I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
I don't agree with Mr Smithson. I think most voters will applaud getting rid of IHT or as a de minimus raising the threshold to say 2 million. It's an inspirational thing that people support irrespective of whether it will affect them.
Yes it is an aspirational thing, and Miklosvar is correct that beneficiaries are often left out when people talk about the proportion of the population concerned about IHT.
Also true that far more people are more worried about potential care home fees than IHT.
Thank you!!
Of course there's a huge overlap. Much of the worry about care home fees is presumably from children seeing their inheritance eaten up.
Yes, but also the old person him/herself. It is tremendously distressing to see the family home evaporating to the local council. It is, for many, their life's achievement which they thought would provide some security after their death to their loved ones.
Be the same for bank savings or anything else. And houses with spouses arent' affected.
Neither are savings when there is a surviving spouse.
Those where the major (sometimes only) constituent of the estate is property are disadvantaged versus someone whose major constituent is savings. This is because it is easy to drip feed your cash estate to beneficiaries in the years prior to death. This ability is not available with property.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
That’s happening in Canada already. Some of the stories sound horrible, and I really hope it doesn’t catch on.
Have we noted this Peter Kellner prediction (11 July) re GE? I think he is about right, and Lab majority is not value, while NOM is worth a look.
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
Well Starmer is also not doing well on favourability, negative on a net basis too. Gold standard Survation also has Sunak cutting Starmer's lead as preferred PM to just 2% on its latest poll, 36% to 38% and I doubt any alternative Tory leader would do better than that now
The Tory plan to have abolishing IHT as a manifesto commitment is a brilliant one. Having it as the big goodie in the Tory manifesto means Sunak and Hunt can focus on cutting inflation and keeping cost of living down before the next election without any big tax cuts (income tax or VAT cuts would also cost more than abolishing IHT overall). Only if the Tories win an unprecedented 5th consecutive general election victory would it need to be implemented.
It is also a policy targeted at the Waitrose shopper southern England and posh bits of London bluewall seats, which the Conservatives are currently neck and neck with Labour in and where the LDs are strong and which they need to hold to save the furniture. The more Aldi shopper Redwall seats are likely gone back to Labour regardless now Brexit has been done and Boris and Corbyn are gone and Labour now have a big poll lead there again
Last shopper demographic data I had showed that Aldi is practically classless, so your snobby put down of "Aldi shoppers" is misplaced. As always coming from you.
What you're saying is that the only thing left is to offer a big enough bribe to the richest voters to try and make them forget just how you and yours have fucked this country over.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
As usual you are omitting stuff that doesn't suit you. Add the RNRB. And double that for most families. That's most of the house covered withotu much biting into the base allowance.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
Generally speaking, however, we don't tax acts of benevolence, such as Christmas gifts, or donations to charity. People see inheritance as a final act of benevolence in the same vein as a £10 note tucked inside a Christmas card. It's not an overdue payment for grandchildren services rendered.
The more I think about it the more ridiculous IHT appears.
It also is a softener in the sad task of a parents death, and the disposal of all their material possessions.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
I don't agree with Mr Smithson. I think most voters will applaud getting rid of IHT or as a de minimus raising the threshold to say 2 million. It's an inspirational thing that people support irrespective of whether it will affect them.
Yes it is an aspirational thing, and Miklosvar is correct that beneficiaries are often left out when people talk about the proportion of the population concerned about IHT.
Also true that far more people are more worried about potential care home fees than IHT.
Thank you!!
Of course there's a huge overlap. Much of the worry about care home fees is presumably from children seeing their inheritance eaten up.
Yes, but also the old person him/herself. It is tremendously distressing to see the family home evaporating to the local council. It is, for many, their life's achievement which they thought would provide some security after their death to their loved ones.
Be the same for bank savings or anything else. And houses with spouses arent' affected.
Neither are savings when there is a surviving spouse.
Those where the major (sometimes only) constituent of the estate is property are disadvantaged versus someone whose major constituent is savings. This is because it is easy to drip feed your cash estate to beneficiaries in the years prior to death. This ability is not available with property.
More than compensated for by the differential inflation of prices vs savings, thjough.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
That's what is worrying me - and abolishing IHT is going to send a very strong signal.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
As usual you are omitting stuff that doesn't suit you. Add the RNRB. And double that for most families. That's most of the house covered withotu much biting into the base allowance.
