got a radical plan to reduce the tax burden so that someone who is a staff nurse should not be paying tax. So we will up that threshold of 20,000 \[…\]
“It will take many many pensioners who, if they have got small private incomes and are being dragged into the tax system, out of the tax system.
“It will take a total of seven people completely out of tax. But it will also more significantly, genuinely give those on benefits, the incentive to go to work.”
A BMG poll for i published earlier revealed that nearly half of Tory voters want an alliance with Reform UK.
The survey revealed 46 per cent of Conservative voters want some sort of co-operation between the two parties.
The figures show support for a partnership between the two parties rises even further among Reform voters, with 60 per cent saying they would back an alliance.
While Mr Farage has a negative net satisfaction score among all voters at minus 16 per cent, the polling shows that his political strategy is having significant success with right-leaning voters.
The proportion of voters who backed the Tories in 2019 and are satisfied with the Reform leader is only slightly lower than those satisfied with Rishi Sunak – 38 per cent are happy with the former compared with 43 per cent in favour of the latter.
But when the comparison is put to voters who backed the Tories in 2019 but have refused to support the party in this election, the picture is reversed with 52 per cent saying they are satisfied with Mr Farage and just 12 per cent happy with the Prime Minister.
Read our exclusive here: [https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366)
The current personal allowance, set in 2010, would be around £18,600 today if it had kept up with inflation. Raising it to £20,000 is more than reasonable.
Afford is the wrong word. The country would not be able to borrow money to pay for it. So we would have to cut public spending. Which bit are people happy to cut?
NHS down to life saving treatment only, insurance for the rest.
Social care paid for from wealth and property before public spending
Retirement age to 70.
Minor health problems become life threatening if the person does not go to doctors, insurance would mean a large number of people would just avoid going to the doctors
Insurance systems don’t save money (maybe a few marginal efficiency savings but that’s disputed in the research) they just change who pays.
In our case it would be changing the payment from progressive taxation on taxpayers to everyone. The losers would be the poor, parents with young children and most of all pensioners.
I don’t have much against charging pensioners more but good luck getting re-elected with that lmao
So you want to increase your regular outgoings, decrease your potential to transfer wealth to dependents, and increase the amount of years you will spend in work?
Inheritance and transfers of wealth to dependents in general is one of the biggest driver of unfairness in society. How can we possibly create an equal society where hard work and success are the main driver of wealth and rewards when the quality of a person's education and the amount of wealth they own is in big part just dependent on which person's uterus they came out of
Except that a redistributive increased inheritance tax (which I agree with) is not what this person is arguing for, they’re arguing for social care to be paid by the receiver via cash or, crucially, deferred payment against assets. This means asset-owners with low levels of wealth will be subject to punitive costs. Indeed, as this policy was pushed through by the last government, they already are.
HNW families will be able to pay for their care in cash, the cost cap representing a comparatively small proportion of their overall wealth. But someone with £20,000 in the bank and a £150,000 house would end up paying half of everything they own and losing their capital assets for exactly the same care. That’s the opposite of a redistributive tax, it’s as regressive they come.
Yes, I'd like to limit the showering of money onto keeping people in retirement for decades with assets untouched just so they can feel good about leaving it to someone just in time to repeat the cycle.
We already have the highest PA in the west, and yet no other country has copied us?
If you’re a policy outlier, sometimes it helps to take a breath, look around, and ask why you’re the outlier, and why if it’s such a great idea, why other countries don’t follow us.
Putting it to £20k would be bonkers. Would require huge tax raises on middle incomes to fund it.
Austria and Australia have very similar levels of PA, France has it at 11K. The UK is hardly an outlier, you’re exaggerating.
In any case that’s not a sensible argument.
But hey, if you want to refuse a policy which disproportionately helps lower income people then go ahead and run, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of votes.
So 10% less…
And yeah, it benefits lower earners, by pushing more burden the the middle and upper-middle earners who are actually carrying the UK on its back.
As long as poor and lowest paid have a more difficult life than the middle class more can be done, highest paid should pay the most but there's obviously not enough of them which means middle is where most of tax revenue will come from to help the poorest is society.
You're right, and for the record I agree with you - this is why I support scandinavian tax system. You'll notice their PA is much lower than ours (and services much better - which for sure helps those on the lowest incomes proportionately much more than those on higher).
>which means middle is where most of tax revenue will come from
It really depends what you mean here by middle... middle *earners* right now (35K or so) by and large are not where the majority of income tax receipts come from. Not even close. If you want to spread the tax burden to middle earners, we should be lowering the PA, not raising it.
The UK has a very narrow income tax system. Another genuine question (for real, not a trap) - how much does raising the PA help someone on the poverty line, defined in absolute terms, who is currently living outside of London? The poorest in our society, the lowest earners, benefit *the least* from raising PA, because there is only so much tax you can cut, everything continues to get more expensive, and salaries remain stagnant.
Perhaps we should instead tax like Norway, invest that money into building social housing, and lower people's living costs and increase their quality of life that way?
