61% of Britons think inheritance tax is unfair – but why is that? Here are the top reasons they gave…Has already been taxed: 42% of those who consider it unfairShould be able to leave it all: 17%Punishes being responsible: 11%Threshold too low: 10%https://t.co/fq1cHSEOwf pic.twitter.com/ALyBcTGdQG
Comments
I'd rather spend any spare money on cutting taxes on labour or business profits, but this cut is better than nothing.
They view IHT as exactly that.
Noone has to pay IHT if they set up a trust.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-for-january-2023
People get frustrated that their family homes are taxed out whilst the super-rich can use shell companies and financial advisors to pay so little.
It’s odd, this obsession with owning one’s own home; other Europeans don’t seem to be as bothered.
However, it didn't win him a majority.
If I'm honest I would have said what would be considerably more useful certainly in the medium term than inheritance tax cuts is sorting out the positively labyrinthine system of probate. It's better than it was but it's still a mess and needs to be knocked down and started again from scratch.
But - there aren't many headlines in that.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/middlesex-to-play-home-blast-matches-at-essex-to-alleviate-financial-pressures-1410133
Lending your ground to a friend and rival to dig them out of a financial hole? That's sportmanship.
I have to say though, what a shambles for Middlesex. No particular fan of them but the mess regarding Lord's really needs sorting out.
It's understandable that people fear/dislike/resent any taxes. And IHT is a very lumpy, very visible tax. Something similar happens with the dislike of the licence fee.
And there is something in Casino's point about family homes. I'm not sure it's a good thing; imagine of all the money people have put into bidding house prices up had gone on something useful instead. And a society where some people just inherit a place to live and others have to pay a fortune for one isn't likely to be a good one. But we are where we are and we all aspire to be Audrey Forbes-Hamilton.
The catch is that the state sector of society needs to be paid for somehow. So either taxes go up, the government stops doing things (diversity officers won't cover it), or we catch an Efficiency Fairy or ten. And they're real but hard to catch.
(See also council budgets this coming year. The gap between central government constrained income and central government mandated expenditure looks like it's going to be impossible to bridge in quite a few sensible places.)
Or at least, I assume so from the way he's writing about Ukraine.
Scientists at a Devon university are hoping to become the first in the world to farm a marine pest for food production.
The University of Plymouth said shipworms, renamed "naked clams" to make them more marketable, had been viewed as a pest due to them boring through wood underwater, including shipwrecks and docks.
In a study, they said they had found the saltwater clams converted wood into a "highly nutritious protein" which was high in levels of Vitamin B12 - almost twice that found in blue mussels.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4prrgqd68o
I could bombard you with photos of my free Cambodian meals if you REALLY insist
Usually aided by something else.
Hope you are enjoying your enormous swimming pool, anyway.
Stealth reform of council tax is the way to go.
Mainly by giving it away to plant nurseries.
My children will inherit the earth.
😀
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/30/farha-israel-condemns-new-netflix-film-for-showing-palestinian
Unless the discussion is on FPTP versus other systems, in which case the voters all go through each manifesto when they are launched, decide which one they approve of in entirety, and vote for it.
Or, in some arguments, the voters weigh up the candidates and vote for one of those. Depends on the argument.
It’s certainly not voting based on perceived ideologies and mindsets, or party leaders.
Either way, though, it’s clear that opinion polls can’t exist in any meaningful sense outside of campaigns. Not until manifestoes and/or candidates are fully known.
Do you run a farm on the side?
Were it not for me travelling today you'd be getting an earful about the entirely unsurprising discovery that Business Ministers have been bare-faced lying to Parliamentary Select Committees about Post Office bonus schemes. Maybe later.
But the really big difference is that in my part of Scotland housing is still comparatively cheap. This is where the "already taxed" point is wrong. Most people caught by IHT are in it because their house, which has not been taxed, has appreciated considerably over the last 20 years.
Coincidentally the Graun ran this interactive map recently.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2023/nov/21/find-out-where-you-can-afford-to-buy-or-rent-in-great-britain
All that aside though, looking at the treasury numbers from the Autumn Statement the spending cliff edge Hunt used to pay for his measures (post election of course) is both frightening and unrealistic. That’s the biggest scam in the whole thing- they bagged the revenue benefit of inflation through fiscal drag, but pretend inflation doesn’t exist in public sector spending.
Labour are walking into a fiscal disaster made by their predecessors and Reeves appears paralysed by this and unwilling to challenge it.
It's interesting quite how quiet Braverman has been since her sacking. I suspect that we have not heard the last of her but it has not had the destabilising effect that she and others anticipated.
I have mailed you a possibly interesting threader.
Enjoy the match, I am a little nervous of Leicesters blip in form, Watford seem good value for the away win at 6.2.