RNRB evaporates when the whole estate gets to something like £2.5m, which sort of counters the argument that this is posho focussed.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
As usual you are omitting stuff that doesn't suit you. Add the RNRB. And double that for most families. That's most of the house covered withotu much biting into the base allowance.
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
The only difference being that Truss actually had some ideas, whereas Sunak appears to have almost nothing.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
As usual you are omitting stuff that doesn't suit you. Add the RNRB. And double that for most families. That's most of the house covered withotu much biting into the base allowance.
RNRB evaporates when the whole estate gets to something like £2.5m, which sort of counters the argument that this is posho focussed.
2.5m? That IS posho by UK standards. Plus HYUFD was specifically talking about average houses. Not fucking Kensington Gardens.
Also: at that level, the RNRB doesn't make that much overall difference to the IHT anyway even if it were a flat rate 175K.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
What do you think the UK is, Pharaonic Egypt?! Some sort of death cult? Might as well start buildign pyramids.
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
In fact IHT abolition is dead in the water for precisely that reason, unless Sunak is replaced by the Lord President of the Council who looks to be a clean skin inheritancewise (dad former O.R. para, mum SN teacher). Sunak is very, very neatly skewered here.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
By debt do you mean private/public/combined?
I would have expected private debt to be lower than 2010 but public debt to be higher overall.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
As usual you are omitting stuff that doesn't suit you. Add the RNRB. And double that for most families. That's most of the house covered withotu much biting into the base allowance.
Which still doesn't cover divorced couples, those leaving to nieces or nephews, or brothers and sisters.
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
What do you think the UK is, Pharaonic Egypt?! Some sort of death cult? Might as well start buildign pyramids.
I was looking for an equivalent killer phrase to "dementia tax."
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
O/T I see Goodwood Festival of Speed is cancelled today due to the potential for high winds. No doubt a sensible decision but that will cost the organisers dearly, and a big shame for anyone with tickets for today, of course.
We were there yesterday and the persistent rain dampened the experience a bit but we still had a great time. God knows how many £millions of rare and exotic cars there were there, too many to see them all.
Consolations are available. In this summer weather you can stay by the fireside! (in the far north anyway) and read 'Bingo has a bad Goodwood' from The Inimitable Jeeves. And all the other short stories in that incandescent sequence, 100 years old this year and immortal.
"He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own." (Waugh)
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
The coolest thing about the film "In Order of Disappearance" other than its name (or rather their name) is the open plan garage/living room of the villain (both versions).
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
In fact IHT abolition is dead in the water for precisely that reason, unless Sunak is replaced by the Lord President of the Council who looks to be a clean skin inheritancewise (dad former O.R. para, mum SN teacher). Sunak is very, very neatly skewered here.
No he isn't, the middle class swing voters in the bluewall this policy is targeting won't care if Rishi is the richest and poshest man in Britain if they get a windfall via inheritance tax being scrapped
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
We've opened up an exciting philosophical issue:
Is it right to consider an attached garage to be part of your house?
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
As usual you are omitting stuff that doesn't suit you. Add the RNRB. And double that for most families. That's most of the house covered withotu much biting into the base allowance.
RNRB evaporates when the whole estate gets to something like £2.5m, which sort of counters the argument that this is posho focussed.
2.5m? That IS posho by UK standards. Plus HYUFD was specifically talking about average houses. Not fucking Kensington Gardens.
Also: at that level, the RNRB doesn't make that much overall difference to the IHT anyway even if it were a flat rate 175K.
Kensington a key Tory v Labour marginal now, as is Cities of London and Westminster and Chelsea and Fulham with the LDs also strong in the latter 2
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
It isn't double. The offer to Junior doctors in England is 6% plus £1250 one off as a consolidated payment. That is over 10% at the starting band and about 8% at the higher band.
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
We've opened up an exciting philosophical issue:
Is it right to consider an attached garage to be part of your house?
I say No.
Link-detached houses are detached if and only if you are right.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
You want doctors?
You're a Tory - you believe in the free market.
Not sure I understand your response
How is Scotland going to pay for these awards without Barnett is the question
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
In fact IHT abolition is dead in the water for precisely that reason, unless Sunak is replaced by the Lord President of the Council who looks to be a clean skin inheritancewise (dad former O.R. para, mum SN teacher). Sunak is very, very neatly skewered here.
