‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Because, as I said, she's dragged herself up by her own bootstraps and now it's all collapsing about her. I don't think she'd ever have made PM but she could have stayed a senior member of the government for as long as she wished, so long as Labour were in power.
Female Northern Working class Progressed through public sector Improved her standing
Im always amazed that the people who push this line - and rightly - cant apply the same rules to Nadine Dorries
As a working class Northerner myself I am critical of both.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Mansion blocks - even ones with lovely balconies - are not really suitable for families. Nowhere to play outside, having to lug prams and loads of shopping up stairs - unless there is a decent lift -etc.,. I grew up in a 4th floor flat in Naples - a beautiful flat with large rooms and high ceilings, the neighbours couldn't be heard and so on. But as a child it meant a very indoor life - and I loved it when I could be outside in a garden in England and on my relatives' farm in Ireland. Gardens are a real necessity for families. @NickPalmer does not have children and, I'm sure he will forgive me for saying this, scarcely knows what a plant is. Wanting some space is perfectly understandable.
What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.
Current UK planning regs make building some of those beautiful mansion blocks almost impossible today.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Mansion blocks - even ones with lovely balconies - are not really suitable for families. Nowhere to play outside, having to lug prams and loads of shopping up stairs - unless there is a decent lift -etc.,. I grew up in a 4th floor flat in Naples - a beautiful flat with large rooms and high ceilings, the neighbours couldn't be heard and so on. But as a child it meant a very indoor life - and I loved it when I could be outside in a garden in England and on my relatives' farm in Ireland. Gardens are a real necessity for families. @NickPalmer does not have children and, I'm sure he will forgive me for saying this, scarcely knows what a plant is. Wanting some space is perfectly understandable.
What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.
I lived in one of those for a year at University on Prince of Wales Drive - they were great blocks, big rooms, high ceilings, loads of natural light, all the internal space a small family might need and if you had children then you had Battersea Park across the road - their problem if you have children and aren’t opposite or very near a park or square is the lack of outdoor space to sit and eat etc which should be factored into design more.
There has been an earthquake in Afghanistan. There are credible reports from that country that women and girls trapped under the rubble are being left there and not rescued because the Taliban has decreed that no man can touch a woman he is not related to. Some are being pulled out by their clothes or by other women. But even if pulled out their injuries are not being treated because male doctors are not allowed to treat them.
They are being left to suffer and die.
This is not just because of the earthquake. Women are now forbidden from any sort of education or accessing medical care or training as doctors or nurses. So as time passes there will be fewer and fewer women left to provide any sort of medical care at all. Women and girls will simply suffer and die. They are being treated worse than livestock.
This is what sex-based oppression leads to. Afghan men seem not to be bothered by this aspect of the society they have created and live in.
There is nothing we can do. Alas. But it is still worth recording one of the utterly abominable ways in which male populations in this world find to torment women.
LDM 41.3% [-36.3] Reform 36.2% [New] Labour 11.1% [-11.3] Con 6.7% [New] Grn 3.8% [New] Ind 0.8% [New]
On the face of it virtually all Reform's votes came from the Lib Dems
I assume someone can explain this
LDs often got the votes of people locally who are Nimby and want potholes mended who would not vote LD nationally.
Some of those now Reform
I was going to argue the NIMBY point there, after all I’m a Lib Dem member who made a point of writing a supportive letter to the council on a planning application actually in (well, facing) our backyard. But then remembered: it’s absolutely true that many of our local voters are indeed NIMBYs.
It’s one of the deepest fracture points of the party, a point of inconsistency between the interests of the floating voters on whom we rely and the ideology of the party base.
No the Lib Dem party members are not NIMBYs, especially the young. Quite the opposite, the national party platform is one of the most pro-development out there. But the older rural swing voters who often seal the deal for the party very often are. Which then acts as an irresistible temptation for local politicians come election time.
We’re not alone in this sort of inconsistency. There’s the obvious one between big-government Reform voters and their slash and burn DOGE ideology, the remainer Labour base and their many leave voting constituencies, or historically the nationalist Tory vote and their globalist leadership. It’s a tricky balancing act.