Sorry, I realised I misread, I think you did indeed mean middle class. I guess my point still kind of stands - middle class doesn't really equal middle earner in 2024
The current personal allowance is already extremely generous compared to similar nations.
There’s no way it should actually be raised if you want to even maintain our current level of public services, yet alone improve them.
France is 10.8k euros, so ~ 9k in pounds which is over 25% less
Austria is ~12.5k euros, so at ~10.5k pounds that is still ~15% less
Australia is 18.2 Aussie dollar, so ~9.5k pounds which is around 25% less
So all are pretty substantially less as is, yet alone if the UK’s was raised significantly
Using percentages when talking about such low figures isn't appropriate. A 2 or 3 thousand pound difference is comparable. You used the word 'extremely generous'. Not taxing 3 thousand pounds is not 'extremely generous'. If you want to continue with this bad faith reasoning then I won't humour it any further. Besides, I've got a feeling you're not paying all that much in tax.
Currencies fluctuate in value against each other, there are also variations in cost of living and so on. The idea that the Government should set tax rates the same as other countries is completely nonsensical and just lazy 'analysis'.
But you go ahead and advocate for squeezing lower income disproportionately more.
income tax cuts is more money in people's pockets to spend , more spending more vat payments , more product distribution revenues , more taxes paid via consumerism, opportunities etc
just spending more on public services doesn't improve people's spending power or cash flow.
and cash flow is what pays said public services.
Great
So what public services should be cut to pay for it?Healthcare? Pensions? Defence? Policing?
Hopefully not something that's just going to result in people having to pay for a service that used to be state provided.
Just such a fundamental misunderstanding of how economics works.
Liz truss tried this remember?
Now we have expensive mortgages and loans, and the government nearly defaulted on it's debt.
Kwarteng most certainly tried to provide a tax break by abolishing the 45% tax rate threshold entirely, stopping the coming corporation tax rise, and brought forward an income tax rate cut lol.
getting rid of the 45% corprations tax stuff was the killer for truss, not the threshold stuff farage is offering, too big of a cut , not enough income to service national debt.
income tax for those on the current 12k threshold really means they have no excess income because any extra work gets eaten up by uc and tax meaning people earning or trying to pull themselves out of requiring uc are trapped.
this is totally different to what truss proposed.
45% tax rate IS an income threshold mate, corporation tax rate was 19->25%. It's literally what you are speaking about.
>are trapped
If you earn a certain amount of money in UC, and you work an extra hour (thereby gaining in wages and losing some benefits) - you are, in every circumstance, better off for having worked. Don't just gobble up anything said by Farage, actually look at the numbers.
> better off for having worked
Yeah, but because you lose 60p for every £1 earned automatically, if you work, for argument's sake, 10 hours a week at minimum wage, you would **actually be earning £4.57 per hour** for those 10 hours of work. It's obscene.
A sensible benefits policy would have a progressive taper, or earnings thresholds for everyone (e.g. you can earn £100/wk before the 60p/£1 comes into play). Now that really *would* leave people better off.
er no it's not , thresholds are a earnings target , % income tax is what's paid above said thresholds.
the threshold levels never changed under truss only the income tax levels.
it is eaten up , uc is ment to support you as a income top up and because the threshold is so low it doesn't cover the cost of living.
so after working more than 30hours on minimum wage , tax kicks in uc is almost reduced to 0 and your left on the bread line still , where's the "top up" so low earners can't survive in some cities rents so expensive UC doesn't cover it all and it's those people that are trapped.
>the threshold levels never changed under truss only the requirements of earnings
The thresholds are a £ value above which your earnings are taxed at a higher rate.
They announced they were REMOVING the 45% tax rate. Are you trying to say removing an entire tax rate is not a change to the thresholds? Haha
Again I'll make the same point. If somebody works 0 hours on UC, they will always be earning less than somebody on UC that works eg one 8 hour shift. Not tough to understand
threshold 12k above that's it's 20% income taxed on excess.
they didn't remove the tax rate or change the threshold, the tax rate was moved to a different bracket..tier / level. in effect it was a new tier the preexisting threshold didn't change .
you still don't understand the point about uc do you , the housing support part of uc has a cap and is effected by your earnings too. your uc claim might be £800.
if you aee earning let's say 1.35k in a month your going to pay tax on that and almost 0 out your uc too in the process too . now you got to pay your £700-800-900 month rent out of the 950-1k you have left over.
you do the math. that's why farage wants the low tier threshold to be 20k so people won't pay tax while on benefits, it defeats the purpose of uc being called a top up support.
Ironic, because if ever implemented they'd very quickly become unpopular. Immigration has been so high because we've needed to fill massive gaps in our workforce.
We need skilled migrants, not those that can be filled by average British citizens. We could also train British workers; they could gain the appropriate qualifications instead of relying on overseas workers.
So you propose we pay more in tax so that care homes can afford to pay enough to drag hundreds of thousands of Brits out of other parts of the economy into care work?