No he isn't, the middle class swing voters in the bluewall this policy is targeting won't care if Rishi is the richest and poshest man in Britain if they get a windfall via inheritance tax being scrapped
No, but swing voters elsewhere will be influenced by what looks like naked self-enrichment.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
More waste can always be found, but the idea reducing wasetfulness in itself can provide for everything is as silly as assuming vague 'reform' will do it, or bankers bonuses will do it.
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
What do you think the UK is, Pharaonic Egypt?! Some sort of death cult? Might as well start buildign pyramids.
I was looking for an equivalent killer phrase to "dementia tax."
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
The coolest thing about the film "In Order of Disappearance" other than its name (or rather their name) is the open plan garage/living room of the villain (both versions).
Some biker friends of mine used to live in a terraced house, with the front room used for keeping their motorbikes in.
Quite handy for a rebuild in warmth, and security too, albeit a bit noisy for the neighbours.
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
In fact IHT abolition is dead in the water for precisely that reason, unless Sunak is replaced by the Lord President of the Council who looks to be a clean skin inheritancewise (dad former O.R. para, mum SN teacher). Sunak is very, very neatly skewered here.
No he isn't, the middle class swing voters in the bluewall this policy is targeting won't care if Rishi is the richest and poshest man in Britain if they get a windfall via inheritance tax being scrapped
No, but swing voters elsewhere will be influenced by what looks like naked self-enrichment.
Voters in the redwall who own or rent a property below the £325k IHT threshold are almost certainly voting Labour again now anyway with Brexit done and Boris and Corbyn gone and ain't coming back to the Tories regardless anytime soon
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
You want doctors?
You're a Tory - you believe in the free market.
Not sure I understand your response
How is Scotland going to pay for these awards without Barnett is the question
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
It isn't double. The offer to Junior doctors in England is 6% plus £1250 one off as a consolidated payment. That is over 10% at the starting band and about 8% at the higher band.
Nurses are already paid more in Scotland.
In that case it is about time this became public knowledge which I am certain it is not
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
I would miss you for one. No doubt a hundred fold for those who know you personally.
Looking at the statistics it is only 3-4% of all deaths that are liable to IHT. This may not be well known, but it means that it could be presented by the opposition as another gift to the very richest.
I think the VERY richest can probably pay the lawyers and accountants necessary to dodge IHT completely through trusts, foreign residency, etc. It's a gift to house owners in the south east.
But, as you say, I doubt there are enough of them to move the needle much.
But paradoxically it does, it single handedly sunk Brown's election in 2007 or 2008. I have no idea why (though nb 4% of deaths is misleading: let's say Rich Guy has 3 children 2 of them married and 4 grandchildren, then he plus 9 are fussed about IHT on his estate which multiplies up to 40% of the population)
So I think actually I have resolved my own paradox
That maths is staggeringly bad. It's 4% of deaths, not 4% of the whole population dying each year.
4% of deaths is 4% of people's dying grandparents, or rich aunts.
The explanation is quite simple - given by DecripterJohnL. It's a tax on aspiration. People hope that when they die they will have enough to pass on that they would be liable to IHT, and so they hope to benefit from its abolition. No-one wants to accept that they will die outside of the charmed circle.
No, THAT maths is staggeringly bad. mortality is 100% even among rich guys, so every single rich guy is going to die in 2023, or a subsequent year, so that is him plus 9 worrying about and voting according to, what the tax regime will be in 2026 or 2027 or 2037.
There may still be time to delete your foolish post, but I am afraid it is crystallised for eternity in the quote above.
But the people who die in the future with a taxable estate, will most likely be the same people who have inherited from a taxable estate in the past. You are counting them twice (or ten times). You'll get there in the end.
That makes no difference, or rather it makes your point even weaker. 4% of estates does not mean 4% of people, we agree. At first glance (this is your mistake) it means only 0.4% of people assuming rich oldies die off at 10% a year. But that doesn't matter. Mortality is 100% not 10%. So for every Big Daddy whose well-heeled death is foreseeable there are 10 voters with an interest in his death. Now, there is a bit of double counting at the grandchild level because they may have expectations from the other big granddaddy, so let's count them as half. That is still 8 votes per taxable estate. So the 4% figure is deceptive, but on the downside.
8 votes per estate? Many families have only 2-3 major/residual inheritors - the childrten - and the ones who get lump sums don't care abouit IHT.