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer
Tice was destroyed and yet he and Reform are winning the popular vote
Reform voters don’t listen to political programmes on the radio.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Mansion blocks - even ones with lovely balconies - are not really suitable for families. Nowhere to play outside, having to lug prams and loads of shopping up stairs - unless there is a decent lift -etc.,. I grew up in a 4th floor flat in Naples - a beautiful flat with large rooms and high ceilings, the neighbours couldn't be heard and so on. But as a child it meant a very indoor life - and I loved it when I could be outside in a garden in England and on my relatives' farm in Ireland. Gardens are a real necessity for families. @NickPalmer does not have children and, I'm sure he will forgive me for saying this, scarcely knows what a plant is. Wanting some space is perfectly understandable.
What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.
The other thing is that not everywhere is blessed with the number of parks, coast, off-road cycle infrastructure in the same way that Edinburgh is.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I do not recall any pledge by the Conservatives, in 2019, to push net immigration up to 900,000 p.a.
Of course, no one is going to be that stupid - in truth, we know inflation has been of periodic concern since the 1950s and arguably long before that.
MY recollection from the mists of time was the belief allowing more migration from other parts of the world would offset the ending of Freedom of Movement when we left the Single Market as part of our departure from the European Union.
I suspect Johnson was advised of our dependence on cheap imported labour to grow the economy and thought if we closed the flow completely we would suffer economically as a result and so much of what he wanted to achieve was predicated on economic growth. We granted 4 million or so EU citizens settled status within the UK under EUSS as well as the 1.7 million granted pre-settled status so many of those who came before we left the EU stayed and were allowed to stay.
I don't know if just as we made the mistaken assumption very few would come to the UK once Freedom of Movement was introduced in 2004, we thought far more EU citizens would leave as a result of Brexit and the requirement for further migration from other partds of the world was not what was envisaged.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
Perhaps she should have crossed the corridor and got HMRC to rubber stamp her proposed deal as kosher.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer
Tice was destroyed and yet he and Reform are winning the popular vote
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it
I don't mean following the rules in a legalistic sense, but in the spirit of them, in a common-sense understanding. This is why most people are so annoyed by tax avoidance, and the tax evasion vs avoidance distinction doesn't convince most people (compared to people on here).
If that was what Starmer and Co meant by ‘rules’ he would have resigned over currygate, Lord Alli and the voice coach.
I'm not making an argument about the politicians, but about wider society. I'm picking up on your statement that, "Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could."
The essence of the Britain that knows how to queue is precisely a self-regulated orderliness that involves people not doing things just because they can.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Doesn't HMRC already make that provision in the income tax system for journalists/authors/performers with lumpy income?
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
I reckon she couldn’t have afforded the Hove apartment with the full stamp duty. Not many of us have a spare £40k in the bank account, even on an MP salary, having just bought a property.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
If the issue was just the stamp duty I would have sympathy for her but the selling part ownership of the house to a trust is where it falls apart and actually makes it funny.
So she got her deposit by selling to the trust but the structure of the trust came back to bite her on stamp duty
I'm probably taking a much dimmer view of her actions than you, and I think shes about to get what she deserves. I do not see her as in any way a victim in this.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Mansion blocks - even ones with lovely balconies - are not really suitable for families. Nowhere to play outside, having to lug prams and loads of shopping up stairs - unless there is a decent lift -etc.,. I grew up in a 4th floor flat in Naples - a beautiful flat with large rooms and high ceilings, the neighbours couldn't be heard and so on. But as a child it meant a very indoor life - and I loved it when I could be outside in a garden in England and on my relatives' farm in Ireland. Gardens are a real necessity for families. @NickPalmer does not have children and, I'm sure he will forgive me for saying this, scarcely knows what a plant is. Wanting some space is perfectly understandable.
What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.
The other thing is that not everywhere is blessed with the number of parks, coast, off-road cycle infrastructure in the same way that Edinburgh is.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
I reckon she couldn’t have afforded the Hove apartment with the full stamp duty. Not many of us have a spare £40k in the bank account, even on an MP salary, having just bought a property.
She would need to reduce her deposit to cover the extra £40,000 which would probably move the mortgage into a different equity band with higher rates.
So the issue would come down to how close to the affordability limits were they at
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
I reckon she couldn’t have afforded the Hove apartment with the full stamp duty. Not many of us have a spare £40k in the bank account, even on an MP salary, having just bought a property.
She would have received a refund of the higher rate section once her son had turned 18 . That is of course if she got the right advice letting her know that ! And she actually applied for it .
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Doesn't HMRC already make that provision in the income tax system for journalists/authors/performers with lumpy income?
Yes it does.