That's quite separate from getting the valuation and if need be the full HMRC documentation done.
The State doles out too much welfare, and doesn't invest enough in our future where it really good make a difference.
Only now coloured by the fact that, for professional reasons, tomorrow afternoon I have to go and eat a dog
As you get older, you spend increasing amounts of money trying to regain the body you so readily abused when you were twenty....
Such discussions are starting to appear in the US though, as we saw with the removal of Speaker McCarthy a couple of months ago, over his failure to break down the budget rather than simply renew everything.
These are not ideal circumstances in which to eat an entire roasted dog. I just hope it’s small
In France the surprise publishing sensation is a man's biography of his pooch.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/bookseller-france-dog-story-life-love-grief-word-of-mouth-bestseller
Only question is whether it is months or weeks into Starmer's term as PM before the question gets asked: "What is Labour for?"
There is no scope for materially different ways of governing Britain without requiring the State to take chunks of wealth away from people. Labour can't do that, certainly not in it's Manifesto - ask Theresa May how many dozen prospective MPs you lose by talking about the unacceptable.
We are left with two options: Labour is going to do nothing very different to 13 yers of Tory rule, other than shrug its shoulders and say "What else can we do?". Or it is lying now, knowing it is going to be the very radical government it feels it will need to be - but can never admit.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/dab-radio-switch-signal-classic-fm/ (£££)
Stations are moving from DAB to DAB+ so put a new wireless on your Christmas list.
“Fivefold rise in number of EU citizens refused entry to UK since Brexit
Home Office data reveals impact of end of free movement and raises questions over Border Force hostility”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/25/fivefold-rise-number-eu-citizens-refused-entry-uk-since-brexit
Of course it chooses a couple of sympathetic sob stories. A nice Spanish girl stuck in red tape
Buried deep in the report is the fact by far the largest number of excluded citizens are from Romania
Who on earth would ship a mangy dog from Guandong? Tell your friend to think twice
We're in La La Land fiscally, but it's in nobody's interest to be the first to say it out loud.
My current view is that the current way our society is structured makes for a tax on inherited wealth to be sensible. Most of our money is tied up in property, and as we live longer we are all putting more demands on the state re health and care costs. It seems to me more preferable that this is taken from you after your death than while you are alive. Additionally, while I fully understand and agree with the concept of being able to do something for your children after you have gone, if that creates and sustains extreme (note: extreme) wealth disparities that again are just going to get tied up in property assets at a time of a severe housing shortage that doesn’t feel particularly equitable to me.
Maybe I’m just doing the reverse of most people and becoming more of a lefty as I age!
I don’t like pet dogs, in principle. Dogs in general kinda bore me - I love wild animals not domestic toys. I’m not overly sentimental about animals in toto (tho killing wildlife can set me off)
But Jesus Christ. This video. I obvs won’t link - it will make you rage with fury. The pure unthinking cruelty
Voters wanting increased spending on services are not easily going to be won back by the Tories who left them in such a parlous state.
There was frustration too in Blairs first term on this, but the Tories didn't benefit.
We need some way of levelling the playing field for people who don’t inherit. The state taking a hefty chunk of estates worth more than £500,000 seems fair (and all the loopholes should be closed). But that money should then be ploughed into housebuilding (nice Georgian terraces, not redbrick horror boxes)
Conservative tax policy is salting the earth for the next government. It's almost worth re electing the Tories in coalition with the DUP on a majority of 2 , so they have to deal with the fallout themselves.
I am told it is “gamey”
And whilst I am confident that, when the time comes, they will use their good fortune wisely and well. But it isn't right.
If we want to pass houses down the generations, they need to be abundant and cheap, so everyone who wants one has one. Alternatively, they ought to be taxed. Because the headstart from having a valuable house for life for free just isn't on
This follows the replacement of paper applications with online ones. This was meant to speed up the process.
Apparently the gourmets like the animal to be both fresh and terrified as the hormonal changes of pain and fear add to the flavour.
Not my cup of tea at all.
Tax take as a percentage of GDP is actually still somewhat below most European peers, and well below the few countries left with high productivity and good public infrastructure.
So: whack up VAT to 25% and put it on everything, no more of these silly exemptions. Like the Danes do. Bring employer social security up to 20% - a “tax on jobs”? Our problem is not unemployment, it’s productivity. Encourage them to spend more on equipment and technology rather than low paid jobs. Cut employee NI further. Cut central government CT to 15% and allow regions to choose whether to add up to 10% locally collected tax on top. Turn full expensing into a qualifying refundable tax credit with 20% super deduction. And borrow to invest in productive infrastructure because you know that £100 postponed now becomes £200 when you get round to it later.
And offer everyone of pension age a £1,000 lump sum to emigrate somewhere warm.
Do something.