One thouight: this might discourage gifts to charities and the Tory Party. IHT immunities for those become irrelevant, so that much less motive.
It would also lock up even more wealth with an even higher age group by removing the incentive to disperse assets before death.
On that logic, then we ought to tax wealth full stop if the rich oldies aren't doing anything useful with it.
Then it gets portrayed as a living death duty.
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
In fact IHT abolition is dead in the water for precisely that reason, unless Sunak is replaced by the Lord President of the Council who looks to be a clean skin inheritancewise (dad former O.R. para, mum SN teacher). Sunak is very, very neatly skewered here.
No he isn't, the middle class swing voters in the bluewall this policy is targeting won't care if Rishi is the richest and poshest man in Britain if they get a windfall via inheritance tax being scrapped
No, but swing voters elsewhere will be influenced by what looks like naked self-enrichment.
Voters in the redwall who own or rent a property below the £325k IHT threshold are almost certainly voting Labour again now anyway with Brexit done and Boris and Corbyn gone and ain't coming back regardless anytime soon
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
The coolest thing about the film "In Order of Disappearance" other than its name (or rather their name) is the open plan garage/living room of the villain (both versions).
Some biker friends of mine used to live in a terraced house, with the front room used for keeping their motorbikes in.
Quite handy for a rebuild in warmth, and security too, albeit a bit noisy for the neighbours.
I have just ordered a titanium pushbike which will have to live indoors on grounds of costing more than my first and my second car did.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
You want doctors?
You're a Tory - you believe in the free market.
Not sure I understand your response
How is Scotland going to pay for these awards without Barnett is the question
How is England? See Foxy's reply.
I note his reply which clearly is not generally known and it would be helpful for the BMA to confirm these add on have been offered
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
I would miss you for one. No doubt a hundred fold for those who know you personally.
An excellent post - I didn't know how to respond, and was reluctant to "Like."
Just to note, it’s not 2007/2008 and Labour have not been in power for 10 years and public services are not in the state now they were then. What was politically popular when suggested by a relatively well regarded opposition in a time of relative plenty may not be so popular now when advocated by a deeply unpopular government that has overseen such a decline in so much of what the state is responsible for.
Time off plenty .. lol...we were fecked then as we are now.. there is no money left.
Living standards rose a lot during the Labour years.
Living standards during 13 years of Tories have stagnated; many will feel (and actually be) worse off now than they were in 2010.
It's as simple as that.
My house has gone up.loads as have many other people's. Granted its coming down a bit But every homeowner who was one in 2010 has done well. Far more than tinkering with 1p off tax which is an illusion.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
The rich don't have carpets. The staff polish the floors.
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
The Churchills have been Liberals and Tories and live in Oxfordshire, key swing voters for Rishi in the bluewall!
Blenheim is represented on local councils by LibDems, and is in a LibDem controlled District in a LibDem dominated county. It's in the new constituency of Bicester & Woodstock - almost certainly represented by Labour or LibDems in the next general election.
IHT will be a complete non-issue: the crucial political issues in Oxfordshire are now: - whether the Tories can save any of its parliamentary seats, which as recently as 1983 voted entirely Blue - and which of Labour and the LibDems will grab the seats the Tories will lose.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
I would miss you for one. No doubt a hundred fold for those who know you personally.
Thanks for that. Appreciated. And to those who ‘liked’ your post!
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
You want doctors?
You're a Tory - you believe in the free market.
Not sure I understand your response
How is Scotland going to pay for these awards without Barnett is the question
How is England? See Foxy's reply.
I note his reply which clearly is not generally known and it would be helpful for the BMA to confirm these add on have been offered
The 6% is the headline - for good Tory political reasons.
I don't believe Labour will be concerned about the Tory IHT proposal, if it comes to pass. The assumption that it will play well for Sunak/Hunt just because it played well for Cameron/Osborne doesn't follow in these straitened times.
Labour's response to such a proposal should be simple:
Families that have been successful in building up wealth, including property, can pass on up to a million pounds to their offspring without any taxation. If it's more than a million pounds, we expect them to contribute a bit. We think that's fair. Don't you?
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
It isn't double. The offer to Junior doctors in England is 6% plus £1250 one off as a consolidated payment. That is over 10% at the starting band and about 8% at the higher band.
Nurses are already paid more in Scotland.