One left field idea would be to treat all corporations with sales under £1m as transparent for tax purposes, with the profits being taxed as income tax and NI on the shareholders.
Very common in other countries, either by election (in the US) or law (take French SCI property companies).
Would wipe out the distortions, massively reduce tax administration, and raise a handy amount of money.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Doesn't HMRC already make that provision in the income tax system for journalists/authors/performers with lumpy income?
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Also if you’re an MP you’re perilously close to that horrible 60% rate of income tax between £100k and £120k. Much better to leave that in the company if you don’t need the cash, and either take it after you’ve finished life in Parliament or take several years’ income all in one go.
Note to Rachel from accounts, such high tax rates cause market distortions and behavioural changes to avoid them.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
I can’t see it - after all the things we would like are things ( lower VAT thresholds, council tax reform) others would completely hate.
There has been an earthquake in Afghanistan. There are credible reports from that country that women and girls trapped under the rubble are being left there and not rescued because the Taliban has decreed that no man can touch a woman he is not related to. Some are being pulled out by their clothes or by other women. But even if pulled out their injuries are not being treated because male doctors are not allowed to treat them.
They are being left to suffer and die.
This is not just because of the earthquake. Women are now forbidden from any sort of education or accessing medical care or training as doctors or nurses. So as time passes there will be fewer and fewer women left to provide any sort of medical care at all. Women and girls will simply suffer and die. They are being treated worse than livestock.
This is what sex-based oppression leads to. Afghan men seem not to be bothered by this aspect of the society they have created and live in.
There is nothing we can do. Alas. But it is still worth recording one of the utterly abominable ways in which male populations in this world find to torment women.
I agree.
How do you feel about deporting female Afghan refugees there?
As I understand it Reform plans to even return those with settled claims.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
I reckon she couldn’t have afforded the Hove apartment with the full stamp duty. Not many of us have a spare £40k in the bank account, even on an MP salary, having just bought a property.
She would need to reduce her deposit to cover the extra £40,000 which would probably move the mortgage into a different equity band with higher rates.
So the issue would come down to how close to the affordability limits were they at
Given she needed to take advice on whether 30k or 70K was payable she presumably intended to go ahead regardless
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I do not recall any pledge by the Conservatives, in 2019, to push net immigration up to 900,000 p.a.
Once the government went Aussie Rules, the total was likely to go up. The only question is whether the Boriswave was something that they didn't expect (because they didn't understand their own rules) or did expect (but didn't tell the public about).
Also on electric vehicles and tax, if you buy one for your small business then you can claim 100% first year allowance, saving plenty - so @Theprole if you have a particularly good year maybe something to consider
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Yes, that tallies with my experience. I remember chatting to one of the (Indian) nurses who was caring for my father at the time, and was surprised when she said that she and many of her colleagues would be voting for Brexit. She said this because they wanted the NHS to have more money and for it to be easier for Asians to immigrate rather than unfair advantage being given to Europeans.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Brexit allowed us to make our own decisions on immigration, that’s why I voted for it, and I’d do the same again given the choice.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The one small area in which the government hasn’t gone the full Ed Miliband, perhaps Rachel actually understands that no single tax has a bigger impact on inflation and economic growth.
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it
I don't mean following the rules in a legalistic sense, but in the spirit of them, in a common-sense understanding. This is why most people are so annoyed by tax avoidance, and the tax evasion vs avoidance distinction doesn't convince most people (compared to people on here).
If that was what Starmer and Co meant by ‘rules’ he would have resigned over currygate, Lord Alli and the voice coach.
I'm not making an argument about the politicians, but about wider society. I'm picking up on your statement that, "Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could."
The essence of the Britain that knows how to queue is precisely a self-regulated orderliness that involves people not doing things just because they can.
I don’t see queue-jumping and legitimately avoiding tax as the same thing really, but if one were to jump a queue, it would be made worse if they’d previously been hectoring about others that did so
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
Well, then, Farage is still dumb. The idea that a market meltdown is going to bring down the government is right-wing wishcasting.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
Well, then, Farage is still dumb. The idea that a market meltdown is going to bring down the government is right-wing wishcasting.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
Well. He should know. He's just been to America to help facilitate it.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
I imagine most EV drivers do as I do: charge overnight at home and only occasionally use public chargers when undertaking long journeys beyond the range of the car. The difficulty comes when trying to sell them to people without the facility to charge at home.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Also if you’re an MP you’re perilously close to that horrible 60% rate of income tax between £100k and £120k. Much better to leave that in the company if you don’t need the cash, and either take it after you’ve finished life in Parliament or take several years’ income all in one go.
