Keir Starner has appointed a Housing Minister who hates private housing.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, former CEO of the far left New Economics Foundation (NEF), wants to tax & regulate private housing to death and build state housing instead.

1/11 Miatta & the NEF are fixated on forcing the transfer of private rented homes to the public sector. "Policy should be geared towards upgrading existing private rented homes to ensure they are energy efficient, & acquiring & repurposing them as homes for social rent," they write.

"Social housing held and controlled by the public sector is best placed to meet social policy needs," they say.

Keir Starmer has appointed a high tax fanatic, Minouche Shafik, as his personal economic adviser.

Shafik is a collectivist academic who believes that “the idea that you are successful because you are smart & hardworking is pernicious & wrong."

She is a menace.
1/6 She wants to grab people's pension pots, saying "those with comfortable pension pots must be expected to pay more towards the common good.”

She also proposed “the imposition of property taxes which would direct a flow of capital from those in high value properties to those unable to get on the property ladder, through a capital endowment scheme.”

A cautionary tale from high tax Britain:

A branch manager of a lettings business was awarded a £25,000 bonus, but was horrified to learn that he would be left with less than nothing after tax. As a result of his £25,000 bonus, £25,533 would be taken by the tax man.

1/4 Over £100k the tax rate on his £25,000 bonus was 60% i.e. £15,000. "On top of this, he pays 2% NI plus another 9% is deducted to pay for this student loan which is really a graduate tax. This means an effective tax rate of 71% i.e. £17,750." writes Adam Walker

"As if this isn’t bad enough he has a 2-year-old daughter. Because he earned too much, he had already lost his right to claim child benefit which is worth £1,354p.a. However, his bonus £25,000 bonus means that he also no longer qualifies for 30 hours per week of free childcare which is worth a further £7,783p.a.. "

"When you add all this together, the impact of his £25,000 bonus is that the poor chap will be £533 worse off. He was so disgusted by this that he asked his employer to pay the whole of his bonus into his pension. This avoided the tax but it didn’t make him feel any less resentful."

"As we talk about the tax-raising budget to come we should not think of it as inevitable. It would be a gross breach of promise. It was what Labour were elected not to do, what they told us all that they would not do," says Danny Finkelstein in @thetimes

It's a key point

1/4 "Labour ran for office saying repeatedly that their plans were “about prosperity, not higher taxes”. At its manifesto launch Angela Rayner announced that “we can’t tax our way to growth.” To which Rachel Reeves added that “we don’t have a tax-and-spend manifesto. We have a growth plan.”

No wonder the bond markets are worried that Torsten Bell is writing the budget. Not only does he advocate growth-destroying tax hikes but he has consistently pushed for higher public spending & the rewriting of fiscal rules to permit yet more borrowing

Examples below:
1/7 In “The end of austerity?” (Resolution Foundation blog, 13 Jun 2017) Bell argued that ending austerity should mean lifting the public-sector pay cap and reversing benefit cuts. “…An extra £3bn a year would be needed for a 1% pay rise," he said.

"Reeves is increasingly beginning to look like the Starmer government’s ‘starter chancellor’ – who will pave the way for a more radical programme at some later date. Her failure to stimulate growth will be used as a pretext for something a little more ambitiously left-wing."

"Were Torsten Bell to be the follow-up figure, we would at least know where we are, given that he appeared to enjoy an open invitation onto the Today programme in the years leading up to the general election to expound on his ideas for tax rises. But it would be a dark day for the UK economy, ditching us in even deeper fiscal waters."

Prescient commentary from @RossjournoClark in April.

1/4 "That the Resolution Foundation seems to think that the answer is yet more public spending says much about the Labour Left’s philosophy. Economic growth, it seems to believe, can only ever result from public investment, not private investment," notes Ross Clark

Frightening news just in. Far left high tax fanatic Torsten Bell has been appointed lead designer of Labour's budget. Bell, who recently had to explain that he is "not an idiot", was responsible for Ed Miliband's idiotic 'Edstone' stunt.

Below are the tax hikes he's pushed:
1/8 Raise the capital gains tax (CGT) rate on shares to 37% & on other assets (mainly real estate) to as much as 53%

Charge CGT on death and on leaving the UK

Hike the basic rate of dividend tax from 8.75% to 20%

(Of course company profits have already suffered 25% corporate tax)

"Fears of an imminent tax grab on the middle class has sent a wave of panic across the country," reports the Sunday Times.

The tax hikes being floated by Labour are prompting either panic action or the freezing of transactions.

It is wholly irresponsible of Labour.

1/6 Saddat Abid from the property buying firm Property Saviour said his clients have been spooked. “A couple in their sixties were planning to downsize from their £800,000 family home, but have now postponed the sale completely. They’re concerned that the residence nil-rate band that currently gives them an extra £175,000 inheritance tax allowance will be scrapped."

Stamp duty is a deeply counterproductive tax, argues Catherine McBride in an excellent Substack analysis.

"Housing is essential for life in the UK & the govt can't afford to house everyone in council housing, nor do they have enough of it. So, what is the point of making private housing more expensive?", she asks
1/7 "Crucially, Stamp duty has a negative impact on the economy by discouraging people from moving to homes better suited to their life stage or relocating for better job opportunities elsewhere in the country. Stamp duty also hampers property renovation & has a substantial multiplier effect on the wider economy."