In that case it is about time this became public knowledge which I am certain it is not
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
We've opened up an exciting philosophical issue:
Is it right to consider an attached garage to be part of your house?
I say No.
My sister and brother-in-law turned their garage into a playroom for the kids. They put a carpet and a radiator in there, insulated the door, and put a shed in the back garden for their tools. Probably only cost a couple of grand, gives them a couple of hundred square feet extra space, and lets the kids keep all their mess in one place. Very few people routinely work on the car anymore, unless it’s an old classic.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
I would miss you for one. No doubt a hundred fold for those who know you personally.
Thanks for that. Appreciated. And to those who ‘liked’ your post!
Yes, even if an "Oh dear" button might be more appropriate!
I don't believe Labour will be concerned about the Tory IHT proposal, if it comes to pass. The assumption that it will play well for Sunak/Hunt just because it played well for Cameron/Osborne doesn't follow in these straitened times.
Labour's response to such a proposal should be simple:
Families that have been successful in building up wealth, including property, can pass on up to a million pounds to their offspring without any taxation. If it's more than a million pounds, we expect them to contribute a bit. We think that's fair. Don't you?
Well that won't help them win Kensington or Cities of London and Westminster though, both now in the top 100 Labour target seats but still with Tory MPs
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
I am so sorry, indeed quite upset, if you feel like that OKC
As I close in on 80 and my wife near 84, we are struggling to do day to day tasks, but have decided to take a day at a time and we are grateful for all our benefits not least a wonderful loving family
All the best to you and your family from a concerned fellow OAP
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
The rich don't have carpets. The staff polish the floors.
Deeply true. From John Mortimer's autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage, talking about his time as a divorce lawyer
" I heard of a General who used to address letters to the furniture his wife's family provided, leaving on the articles concerned notes like, 'You are a very vulgar little sideboard. Go back to Whiteleys where you came from' or 'Gentlemen's homes have rugs over polished boards. You are a nasty common fitted carpet and your presence here is no longer required.' The wonder was not that this sort of conduct led to the Divorce Court but that it was tolerated for so long without complaint."
I don't believe Labour will be concerned about the Tory IHT proposal, if it comes to pass. The assumption that it will play well for Sunak/Hunt just because it played well for Cameron/Osborne doesn't follow in these straitened times.
Labour's response to such a proposal should be simple:
Families that have been successful in building up wealth, including property, can pass on up to a million pounds to their offspring without any taxation. If it's more than a million pounds, we expect them to contribute a bit. We think that's fair. Don't you?
Well that won't help them win Kensington or Cities of London and Westminster though, both now in the top 100 Labour target seats but still with Tory MPs
Don't worry. We're willing to let you keep those three of our top target seats. You can keep Posh-on-Thames as well. We'll just pick a few more from lower down the pile.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
I don't believe Labour will be concerned about the Tory IHT proposal, if it comes to pass. The assumption that it will play well for Sunak/Hunt just because it played well for Cameron/Osborne doesn't follow in these straitened times.
Labour's response to such a proposal should be simple:
Families that have been successful in building up wealth, including property, can pass on up to a million pounds to their offspring without any taxation. If it's more than a million pounds, we expect them to contribute a bit. We think that's fair. Don't you?
Well that won't help them win Kensington or Cities of London and Westminster though, both now in the top 100 Labour target seats but still with Tory MPs
Don't worry. We're willing to let you keep those three of our top target seats. You can keep Posh-on-Thames as well. We'll just pick a few more from lower down the pile.
Looks like the average Tory voter under Rishi is going to end up rather posher than the average Conservative voter under Boris was then
Given that the average estate is well below the IHT level, and spouse/civil partner doesn't attract IHT: of the 600,000 odd deaths a year, the vast, vast majority will be unaffected by any such proposed change. Just a few at the top.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people at the bottom who get a very small inheritance (6k+ with the average being 11k) and find their benefits/credits are stopped as a result of now having "savings".
I hope everyone else is enjoying a few hand shandies about the prospect of the Duke of Marlborough saving money on his IHT bill, because I know I am.
That's what the Tory Party is about - saving money for the aristos, while the little people fantasise about Upstairs Downstairs and the Tory on here keeps going on about posh and inheritances.
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
The rich don't have carpets. The staff polish the floors.