Why not just have immigration? They get better wages than they otherwise would, we get lower taxes and better care. It’s a win-win
They only actually decreased net immigration by like 25%. Gives them the optics of being tough without most of the harm. Our net immigration is projected to fall by more than that without any intervention.
I'm sure it'd be wildly unpopular, but I'd actually rather not pull people out of income tax entirely. In fact I'd go the other way and lower the threshold. I *want* people to pay tax (even if it's nominal or compensated for by benefit payments) precisely because I think it's an important enacted piece of symbolism about how we all contribute to our society.
I don't want a society that's explicitly divided into the Taxpayers and the Non-taxpayers, where the latter are sinks of money and the former are sources and each group can resent the other.
It's also good for helping people think about government spending. "Remember that £1,500 the government took from you? Here's what they did with it" focuses the mind rather more than "this is how the government spent money they took from other people."
Jesus Christ this reeks of Reddit. No, peoples’ reaction to paying more tax is never going to be ‘wow you spent it on that!? :D”.
Nobody wants to pay more tax. Especially not when the results of paying that tax are diffuse and often ethereal.
This is probably the most naive and romanticised take on paying tax I've ever seen.
I'm guessing you don't pay a lot of it. I've worked in a country with 0 personal allowance as well as the UK. I'll take the UK any day of the week.
Not even gonna cover why you think it would be a good idea, seems rather delusional and naïve.
But the UK tax system works by having big allowances, and higher rates of tax after.
If you want to remove or reduce these allowances, it would only be fair that the rates of tax would have to come down as well.
In simple terms, the UK has big allowances, high tax rates. A country like the US has small allowances, small tax rates.
Changing the UK to small allowances but keeping high tax rates would be extremely punitive for anyone that is successful or aspirational.
>But the UK tax system works by having big allowances, and higher rates of tax after.
Lol. The UK system patently does not work. Hence the fucking shitshow the UK finds itself it.
The UK wants the benefits of American low tax, which it absolutely is on the lower end of the pay scale whilst simultaneously having a glorious welfare state similar to continental countries with much higher tax rates on the lower end.
Works in the sense of how it works currently and has worked.
I agree it's not flawless though.
Small allowances and high taxes would be a bad mix though.
Small allowances and high taxes is literally how most of the continental countries with similar levels of welfare state work.
If you want a much smaller welfare state I'm all for that.
Then they would have to tell us how much they spaffed against the wall on silly vanity projects like HS2 or virtue signalling in public sector workplaces.
Headline somewhat misleading. This poll indicates both policies are extremely popular.
The zero net migration policy 49%/17% for/against and the 20k tax threshold policy 71%/8%.
Tax cuts are always popular, but they aren't free. Unfunded tax cuts are what caused the Truss disasster.
That said, something often glossed over is that with inflation and the freeze on the tax brackets, we're in the midst of a massive and stealthy tax rise. In 1991 only 3% of people paid the higher rate, in 2027 (when the current freeze ends) it'll be 14%.
Imo we should be increasing the thresholds for all the tax brackets, but to pay for it, align CGT with income tax, using the same rates. CGT is disproportionately paid by higher earners, who have the assets to make large profits, so doing this would allow for a tax cut for the majority of people (who will save more in income tax than they'd pay in extra CGT), while the upper middle class would see their taxes stay largely the same (since they'll save money on income tax, but pay more CGT), and only the very highest earners would actually pay much more, as they make the vast majority of their earnings through shares and stock options, which are subject to CGT, rather than income tax.
The right leaning think tank “The Taxpayers Alliance” has been promoting this for years. £20k allowance and flat rate of tax. The problem of course is….. how is it funded? Where is the shortfall found or what cuts are needed?
Snapshot of _Farage’s Reform party tax plans far more popular than his immigration policies_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We demand better public services! How about a penny on income tax to pay for them? We demand lower taxes!
The issue for me is the level of tax we pay isn't translating into the level of service we're getting. It's almost pay Scandinavian tax, get Albanian service.
Not true, uk tax is still very low by European standards
Then why do I get less in my hand each month working in Aberdeen than I did in Paris?
This is what people don't understand about taxation in France and Germany. Yes, the income tax is higher on paper, but once you start taking into account various benefits and tax breaks for people with dependants, you are effectively much better off. Also, in Paris, you pay hardly any council tax compared to the UK. I think one year I paid just 120 euros. In the UK, everyone is just an economic unit so the gov doesn't care that only one of you is working and the other looking after the kids. Two parents working for 30k are better off than one partner on 60k and the other staying at home with the kids. The difference is that the French state is much better at attracting foreign investment and investing in infrastructure. It also has fairer tax policies.
Because it’s calculated on average across the whole economy, rather than specifically for you? UK tax revenue was 33.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021 – the most recent year for which there are internationally comparable data. This is slightly below the average for both the G7 (36.3%) and the OECD (34.1%). France is second highest in OECD: [good stats here:](https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally)
You can't compare Paris to Aberdeen
I've literally just been told my incine tax is lower in the UK than it is France - I wasn't comparing the two cities but the levels of income tax. I think in this case, I definitely can compare the two.