Note to Rachel from accounts, such high tax rates cause market distortions and behavioural changes to avoid them.
The marginal rate from 100-120k is even worse than that if you’re an MP with kids paying back student loans on top.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Indeed. Hence the argument: if there are special rules for them, why not anyone with lumpy income?
Because they don't want all the authors to bugger off to Ireland, where the creative arts are/were given special tax treatment? ISTR this was something of an issue but don't really remember the details - it was a long time ago.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Brexit allowed us to make our own decisions on immigration, that’s why I voted for it, and I’d do the same again given the choice.
And the decision we made in the GE of 2019 was to elect a government that opened the floodgates to non-EU migrants.
Didn't you vote for Johnson? Your anger should be directed at him, though to be fair he did deliver for the Bengali community.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
Well if there's a market and economic collapse which brings in a Reform government then Farage and Tice will have to raise a lot of taxes and cut a lot of spending.
Has Farage given any details as to what he would do ?
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Also if you’re an MP you’re perilously close to that horrible 60% rate of income tax between £100k and £120k. Much better to leave that in the company if you don’t need the cash, and either take it after you’ve finished life in Parliament or take several years’ income all in one go.
Note to Rachel from accounts, such high tax rates cause market distortions and behavioural changes to avoid them.
The marginal rate from 100-120k is even worse than that if you’re an MP with kids paying back student loans on top.
Cutting shallots time ... the buggers are *responsible* (admittedly for some only in the sense of continuing management, rather than the original genius idea) for the SLC.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
I imagine most EV drivers do as I do: charge overnight at home and only occasionally use public chargers when undertaking long journeys beyond the range of the car. The difficulty comes when trying to sell them to people without the facility to charge at home.
This also means that public chargers aren't receiving the volume of use that would lower the per-unit cost of operating them.
Catastrophic poll for Labour. I mean the SNP have been shocking and they have lost half their vote?
To keep out the SNP will Labour, Tories and Lib Dems all tactical vote for Reform? Or is the SNP the lesser evil?
Holyrood is PR so no need, on that poll there will be a Unionist majority in the Scottish Parliament next year anyway for the first time since 2011
Not according to an actual Scotch polling expert, SNP just 2 seats off an outright majority. He does caveat that the LD numbers are very likely an outlier.
Projecting More in Common ?? Aug/Sep into seats (changes vs 2021 on new boundaries):
SNP ~ 63 (nc) Lab ~ 17 (-4) Reform UK ~ 17 (+17) Lib Dem ~ 15 (+11) Con ~ 11 (-20) Green ~ 6 (-4)
Next years elections look very grim for the Tories.
I expect more rats to leave the sinking ship so that they keep their seats. All that is needed is to kiss Farages arse.
FPT
Lib dems polling very well in that poll, 6 seats looks very low for the Greens. If the Lib Dem vote is concentrated in former heartlands, NE, Highlands, SoS, they can win a few list seats back and challenge Tories for 4th place
There will be a bun fight over the top place list seats for the Tories, even that may not save some of them.
On the current polling the SNP vote goes down 4/5k in many constituencies but they still hoover up the seats as the opposition are too fragmented
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Indeed. It turns out that among all the lies told during the Brexit campaign, one of the few truthful bits of campaigning was the Leave campaign telling minority voters that Brexit would make it easier for them to bring family members over. It's one of the few genuinely funny things about Brexit, alongside Dan Hannan's hilariously inaccurate Brexit futurology piece.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
She tried to game the system despite knowing the impact if caught out, even if not illega,l it would definitely look dodgy at best and so deserves all she gets.
If the issue was just the stamp duty I would have sympathy for her but the selling part ownership of the house to a trust is where it falls apart and actually makes it funny.
So she got her deposit by selling to the trust but the structure of the trust came back to bite her on stamp duty
AIUI if she'd bought the flat 5 months later her son would have turned 18 and the trust-owned house would then NOT have counted for SD purposes and she'd have been fine on that front. This to me (if true) is strong evidence that she genuinely wasn't aware of the issue. So I'm expecting the finding of the investigation to be honest mistake. But that in itself doesn't save her because the mistake could be deemed negligent and thus not really survivable for a senior cabinet minster let alone the Housing Secretary. The drums are she's going but let's see. SKS will want to keep her if he possibly can.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
Well if there's a market and economic collapse which brings in a Reform government then Farage and Tice will have to raise a lot of taxes and cut a lot of spending.