Deeply true. From John Mortimer's autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage, talking about his time as a divorce lawyer
" I heard of a General who used to address letters to the furniture his wife's family provided, leaving on the articles concerned notes like, 'You are a very vulgar little sideboard. Go back to Whiteleys where you came from' or 'Gentlemen's homes have rugs over polished boards. You are a nasty common fitted carpet and your presence here is no longer required.' The wonder was not that this sort of conduct led to the Divorce Court but that it was tolerated for so long without complaint."
Fitted carpets were a hack to seal floors in traditionally drafty houses.
Anyone who has used a washing vacuum cleaner on one will never have quite the same attitude towards them again - it’s no wonder that getting rid of fitted carpets is recommended for people with severe allergies.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Just to note, it’s not 2007/2008 and Labour have not been in power for 10 years and public services are not in the state now they were then. What was politically popular when suggested by a relatively well regarded opposition in a time of relative plenty may not be so popular now when advocated by a deeply unpopular government that has overseen such a decline in so much of what the state is responsible for.
Time off plenty .. lol...we were fecked then as we are now.. there is no money left.
Living standards rose a lot during the Labour years.
Living standards during 13 years of Tories have stagnated; many will feel (and actually be) worse off now than they were in 2010.
It's as simple as that.
My house has gone up.loads as have many other people's. Granted its coming down a bit But every homeowner who was one in 2010 has done well. Far more than tinkering with 1p off tax which is an illusion.
Yes but it's still the same house. It may be worth more on paper but it hasn't suddenly turned from a 3 bed semi to a 5 bed detached.
Given that the average estate is well below the IHT level, and spouse/civil partner doesn't attract IHT: of the 600,000 odd deaths a year, the vast, vast majority will be unaffected by any such proposed change. Just a few at the top.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people at the bottom who get a very small inheritance (6k+ with the average being 11k) and find their benefits/credits are stopped as a result of now having "savings".
This the point we keep coming back to: that despite your first para it is electoral magic
Let's remind ourselves about Brown's 2007 fiasco
"Then things started to go badly awry. The hope had been that the Conservatives would implode at their conference. But the right were on their best behaviour, containing their mutterings on the need for tax cuts to the confines of private dinners. One senior Tory said: "The threat of the election ensured that we were disciplined and united."
Cameron gave a nerveless performance on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, setting out a number of new ideas including cuts in stamp duty for first-time buyers. On Monday, shadow chancellor George Osborne made his bold commitment to increase the threshold for inheritance tax to £1m.
Brown was angry, since the exact proposal had been advocated by Livermore before Brown's last budget in 2007, but withdrawn with two days to go when it seemed unaffordable."
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Yes it was, a lot. But even if you include the 2008-2010 period these measures will still be in Labour's favour.
Tories could counter with unemployment numbers. That's about it.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
By debt do you mean private/public/combined?
I would have expected private debt to be lower than 2010 but public debt to be higher overall.
I was referring to public debt, the measure Sunak offered as a 2023 top 5 priority. I'd have to check the private/combined.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
Personally I don't give a monkey's. However I thought Barnett was based on NHS spending and so as they will spend more the pocket money will increase.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Now you are playing with my brain @hyufd because I have just liked 2 of your posts on this topic even though we disagree on IHT.
It has taken me a few minutes to get my head around that contradiction and I have finally realised I agree with you on the electoral consequences if not the policy. Had this worry that you were converting me from an Orange Booker to a traditional Tory without me noticing.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Germany is taking a sensible step forward here:
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
The strange thing for me is we've had 13 years of Conservative-led Government and none of the predecessors (nor even Mrs Thatcher) saw the need to abolish IHT in its entirety.
You would think given the ideological stress placed on inheritance by @HYUFD it would have been abolished on day 1 of any incoming Conservative Government but seemingly not.
The £6 - £7 billion it raises is not insignificant but could presumably be met by spending cuts or stealth tax rises such as freezing allowances though one might argue with the public finances where they are the Government can use every penny it gets.
The truth is many of those liable (or considering themselves liable) for IHT are actively seeking to avoid the tax by, for example, putting houses in trust so if one parent passes, their half of the property goes in trust to the children so it's not counted as part of the estate of the other parent.
There's the thornier question of care costs which can also eat into property and other assets such that the estate is no longer liable for IHT.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
A majority of the electorate had something to do with it...
Labour would need to be careful how they respond to the Tories scrapping IHT .