There's a sharp drop in the percentage of income tax paid by top earners, @the_tpa analysis of HMRC data has found

The top 1% are expected to pay 26.6% of all income tax receipts in 2025-26, down significantly from the 30.7% they paid in 21-22

A key trend has been reversed

1/5 In 1979 Chancellor Geoffrey Howe cut the top rate from 83% to 60%. Before the cut, the top 1% of UK taxpayers paid only 11% of the total income tax take. By 1988 they were paying 14% of income tax revenue.

The Laffer curve is real.

Labour's plans to force taxpayers to submit digital information about their earnings to the government every 12 weeks will hit lower earners the hardest, even pushing the poorest people out of work & onto benefits, experts have warned.

We should resist this scheme

1/4 "It’s hard to imagine how so many single parents are going to find the time to continue running a business, juggling childcare but then also learn how to bookkeep & file quarterly updates without it putting a huge amount of pressure on top,” said Tom Bickle of JP Blackmoor Ltd.

Wealthy business leaders are fleeing Britain

A Bloomberg analysis of 5 million company filings shows a big spike in departing business leaders over recent months, with more than 4,400 disclosing an overseas move over the last year.

1/5 April exits were up 75% from 12 months earlier and the highest in 4 years.

Many departing are non-doms and if 25% of those leave then the Treasury starts losing serious money. “I’d be stunned if we didn’t get to 25%” said Catrin Harrison of law firm Charles Russell Speechlys.

Do you trust the Government to decide where your pension funds should be invested?

The Treasury has just said “The government will take a reserve power in the Pension Schemes Bill to set binding asset allocation targets.”

It's a shocking expansion of state power

1/5 If the Government wants to get more pension money invested in British shares it should reverse Gordon Brown's tax grab & restore the pension dividend tax credit. And it should scrap stamp duty on shares.

But then it would have less cash to give to the public sector unions.

Angela Rayner's tax hike proposals would “seriously risk wrecking savers’ retirement plans” according to Andrew Tully of financial advisers Nucleus.

Punishing savers in order to reward public sector unions is not a morally justifiable policy

1/4 “Savers need confidence that the goalposts won’t constantly shift. Rather than constantly tweaking rules we need cross party consensus on issues like this to deliver the stability required,” Tully said.

Today is the first day of Tax Horror Week.

This week Britain will be hit by a range of horrifying tax increases which will inflict major damage to the finances of British citizens, to businesses & to the economy.

We detail 12 scheduled tax hikes below

1/14 Tax hikes are programmed for April 1 and April 6.

The greatest economic damage will be caused by hikes to Employer NI contributions. The rate will go up by 1.2ppts to 15% & the threshold cut to £5k, dragging many more low-paid & part-time workers into its scope.

The OBR budget watchdog downgraded its forecast for capital gains tax revenue for the next 5 years, reducing the projected tax take by £23b

No surprise there, as hikes in CGT invariably lead to reduced revenues. Labour's ideology driven CGT hikes are having the same effect

1/8 Under reforms introduced by Tony Blair’s Government, from the year 2002-03 business assets attracted a reduced rate of 10% CGT if held for more than 2 years. CGT revenues increased sharply as a consequence, doubling in 3 years.

Rachel Reeves has rejected the very sensible proposal by Marks & Spencer to phase in her NI tax hikes over 2 years.

Her tax increases seem specifically designed to hurt low-paid and part-time workers.

1/4 As well as hiking the rate, Labour is lowering the level at which firms have to start paying NI contributions to £5k a year instead of £9.1k a year.

Supermarkets are already pulling back on hiring for part-time roles, which will be more expensive for them due to the tax raid.

Inventor Sir James Dyson has accused Rachel Reeves of “vindictiveness” saying that her death tax raid on family businesses will “destroy” them & that, rather than raise revenue, it will cost the exchequer billions in other taxes.

He is entirely correct.

1/6 Dyson said that 60 of the top 100 UK taxpayers were owners of family businesses and together pay £3 billion a year in taxes. “Such companies employ 14 million people & contribute many more billions — year in, year out — funding vital public services,” he said.

Rachel Reeves is a one woman walking political disaster area for the Labour Party.

The vast majority of Labour’s political screw-ups since the election have been caused by Rachel.

Will they allow her to carry on doing this?

1/9 The family farm tax row, which will both dominate the news for months and threaten Labour’s 100 rural seats was a totally unnecessary blunder.

Infuriating farmers for a measly £560m, enough to keep the NHS running for 25 hours, was a major mis-step.

The Labour Party appears to have adopted the "big lie" approach to communicating its tax and economic policy.

Labour's latest brazen lie is that they didn't hike NI when in fact it was the biggest tax increase in the budget.

This thread examines the big lie technique

1/9 “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Incentives to invest in start-ups were shredded in Labour's budget

Labour can't claim that the tax hikes are needed to 'save the NHS' as HMRC's own analysis shows the "exchequer impact" is negligible

The policy seems based on ideological hatred of private investors

1/15 Investors' relief (IR) from Capital Gains Tax (CGT) was slashed, both by an 80% increase in the tax rate from 10% to 18% & a 90% cut in the lifetime limit on gains from £10m to a measly £1m.

IR's purpose was to increase investment into small companies through a lower CGT rate.