Has Farage given any details as to what he would do ?
They said they'd save money by dropping Net Zero... until journalists pointed out that they got their figures completely wrong on how much this would save.
Guardian pre-reporting Farages speech and claim he will 'predict' 80 MPs to jump ship to Corbyn and the govt to fall by end 2027 and basically to go back to their constituencies and prepare etc etc And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
Well, then, Farage is dumb. 80 Labour MPs are not going to join Your Party. (Even if they did, with Sinn Fein not sitting and the Speaker, Labour would only be 3 short of a majority. Getting every other MP to vote down the government in those circumstances would be difficult. There are a few independents who would rather continue collecting a salary than face an election.)
According to the G, he will assert a market and economic meltdown will cause it to collapse All very Mother Shipton
Well if there's a market and economic collapse which brings in a Reform government then Farage and Tice will have to raise a lot of taxes and cut a lot of spending.
Has Farage given any details as to what he would do ?
On the Rayner stuff, have we now passed the point where if she were to resign from the cabinet, she couldn't now come back Mandelson style? Often with these issues a quick resignation shuts the media up, and after a time on the back benches, an MP can return and do a job at a later date.
The optics are very poor given the previous comments she has made on tax avoidance/evasion, but it's almost impossible to prove she did this deliberately.
It's likely now way too far gone for her to be considered a serious candidate for future PM. I'd have agreed with those who thought she would replace Keir Starmer at some point. Personally, I think Starmer will have had enough by 2029, and likely hand onto a successor around a year before the next election.
From memory, when Hazel Blears paid back money during the MP expenses scandal, I remember her waving a cheque (or imaginary cheque) but think it was capital gains, higher rate stamp duty for second homes didn't exist back them. Don't think the decision to repay made her any more popular
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Indeed. It turns out that among all the lies told during the Brexit campaign, one of the few truthful bits of campaigning was the Leave campaign telling minority voters that Brexit would make it easier for them to bring family members over. It's one of the few genuinely funny things about Brexit, alongside Dan Hannan's hilariously inaccurate Brexit futurology piece.
And it's the will of the people. From the Platinum Standard British Social Attitudes Survey;
Reform and X are not Britain, as John Curtice shows, though this loud minority voice thinks it is
Migration bad for economy? 32% of public - but 73% of Reform
Bad for our culture? 31% of public - 81% of Reform
Rights for ethnic minorities have gone too far? 18% of public - but 49% of Reform
Perhaps not but it doesn’t show how hopelessly out of touch much of the discussion on this board has become. “42% would consider voting Reform and 49% would either consider voting Reform or have a positive view of Farage.”
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
And - surprisingly - poor people are bigger users of electricity as a proportion than rich people. The progressive thing to do is keep electricity taxes low and push them up on gas and petrol/diesel.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I do not recall any pledge by the Conservatives, in 2019, to push net immigration up to 900,000 p.a.
Of course, no one is going to be that stupid - in truth, we know inflation has been of periodic concern since the 1950s and arguably long before that.
MY recollection from the mists of time was the belief allowing more migration from other parts of the world would offset the ending of Freedom of Movement when we left the Single Market as part of our departure from the European Union.
I suspect Johnson was advised of our dependence on cheap imported labour to grow the economy and thought if we closed the flow completely we would suffer economically as a result and so much of what he wanted to achieve was predicated on economic growth. We granted 4 million or so EU citizens settled status within the UK under EUSS as well as the 1.7 million granted pre-settled status so many of those who came before we left the EU stayed and were allowed to stay.
I don't know if just as we made the mistaken assumption very few would come to the UK once Freedom of Movement was introduced in 2004, we thought far more EU citizens would leave as a result of Brexit and the requirement for further migration from other partds of the world was not what was envisaged.
Your last paragraph raises an interesting suggestion.
Certainly in the couple of years after June 2016 there was endless fake stories about attacks on European migrants, European migrants 'pouring out' of the country, crops 'rotting in the fields' because a lack of agricultural workers.
One thing though that the Johnson government got wrong was in the number of dependants workers and students were allowed to bring.
Whether immigration rules were changed, and if so by whom and why, is something I'm curious about.