It’s one of those taxes which most hate even if they’ll never benefit from it .
On the face of it it’s a form of double taxation.
I’m sure the policy will poll well and I’m sure will help the Tories in certain seats .
We have lots of double taxation.
If I put petrol in my car or buy a pint in the pub I am paying fuel duty, beer duty and VAT, all out of already taxed money.
I thought you had an electric car?
We have 2 cars in our house, 1 electric and one hybrid.
You must have a very wide front door.
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
In the Midlands we have quite an innovative way of managing this issue. We call it a garage, a sort of room deliberately constructed to house a car, and generally uncarpeted with a wide door.
We've opened up an exciting philosophical issue:
Is it right to consider an attached garage to be part of your house?
I say No.
My sister and brother-in-law turned their garage into a playroom for the kids. They put a carpet and a radiator in there, insulated the door, and put a shed in the back garden for their tools. Probably only cost a couple of grand, gives them a couple of hundred square feet extra space, and lets the kids keep all their mess in one place. Very few people routinely work on the car anymore, unless it’s an old classic.
So they extended their house into what was previously a garage.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
A majority of the electorate had something to do with it...
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
When I am completely knackered I will be off to Switzerland
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
A majority of the electorate had something to do with it...
If only that had been the requirement!
A majority of the non-apathetic electorate had something to do with it...
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Hang on. Your bloke has 5 pledges. He and ministers and you have insisted these are the people's priorities. STOP THE BOATS is there. SCRAP IHT is not.
So no, scrapping IHT is not one of the electorate's priorities. If it was you would have it. Either that our your "people's priorities" are just focus group bullshit?
I like the idea of abolishing IHT and instead taxing inheritance money as income in the hands of the recipient, subject to the normal rates and allowances. I think Labour under Corbyn were looking at something like this.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Germany is taking a sensible step forward here:
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
I like the idea of abolishing IHT and instead taxing inheritance money as income in the hands of the recipient, subject to the normal rates and allowances. I think Labour under Corbyn were looking at something like this.
Seems incredibly good sense. And would massively streamline the system.
Annoyingly, big client has decided that the last Friday of my holiday is the right time to kick off budget 2024 discussions. So not only am I going to that meeting, I'm also doing a load of prep for it beforehand.
Ah well. Billable days whilst on holiday isn't too bad.
Comments
One or two people really will need to buy a new carpet, btw, the way they are going on.
Those where the major (sometimes only) constituent of the estate is property are disadvantaged versus someone whose major constituent is savings. This is because it is easy to drip feed your cash estate to beneficiaries in the years prior to death. This ability is not available with property.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/11/canada-cases-right-to-die-laws
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/62070/labour-poll-lead-general-election
What you're saying is that the only thing left is to offer a big enough bribe to the richest voters to try and make them forget just how you and yours have fucked this country over.
Moral as ever.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/house-price-index/
This is the tory strategy. Red wall is gone, shore up the Blue wall with a reverse TMay.
If I were Labour I'd be cooking up some hypotheticals as to how much Sunak would benefit personally from the abolition of IHT. You could make it look like £100 millions. Of course in reality it would be nothing like that because it would be dodged with offshore trusts and so on, but saying so would be a bit awks.
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/ad-am/bk-di.html
And watch out for oil stains on the carpet.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times
- Real income
- Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?)
- Growth
- Inflation
- Immigration
- House ownership %
- Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Also: at that level, the RNRB doesn't make that much overall difference to the IHT anyway even if it were a flat rate 175K.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
On IHT I believe it is fair as it is, but abolition may be popular with some including our very own @HYUFD
On public sector pay I understand the Scottish Government have offered their doctors a 12.4% award for this year and this is going to ballot
This is double Sunak's offer but I understand the way Sunak and Hunt have designed acceptance of the pay review bodies recommendations is without further borrowing or increasing taxes therefore eliminating any Barnett formula for Scotland
Apparently this has caused considerable concern in Scotland, as the only way their government can afford these increases is either cuts to public spending or further increases in Scottish taxes
I would be interested to hear our Scots colleagues views on this
I would have expected private debt to be lower than 2010 but public debt to be higher overall.
Even in Scotland the average detached house now costs £340,647 ie above the IHT threshold too. So this policy will help in posher seats in Scotland the Tories hold or are targeting the SNP in
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-house-price-index-for-january-2023/uk-house-price-index-scotland-january-2023
You're a Tory - you believe in the free market.