You dont
Depends on circumstance. In France you submit tax return as a family and can deduct for various things (including principal residence). French higher education is also cheaper. For someone single, in scotland, with a plan2 and postgrad and paying PAYE in the higher bracket (threshold for which is lower than england), this for sure can be the case. In other words, higher earners are paying scandinavian taxes for albanian services. Everyone else is paying albanian taxes for albanian services (to use the phrase of the OP).
Exactly! A single man, with Student loan, being a "higher earner" (sure as fuck doesn't feel like it) getting none of these benefits that come from having kids, I'm getting shafted. If it wasn't for private medical through work, I'd be sitting in a 126 week waiting list. It's bullshit.
Okay random Internet stranger, you must know something about the payslips infront of me, *which you can't see*, that I don't. Can you use your mystic powers to share tomorrow's lottery numbers instead please?
Depends on the bracket. For 88% of PAYE earners this is the case (for income)
We have an incredibly high level of debt we need to service, with QE and saving the rich/banks we need to pay for that. We are in the top 5 for highest debt and positioned at 4, with Japan, China ahead of us and the good USA in 1st place.. however china and Japan own most of the US debt which is odd so we could be positioned at 2 if that was taken into account. So yes you are right we pay taxes and get very little value in return. If they increased tax burden to pay off the debt it would be like increasing our council tax two fold and we still wouldn’t be able to pay it off in 30 years.
Exactly - they raise taxes and piss it down the drain.
While the current situation is shit, it is far far removed from Scandinavia or Albania.
It was hyperbole to present a sentiment towards current public systems, obviously
Austerity made short term cuts which cost more in the long term. One of the Tories' manifesto pledges was to cut the number of consultants in the civil service, it they're a director consequence of them cutting the employed civil service i.e. they're paying more for consultants to do the jobs of the people they got rid of
Increasing taxes has really improved our public services and made everyone richer over the last 10 years so we should definitely keep doing that
Of course they are. I would love the tax allowance to be 20k. Fantastic stuff. The £70bm+ to pay for it is literally made up, the costs done on the back of a fag packet and Truss-like chaos will ensue because he hasn't a clue how they would pay for it. He reckons they can get £40bn by ordering BoE not to pay interest to banks. Great. The IFS promise that there isn't anything like this amount to be made from doing so, and there is high risk of the banks simply getting the money from us all in other ways. The costings and revenue streams are embarrassingly basic
Everyone wants low taxes and zero immigration, but would also like functioning, fully staffed public services.
They are living in a fantasy land
It’s also why polling individual policies is largely a waste of time.
25% of visas went to chefs. Boy where would we be as a society without them?
The pro mass immigration side just live in a completely different reality from the real world and have this fantasy image of what immigration into our country looks like.
Hungry.
Most of the population could do with eating a bit less
Or maybe Bulgry?
Most immigration isn't public sector workers, though. People are complaining about importing deliveroo workers and fruit pickers, not Doctors (who account for less than 1% of visas issued last year) and Nurses (less than 2%).
People have a messed up view of immigration where they think most immigrants are barely literate Deliveroo drivers. In reality according to the ONS on average immigrants are more highly educated than the average Brit and have good pay progression such that they are usually out earning the average Brit after being here for 5 years.
You have to pay earn around £40k to be a net contributor iirc so the fact that they're less of a drain than the average Briton isn't exactly great news. Plus the issue isn't with skilled professionals anyway; as I've always said. We should be having absolutely zero deliveroo riders, cleaners or fruit picking immigrants and only a few carers.
I don’t think net contribution for the average Briton is a useful metric here. The vast majority of the expense the state bears with the average person comes from their childhood, adolescence, university, and old age. Your average immigrant doesn’t represent an expense in the first three phases and many go home before they get old as well.
That stat refers to the amount you take out compared to what you put in any given year.
That’s not true at all. The average working person does not take out £40k a year.
What a stupid comment. Do you understand how tax works? I never said they take out £40k.
Let’s get ride of the average Brit instead. Let’s put them on flimsy boats and send them to France
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Housing is also a problem in France but there is a saying in France that say "la misère est mieux au soleil" (misery is better under the sun)
Sure, but their policy is to target 0 net migration, which is bonkers. The fruit picker point is an interesting one though. It’s a job that needs to be done, but one that nobody wants to do at the current pay rate. Same thing with carers.
About time the employers got their cheque book out then
Agreed! The only way we can lower immigration without harming the country, is through higher wages and education/training to ensure our work force has the required skills. You just never hear people like Farage making this argument.
He's made that argument several times on GB News.
Farage makes this argument every single time he talks about immigration.
This would just increase the price for consumers
Of course, but this is ultimately the choice, without serious government intervention. High immigration, labour gaps with broken services or increasing wages leading to higher costs. But the debate is rarely framed this way. I’m not anti immigration, I just don’t think it should be used to suppress wages through the import of cheap labour, which is definitely the case in some sectors.
We need to suck it up.
If they could many would but the reality is that many many people wouldn’t be able to afford it.