On the Rayner stuff, have we now passed the point where if she were to resign from the cabinet, she couldn't now come back Mandelson style? Often with these issues a quick resignation shuts the media up, and after a time on the back benches, an MP can return and do a job at a later date.
The optics are very poor given the previous comments she has made on tax avoidance/evasion, but it's almost impossible to prove she did this deliberately.
It's likely now way too far gone for her to be considered a serious candidate for future PM. I'd have agreed with those who thought she would replace Keir Starmer at some point. Personally, I think Starmer will have had enough by 2029, and likely hand onto a successor around a year before the next election.
From memory, when Hazel Blears paid back money during the MP expenses scandal, I remember her waving a cheque (or imaginary cheque) but think it was capital gains, higher rate stamp duty for second homes didn't exist back them. Don't think the decision to repay made her any more popular
Nah, resign now, be a big name outsider whilst the government is unpopular who can advocate for it being a bit more spendy/less taxy without any of the responsibility and she will be perfectly placed for the next leadership election. Should she want it, which she may not.
On the Rayner stuff, have we now passed the point where if she were to resign from the cabinet, she couldn't now come back Mandelson style? Often with these issues a quick resignation shuts the media up, and after a time on the back benches, an MP can return and do a job at a later date.
The optics are very poor given the previous comments she has made on tax avoidance/evasion, but it's almost impossible to prove she did this deliberately.
It's likely now way too far gone for her to be considered a serious candidate for future PM. I'd have agreed with those who thought she would replace Keir Starmer at some point. Personally, I think Starmer will have had enough by 2029, and likely hand onto a successor around a year before the next election.
From memory, when Hazel Blears paid back money during the MP expenses scandal, I remember her waving a cheque (or imaginary cheque) but think it was capital gains, higher rate stamp duty for second homes didn't exist back them. Don't think the decision to repay made her any more popular
There is so long to go until the next election that she can easily make a come-back.
There is also a world where she develops a bit of self awareness, goes on a journey and softens her visible hatred of the centre, the centre right, aspirational people etc where she reflects that she was doing what she believed best for her family, where she has more money than a large chunk of the electorate and actually she has more in common with a lot of conservatives than she might have realised. Then she would be dangerous and not just a caricature.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Oh indeed. But when you look at the economics of these sites it makes at least some sense. The higher power ones need expensive AC->DC converters, an expensive grid connection & face similarly chunky charges from local councils. Then they have to put VAT on top of paying for all of that. Oh, and fast charger demand is lumpy so you have to charge enough at peak times to cover your fixed costs at fallow times.
From the outside, I think fast charging is reasonably fairly priced: Look at what Tesla charges as a floor.
What is egregiously priced is on street lower power charging - 76p / unit is not unusual to see for a 7kW overnight charger. That’s nuts & makes buying an EV for a household without off street parking completely uneconomic.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
I imagine most EV drivers do as I do: charge overnight at home and only occasionally use public chargers when undertaking long journeys beyond the range of the car. The difficulty comes when trying to sell them to people without the facility to charge at home.
This also means that public chargers aren't receiving the volume of use that would lower the per-unit cost of operating them.
True. I stopped at an Osprey hub with 16 chargers on the way back from moving my lad and his stuff down to London. For most of the time I was the only one there, though another car did pull in just before I left. I didn't have any problems charging, having downloaded and set up the app beforehand. It was, however, very expensive (understandably, as you point out), making the overall cost of the journey similar to a petrol vehicle.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Commercial charging companies do not just have to pay by the kWh / MWh but by the kW / MW. Multiple fast chargers means they might cause sudden demand spikes even if they are unused at other times. The sensible business model is hence is collocate with large scale storage to smooth out their demand spikes. They then also have another potential income source of selling power back to provider during grid demand spikes.
Well, very much minus the subsidiary ‘Let’s stop all those Polish plumbers taking our jobs cos the EU is racist, and get in our lovely Commonwealthers instead’ button.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Indeed. It turns out that among all the lies told during the Brexit campaign, one of the few truthful bits of campaigning was the Leave campaign telling minority voters that Brexit would make it easier for them to bring family members over. It's one of the few genuinely funny things about Brexit, alongside Dan Hannan's hilariously inaccurate Brexit futurology piece.