Not something I am comfortable with.
"He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own." (Waugh)
Is it right to consider an attached garage to be part of your house?
I say No.
Nurses are already paid more in Scotland.
How is Scotland going to pay for these awards without Barnett is the question
Quite handy for a rebuild in warmth, and security too, albeit a bit noisy for the neighbours.
IHT will be a complete non-issue: the crucial political issues in Oxfordshire are now:
- whether the Tories can save any of its parliamentary seats, which as recently as 1983 voted entirely Blue
- and which of Labour and the LibDems will grab the seats the Tories will lose.
And to those who ‘liked’ your post!
Labour's response to such a proposal should be simple:
Families that have been successful in building up wealth, including property, can pass on up to a million pounds to their offspring without any taxation. If it's more than a million pounds, we expect them to contribute a bit. We think that's fair. Don't you?
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1679859667877388290?t=KJjZk7C4c5Eqj6iZwuSO5Q&s=19
As I close in on 80 and my wife near 84, we are struggling to do day to day tasks, but have decided to take a day at a time and we are grateful for all our benefits not least a wonderful loving family
All the best to you and your family from a concerned fellow OAP
" I heard of a
General who used to address letters to the furniture his wife's
family provided, leaving on the articles concerned notes like, 'You
are a very vulgar little sideboard. Go back to Whiteleys where you
came from' or 'Gentlemen's homes have rugs over polished boards.
You are a nasty common fitted carpet and your presence here is no
longer required.' The wonder was not that this sort of conduct led
to the Divorce Court but that it was tolerated for so long without
complaint."
On the other hand, there are plenty of people at the bottom who get a very small inheritance (6k+ with the average being 11k) and find their benefits/credits are stopped as a result of now having "savings".
Anyone who has used a washing vacuum cleaner on one will never have quite the same attitude towards them again - it’s no wonder that getting rid of fitted carpets is recommended for people with severe allergies.
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
Let's remind ourselves about Brown's 2007 fiasco
"Then things started to go badly awry. The hope had been that the Conservatives would implode at their conference. But the right were on their best behaviour, containing their mutterings on the need for tax cuts to the confines of private dinners. One senior Tory said: "The threat of the election ensured that we were disciplined and united."
Cameron gave a nerveless performance on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, setting out a number of new ideas including cuts in stamp duty for first-time buyers. On Monday, shadow chancellor George Osborne made his bold commitment to increase the threshold for inheritance tax to £1m.
Brown was angry, since the exact proposal had been advocated by Livermore before Brown's last budget in 2007, but withdrawn with two days to go when it seemed unaffordable."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jun/26/gordonbrown.labour
Despite the fact that in 2008 you could fit the people in the country with £1m onto a couple of tennis courts
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Tories could counter with unemployment numbers. That's about it.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
I was referring to public debt, the measure Sunak offered as a 2023 top 5 priority. I'd have to check the private/combined.
It has taken me a few minutes to get my head around that contradiction and I have finally realised I agree with you on the electoral consequences if not the policy. Had this worry that you were converting me from an Orange Booker to a traditional Tory without me noticing.
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
https://smithstonewalters.com/2023/07/06/how-germany-plans-to-attract-more-workers-by-reforming-the-skilled-immigration-act/
The strange thing for me is we've had 13 years of Conservative-led Government and none of the predecessors (nor even Mrs Thatcher) saw the need to abolish IHT in its entirety.
You would think given the ideological stress placed on inheritance by @HYUFD it would have been abolished on day 1 of any incoming Conservative Government but seemingly not.
The £6 - £7 billion it raises is not insignificant but could presumably be met by spending cuts or stealth tax rises such as freezing allowances though one might argue with the public finances where they are the Government can use every penny it gets.
The truth is many of those liable (or considering themselves liable) for IHT are actively seeking to avoid the tax by, for example, putting houses in trust so if one parent passes, their half of the property goes in trust to the children so it's not counted as part of the estate of the other parent.
There's the thornier question of care costs which can also eat into property and other assets such that the estate is no longer liable for IHT.
So no, scrapping IHT is not one of the electorate's priorities. If it was you would have it. Either that our your "people's priorities" are just focus group bullshit?
Ah well. Billable days whilst on holiday isn't too bad.