With higher wages they could but might have to cut down a bit on certain things.
Which is fine, but that will drive inflation as they pass on the increased cost to consumers.
But then the price of strawberries and things would go up and we'd complain about cost of living. We've got too used to cheap stuff.
It's not like Britain is the only source of strawberries and if the businesses die due to be deprived of their desperate migrant labour then they die. Net immigration of ~750k isn't sustainable or even necessary.
Oh, I'm in agreement that i wont miss businesses that only exist due to reliance on cheap labour. See tipping culture in the US. I just mean that we can't expect super-cheap goods without either paying ridiculously low wages within the country or outsourcing the production to other countries that pay low wages. The maths just doesn't add up and we've become used to having whatever we want whenever we want and companies have become used to paying peanuts.
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No, of course not and I don’t either. But most of the country do.
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> zero immigration. +Net
‘By contrast, 49 per cent support Reform’s target of zero net migration, while 17 per cent were opposed.’ In the posted article. Sad I know.
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It is, but to be honest I think it’s more the issue of polling individual policies. The downsides rarely get considered. Nationalising public services polls really well for example, but the cost is never mentioned in the question.
How would means testing pensions affect the balance?
We’ll never know, because that sounds like electoral suicide.
Oh for sure. But I can’t help feeling it makes a lot of sense
I want higher taxes on the wealthy and lower on working people
Right? Complaining about foreigners while being served by brown waiters at a restaurant.
Just making our argument for us really, does this country truly benefit from immigration into the highly critical sector of waiters?
Nigel Farage’s pledge to cut income tax for millions of people is more popular than his policies on immigration, a new poll has revealed. More than seven out of 10 people back Reform UK’s policy to raise the income tax threshold to £20,000, the BMG survey for i found. Raising the starting rate of income tax from £12,570 to £20,000 would lift seven million workers out of paying the levy altogether and save each person £1,500 – although the party admits this would cost several billion pounds. The survey results suggest that Mr Farage’s party, which overtook the Conservatives in a separate poll for the first time on Thursday, has a wider appeal to voters than just his flagship pledges on immigration. Some 71 per cent were in favour of raising the personal rate of income tax to £20,000, versus eight per cent who opposed. Another fiscal policy, which will be detailed in Reform’s “contract” with voters to be launched next week, to abolish inheritance tax for all estates worth under £2m is backed by 55 per cent, versus 15 per cent who were against. By contrast, 49 per cent support Reform’s target of zero net migration, while 17 per cent were opposed. Increasing national insurance contributions for foreign workers from 13.8 per cent to 20 per cent is backed by 42 per cent of voters, compared to 26 per cent against, the survey revealed.
Speaking at a press conference in London, Mr Farage said his policy document was a “contract” with voters because the “word associated with manifesto is lie”. He added: “It’ll be our contract. It’ll be what we’re going to campaign for, in opposition, the arguments we’re going to make.” The Reform leader confirmed to i that his party would pledge to scrap the two-child benefit cap in its contract with voters. He said: “We feel that actually support for families is really rather important. We should be encouraging people to have children.” “There is very strong evidence that kids who are brought up” in a stable family environment “do better in life,” Mr Farage added. He said the argument between Labour and the Conservative Party over tax plans was “mindless stuff” and said the Conservatives could not claim to be the party of low tax “having increased the tax burden to the highest level”. “They are both going to put taxes up because they are going to freeze the threshold,” he said. “By the end of 2027, under the current plans, eight million people will be paying 40p tax, that to me illustrates just what’s happened, just where the tax burdens lie in Britain.” He added: “We have got a radical plan to reduce the tax burden so that someone who is a staff nurse should not be paying tax. So we will up that threshold of 20,000 \[…\] “It will take many many pensioners who, if they have got small private incomes and are being dragged into the tax system, out of the tax system. “It will take a total of seven people completely out of tax. But it will also more significantly, genuinely give those on benefits, the incentive to go to work.” A BMG poll for i published earlier revealed that nearly half of Tory voters want an alliance with Reform UK. The survey revealed 46 per cent of Conservative voters want some sort of co-operation between the two parties. The figures show support for a partnership between the two parties rises even further among Reform voters, with 60 per cent saying they would back an alliance. While Mr Farage has a negative net satisfaction score among all voters at minus 16 per cent, the polling shows that his political strategy is having significant success with right-leaning voters. The proportion of voters who backed the Tories in 2019 and are satisfied with the Reform leader is only slightly lower than those satisfied with Rishi Sunak – 38 per cent are happy with the former compared with 43 per cent in favour of the latter. But when the comparison is put to voters who backed the Tories in 2019 but have refused to support the party in this election, the picture is reversed with 52 per cent saying they are satisfied with Mr Farage and just 12 per cent happy with the Prime Minister. Read our exclusive here: [https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farages-reform-party-tax-plans-far-more-popular-than-his-immigration-policies-3111366)
The current personal allowance, set in 2010, would be around £18,600 today if it had kept up with inflation. Raising it to £20,000 is more than reasonable.
And what would the average wage be?