And it's the will of the people. From the Platinum Standard British Social Attitudes Survey;
Reform and X are not Britain, as John Curtice shows, though this loud minority voice thinks it is
Migration bad for economy? 32% of public - but 73% of Reform
Bad for our culture? 31% of public - 81% of Reform
Rights for ethnic minorities have gone too far? 18% of public - but 49% of Reform
By historical standards, Reform and their attitudes are not that popular. They look that way because their opponents are scattered and even less so.
In more detail
'According to the latest British Social Attitudes survey, 81% of those who voted Reform last year believe that migrants have undermined rather than enriched the country's culture. Equally 73% feel that migrants have been bad for the country's economy. These figures are very different from those among voters in general, just 31% of whom believe that migration has undermined Britain's culture, and only 32% feel it has been bad for the economy.
Meanwhile, 53% of Reform voters believe that attempts to give equal opportunities for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals have "gone too far". Some 49% say the same of equal opportunities for black and Asian people, while 71% express that view in the case of transgender people. The equivalent figures among the general public are 33%, 18% and 50% respectively.
Only 33% of Reform voters believe that climate change is being caused mainly by human activity, far fewer than the 54% figure among the public in general. As many as 25% state that the climate is largely changing as a result of natural processes, a view shared by just 8% of all voters. Reform voters are less supportive than other voters of virtually any measure designed to address climate change.'
Opposition to immigration, equal opportunities policies, and climate change measures feature prominently in Reform's campaigning – which often cites spending on these issues as alleged examples of government waste. Indeed, Reform voters are noticeably less keen on government spending too. Only one in four (25%) believe taxes should be increased in order to spend more on "health, education and social benefits", much lower than the 46% of all voters who take that view.'
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Commercial charging companies do not just have to pay by the kWh / MWh but by the kW / MW. Multiple fast chargers means they might cause sudden demand spikes even if they are unused at other times. The sensible business model is hence is collocate with large scale storage to smooth out their demand spikes. They then also have another potential income source of selling power back to provider during grid demand spikes.
In France there are charging stations at BESS sites... as you say double bubble
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Brexit allowed us to make our own decisions on immigration, that’s why I voted for it, and I’d do the same again given the choice.
And the decision we made in the GE of 2019 was to elect a government that opened the floodgates to non-EU migrants.
Didn't you vote for Johnson? Your anger should be directed at him, though to be fair he did deliver for the Bengali community.
Yeah I’m disappointed with Boris Johnson for opening the floodgates, he is another in a long list of politicians who broke their promise to reduce immigration. I voted for him because there was no other option in my constituency that would respect the referendum result
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.
Also if you’re an MP you’re perilously close to that horrible 60% rate of income tax between £100k and £120k. Much better to leave that in the company if you don’t need the cash, and either take it after you’ve finished life in Parliament or take several years’ income all in one go.
Note to Rachel from accounts, such high tax rates cause market distortions and behavioural changes to avoid them.
The marginal rate from 100-120k is even worse than that if you’re an MP with kids paying back student loans on top.
Cutting shallots time ... the buggers are *responsible* (admittedly for some only in the sense of continuing management, rather than the original genius idea) for the SLC.
The loss of childcare from £100k is worse than the student loans. The point is that the marginal rate of income tax for typical professional salaried people earning > £100k with young families is completely ludicrous.
There has been an earthquake in Afghanistan. There are credible reports from that country that women and girls trapped under the rubble are being left there and not rescued because the Taliban has decreed that no man can touch a woman he is not related to. Some are being pulled out by their clothes or by other women. But even if pulled out their injuries are not being treated because male doctors are not allowed to treat them.
They are being left to suffer and die.
This is not just because of the earthquake. Women are now forbidden from any sort of education or accessing medical care or training as doctors or nurses. So as time passes there will be fewer and fewer women left to provide any sort of medical care at all. Women and girls will simply suffer and die. They are being treated worse than livestock.
This is what sex-based oppression leads to. Afghan men seem not to be bothered by this aspect of the society they have created and live in.
There is nothing we can do. Alas. But it is still worth recording one of the utterly abominable ways in which male populations in this world find to torment women.
I agree.
How do you feel about deporting female Afghan refugees there?
As I understand it Reform plans to even return those with settled claims.
Farage is a charlatan, grifter and liar. He has no concern for women at all. I would not vote for his ghastly party.
There are very few Afghan women on the boats. But obviously they should not be returned to Afghanistan. There is a charity which helps Afghan women, especially judges, escape. Funded in part by the estimable JK Rowling. There are some other charities which are still trying to do what they can for Afghan women. Taliban leaders send their daughters to Dubai to be educated, I understand. Ghastly hypocrites on top of everything else.