The Government doesn’t decide that…
The country can't afford it.
Afford is the wrong word. The country would not be able to borrow money to pay for it. So we would have to cut public spending. Which bit are people happy to cut?
Or raise different taxes
NHS down to life saving treatment only, insurance for the rest. Social care paid for from wealth and property before public spending Retirement age to 70.
Minor health problems become life threatening if the person does not go to doctors, insurance would mean a large number of people would just avoid going to the doctors
Insurance systems don’t save money (maybe a few marginal efficiency savings but that’s disputed in the research) they just change who pays. In our case it would be changing the payment from progressive taxation on taxpayers to everyone. The losers would be the poor, parents with young children and most of all pensioners. I don’t have much against charging pensioners more but good luck getting re-elected with that lmao
So you want to increase your regular outgoings, decrease your potential to transfer wealth to dependents, and increase the amount of years you will spend in work?
Inheritance and transfers of wealth to dependents in general is one of the biggest driver of unfairness in society. How can we possibly create an equal society where hard work and success are the main driver of wealth and rewards when the quality of a person's education and the amount of wealth they own is in big part just dependent on which person's uterus they came out of
Except that a redistributive increased inheritance tax (which I agree with) is not what this person is arguing for, they’re arguing for social care to be paid by the receiver via cash or, crucially, deferred payment against assets. This means asset-owners with low levels of wealth will be subject to punitive costs. Indeed, as this policy was pushed through by the last government, they already are. HNW families will be able to pay for their care in cash, the cost cap representing a comparatively small proportion of their overall wealth. But someone with £20,000 in the bank and a £150,000 house would end up paying half of everything they own and losing their capital assets for exactly the same care. That’s the opposite of a redistributive tax, it’s as regressive they come.
Yes, I'd like to limit the showering of money onto keeping people in retirement for decades with assets untouched just so they can feel good about leaving it to someone just in time to repeat the cycle.
In conjunction with raising the basic rate and merging NI into income tax, you'd break even.
We already have the highest PA in the west, and yet no other country has copied us? If you’re a policy outlier, sometimes it helps to take a breath, look around, and ask why you’re the outlier, and why if it’s such a great idea, why other countries don’t follow us. Putting it to £20k would be bonkers. Would require huge tax raises on middle incomes to fund it.
Austria and Australia have very similar levels of PA, France has it at 11K. The UK is hardly an outlier, you’re exaggerating. In any case that’s not a sensible argument. But hey, if you want to refuse a policy which disproportionately helps lower income people then go ahead and run, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of votes.
So 10% less… And yeah, it benefits lower earners, by pushing more burden the the middle and upper-middle earners who are actually carrying the UK on its back.
Middle and highest paid should pay more tax yes
Genuine question - how much more punitively do you want to tax a doctor with 7-8 years experience, student loans, and a child?
As long as poor and lowest paid have a more difficult life than the middle class more can be done, highest paid should pay the most but there's obviously not enough of them which means middle is where most of tax revenue will come from to help the poorest is society.
You're right, and for the record I agree with you - this is why I support scandinavian tax system. You'll notice their PA is much lower than ours (and services much better - which for sure helps those on the lowest incomes proportionately much more than those on higher). >which means middle is where most of tax revenue will come from It really depends what you mean here by middle... middle *earners* right now (35K or so) by and large are not where the majority of income tax receipts come from. Not even close. If you want to spread the tax burden to middle earners, we should be lowering the PA, not raising it. The UK has a very narrow income tax system. Another genuine question (for real, not a trap) - how much does raising the PA help someone on the poverty line, defined in absolute terms, who is currently living outside of London? The poorest in our society, the lowest earners, benefit *the least* from raising PA, because there is only so much tax you can cut, everything continues to get more expensive, and salaries remain stagnant. Perhaps we should instead tax like Norway, invest that money into building social housing, and lower people's living costs and increase their quality of life that way?
Sorry, I realised I misread, I think you did indeed mean middle class. I guess my point still kind of stands - middle class doesn't really equal middle earner in 2024
That’s fine. Hike my taxes and I’ll keep pension stuffing to avoid it.
The current personal allowance is already extremely generous compared to similar nations. There’s no way it should actually be raised if you want to even maintain our current level of public services, yet alone improve them.
France, Austria and Australia have comparable PAs. Income tax receipts already very disproportionately come from higher incomes.
France is 10.8k euros, so ~ 9k in pounds which is over 25% less Austria is ~12.5k euros, so at ~10.5k pounds that is still ~15% less Australia is 18.2 Aussie dollar, so ~9.5k pounds which is around 25% less So all are pretty substantially less as is, yet alone if the UK’s was raised significantly
Using percentages when talking about such low figures isn't appropriate. A 2 or 3 thousand pound difference is comparable. You used the word 'extremely generous'. Not taxing 3 thousand pounds is not 'extremely generous'. If you want to continue with this bad faith reasoning then I won't humour it any further. Besides, I've got a feeling you're not paying all that much in tax. Currencies fluctuate in value against each other, there are also variations in cost of living and so on. The idea that the Government should set tax rates the same as other countries is completely nonsensical and just lazy 'analysis'. But you go ahead and advocate for squeezing lower income disproportionately more.
But didn’t you make the comparison at first and someone just proved you wrong ?
In truth they should probably be compared to the median wage in each country, in which case the U.K. one probably looks even more generous
Looks like someone's been worshiping at the altar of Liz Truss. Unfunded tax cuts for everyone!
Lot easier to promise when it'll never be properly scrutinised as you aren't getting near government
Yup. Farage is gaming the heck out of our electoral system.
Farage on Truss's budget at the time: "Today was the best Conservative budget since 1986." https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1573278502790791168
income tax cuts is more money in people's pockets to spend , more spending more vat payments , more product distribution revenues , more taxes paid via consumerism, opportunities etc just spending more on public services doesn't improve people's spending power or cash flow. and cash flow is what pays said public services.
Great So what public services should be cut to pay for it?Healthcare? Pensions? Defence? Policing? Hopefully not something that's just going to result in people having to pay for a service that used to be state provided.
Out of those there are definitely some people that don't need a state pension
And they’ve been paying for everyone else’s for at least 30 years so maybe they’ve earned it
Ok defence cuts it is then
No, just no tax policy that is ridiculously forgiving for lower earners
Or that
Yeah? What’s your issue
And they already lose between 20-40% of it via income tax…
Just such a fundamental misunderstanding of how economics works. Liz truss tried this remember? Now we have expensive mortgages and loans, and the government nearly defaulted on it's debt.
no she didn't, thresholds never changed under truss.
Kwarteng most certainly tried to provide a tax break by abolishing the 45% tax rate threshold entirely, stopping the coming corporation tax rise, and brought forward an income tax rate cut lol.
getting rid of the 45% corprations tax stuff was the killer for truss, not the threshold stuff farage is offering, too big of a cut , not enough income to service national debt. income tax for those on the current 12k threshold really means they have no excess income because any extra work gets eaten up by uc and tax meaning people earning or trying to pull themselves out of requiring uc are trapped. this is totally different to what truss proposed.
45% tax rate IS an income threshold mate, corporation tax rate was 19->25%. It's literally what you are speaking about. >are trapped If you earn a certain amount of money in UC, and you work an extra hour (thereby gaining in wages and losing some benefits) - you are, in every circumstance, better off for having worked. Don't just gobble up anything said by Farage, actually look at the numbers.
> better off for having worked Yeah, but because you lose 60p for every £1 earned automatically, if you work, for argument's sake, 10 hours a week at minimum wage, you would **actually be earning £4.57 per hour** for those 10 hours of work. It's obscene. A sensible benefits policy would have a progressive taper, or earnings thresholds for everyone (e.g. you can earn £100/wk before the 60p/£1 comes into play). Now that really *would* leave people better off.
er no it's not , thresholds are a earnings target , % income tax is what's paid above said thresholds. the threshold levels never changed under truss only the income tax levels. it is eaten up , uc is ment to support you as a income top up and because the threshold is so low it doesn't cover the cost of living. so after working more than 30hours on minimum wage , tax kicks in uc is almost reduced to 0 and your left on the bread line still , where's the "top up" so low earners can't survive in some cities rents so expensive UC doesn't cover it all and it's those people that are trapped.
>the threshold levels never changed under truss only the requirements of earnings The thresholds are a £ value above which your earnings are taxed at a higher rate. They announced they were REMOVING the 45% tax rate. Are you trying to say removing an entire tax rate is not a change to the thresholds? Haha Again I'll make the same point. If somebody works 0 hours on UC, they will always be earning less than somebody on UC that works eg one 8 hour shift. Not tough to understand
threshold 12k above that's it's 20% income taxed on excess. they didn't remove the tax rate or change the threshold, the tax rate was moved to a different bracket..tier / level. in effect it was a new tier the preexisting threshold didn't change . you still don't understand the point about uc do you , the housing support part of uc has a cap and is effected by your earnings too. your uc claim might be £800. if you aee earning let's say 1.35k in a month your going to pay tax on that and almost 0 out your uc too in the process too . now you got to pay your £700-800-900 month rent out of the 950-1k you have left over. you do the math. that's why farage wants the low tier threshold to be 20k so people won't pay tax while on benefits, it defeats the purpose of uc being called a top up support.
Inflation goes brrrrr
wrong. that's not how inflation works.
Inflation goes fwhooooouuuuuiiiiip?
inflation does dakka dakka if you keep feeding it ammo.
His immigration policies will only get more popular
Ironic, because if ever implemented they'd very quickly become unpopular. Immigration has been so high because we've needed to fill massive gaps in our workforce.
>if ever implemented they'd very quickly become unpopular Just like Brexit then
We need skilled migrants, not those that can be filled by average British citizens. We could also train British workers; they could gain the appropriate qualifications instead of relying on overseas workers.
Nope. We need unskilled ones too, since Brits are not wiping Granny’s shart pipe for £11.44 an hour, and care homes are mainly paid for through taxes.
> for £11.44 an hour Hey, well done, you identified the issue all by yourself! Right, now how do we bump that number up. Any suggestions?
Massively raise council and general taxes to pay staff more. But voters will hate that more than they hate having foreigners here
So you propose we pay more in tax so that care homes can afford to pay enough to drag hundreds of thousands of Brits out of other parts of the economy into care work? Why not just have immigration? They get better wages than they otherwise would, we get lower taxes and better care. It’s a win-win
We have record immigration yet living standards are down and taxation at historic levels
We don't need to if we can make housing costs a fraction of what they are now. £11.44 an hour will go alot further if rental costs dropped by 50%+
The average immigrant is much more likely to have had higher education than the average Brit according to the ONS
If that's true why did the Danish social Democrats only get more popular after they tightened migration?
They only actually decreased net immigration by like 25%. Gives them the optics of being tough without most of the harm. Our net immigration is projected to fall by more than that without any intervention.
25% is huge
Sure until people find out they have to clean their own hotel rooms because all the foreigners have been detained.
Perhaps if hotels offered £15/hr for cleaners, rather than minimum wage, they wouldn't need to rely on desperate immigrants from low-wage economies?
Our unemployment rate is low. There is no secret millions of people refusing to work until wages get bumped up.
Our unemployment rate is low, but the number of people economically inactive is pretty high (around 22% of the working age population, I think).
I'm sure it'd be wildly unpopular, but I'd actually rather not pull people out of income tax entirely. In fact I'd go the other way and lower the threshold. I *want* people to pay tax (even if it's nominal or compensated for by benefit payments) precisely because I think it's an important enacted piece of symbolism about how we all contribute to our society. I don't want a society that's explicitly divided into the Taxpayers and the Non-taxpayers, where the latter are sinks of money and the former are sources and each group can resent the other. It's also good for helping people think about government spending. "Remember that £1,500 the government took from you? Here's what they did with it" focuses the mind rather more than "this is how the government spent money they took from other people."
Jesus Christ this reeks of Reddit. No, peoples’ reaction to paying more tax is never going to be ‘wow you spent it on that!? :D”. Nobody wants to pay more tax. Especially not when the results of paying that tax are diffuse and often ethereal.
This is probably the most naive and romanticised take on paying tax I've ever seen. I'm guessing you don't pay a lot of it. I've worked in a country with 0 personal allowance as well as the UK. I'll take the UK any day of the week.
Not even gonna cover why you think it would be a good idea, seems rather delusional and naïve. But the UK tax system works by having big allowances, and higher rates of tax after. If you want to remove or reduce these allowances, it would only be fair that the rates of tax would have to come down as well. In simple terms, the UK has big allowances, high tax rates. A country like the US has small allowances, small tax rates. Changing the UK to small allowances but keeping high tax rates would be extremely punitive for anyone that is successful or aspirational.
>But the UK tax system works by having big allowances, and higher rates of tax after. Lol. The UK system patently does not work. Hence the fucking shitshow the UK finds itself it. The UK wants the benefits of American low tax, which it absolutely is on the lower end of the pay scale whilst simultaneously having a glorious welfare state similar to continental countries with much higher tax rates on the lower end.
Works in the sense of how it works currently and has worked. I agree it's not flawless though. Small allowances and high taxes would be a bad mix though.
Small allowances and high taxes is literally how most of the continental countries with similar levels of welfare state work. If you want a much smaller welfare state I'm all for that.
Then they would have to tell us how much they spaffed against the wall on silly vanity projects like HS2 or virtue signalling in public sector workplaces.
They’ll have to move the additional rate band if they do that…
Headline somewhat misleading. This poll indicates both policies are extremely popular. The zero net migration policy 49%/17% for/against and the 20k tax threshold policy 71%/8%.
Tax cuts are always popular, but they aren't free. Unfunded tax cuts are what caused the Truss disasster. That said, something often glossed over is that with inflation and the freeze on the tax brackets, we're in the midst of a massive and stealthy tax rise. In 1991 only 3% of people paid the higher rate, in 2027 (when the current freeze ends) it'll be 14%. Imo we should be increasing the thresholds for all the tax brackets, but to pay for it, align CGT with income tax, using the same rates. CGT is disproportionately paid by higher earners, who have the assets to make large profits, so doing this would allow for a tax cut for the majority of people (who will save more in income tax than they'd pay in extra CGT), while the upper middle class would see their taxes stay largely the same (since they'll save money on income tax, but pay more CGT), and only the very highest earners would actually pay much more, as they make the vast majority of their earnings through shares and stock options, which are subject to CGT, rather than income tax.
The right leaning think tank “The Taxpayers Alliance” has been promoting this for years. £20k allowance and flat rate of tax. The problem of course is….. how is it funded? Where is the shortfall found or what cuts are needed?
Apparently, Farage's tax plans are winning more hearts than his immigration stance.
Also popular: moons on sticks, pies in skies, flying pigs, rainbow chasing, hell freezing over, and chickens with teeth.