“Farage claimed last year to have “bought a house” in his constituency but the property is actually owned in the name of his partner, meaning he legally avoided higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home – given he already owns other properties”
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Brexit allowed us to make our own decisions on immigration, that’s why I voted for it, and I’d do the same again given the choice.
And the decision we made in the GE of 2019 was to elect a government that opened the floodgates to non-EU migrants.
Didn't you vote for Johnson? Your anger should be directed at him, though to be fair he did deliver for the Bengali community.
Yeah I’m disappointed with Boris Johnson for opening the floodgates, he is another in a long list of politicians who broke their promise to reduce immigration. I voted for him because there was no other option in my constituency that would respect the referendum result
If voters keep voting for people who promise them what they want to hear without any realistic plan of it delivering it, blame the voters as much as the politicians.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Commercial charging companies do not just have to pay by the kWh / MWh but by the kW / MW. Multiple fast chargers means they might cause sudden demand spikes even if they are unused at other times. The sensible business model is hence is collocate with large scale storage to smooth out their demand spikes. They then also have another potential income source of selling power back to provider during grid demand spikes.
The price of energy storage coming down will be revolutionary at some point, as it reduces the size of the incoming power cable needed for a given number of chargers.
I wonder how easy it will be to recycle old EV batteries into applications such as this in future. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Tesla do this first, stripping batteries from retired taxis or written-off cars, whihc will become much more available in the next few years.
“Farage claimed last year to have “bought a house” in his constituency but the property is actually owned in the name of his partner, meaning he legally avoided higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home – given he already owns other properties”
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
Brexit allowed us to make our own decisions on immigration, that’s why I voted for it, and I’d do the same again given the choice.
And the decision we made in the GE of 2019 was to elect a government that opened the floodgates to non-EU migrants.
Didn't you vote for Johnson? Your anger should be directed at him, though to be fair he did deliver for the Bengali community.
Yeah I’m disappointed with Boris Johnson for opening the floodgates, he is another in a long list of politicians who broke their promise to reduce immigration. I voted for him because there was no other option in my constituency that would respect the referendum result
If voters keep voting for people who promise them what they want to hear without any realistic plan of it delivering it, blame the voters as much as the politicians.
Which is how you end up with the likes of Farage and Trump elected, people who have every intention of stopping immigration and returning illegal immigrants, rather than taking about it but doing little.
To paraphrase, assets of billionaires are £620bn, taxing them 3% raises £40bn which funds the entire NHS.
Err no Claudia, 3% of £620bn is £18.6bn, and the NHS budget is more than £200bn.
(Assuming of course that the billionaires don’t relocate to Delaware or Dubai, and just happily pay 3% of their wealth every year).
Why is it that so many politicians are all at sea when they need to deal with numbers greater than they can do on fingers and toes? The inability to sort out millions from billions from trillions should disqualify them from office, when the job of running the country requires a rudimentary understanding of Big Numbers.
Catastrophic poll for Labour. I mean the SNP have been shocking and they have lost half their vote?
To keep out the SNP will Labour, Tories and Lib Dems all tactical vote for Reform? Or is the SNP the lesser evil?
Holyrood is PR so no need, on that poll there will be a Unionist majority in the Scottish Parliament next year anyway for the first time since 2011
Not according to an actual Scotch polling expert, SNP just 2 seats off an outright majority. He does caveat that the LD numbers are very likely an outlier.
Projecting More in Common ?? Aug/Sep into seats (changes vs 2021 on new boundaries):
SNP ~ 63 (nc) Lab ~ 17 (-4) Reform UK ~ 17 (+17) Lib Dem ~ 15 (+11) Con ~ 11 (-20) Green ~ 6 (-4)
Next years elections look very grim for the Tories.
I expect more rats to leave the sinking ship so that they keep their seats. All that is needed is to kiss Farages arse.
FPT
Lib dems polling very well in that poll, 6 seats looks very low for the Greens. If the Lib Dem vote is concentrated in former heartlands, NE, Highlands, SoS, they can win a few list seats back and challenge Tories for 4th place
There will be a bun fight over the top place list seats for the Tories, even that may not save some of them.
On the current polling the SNP vote goes down 4/5k in many constituencies but they still hoover up the seats as the opposition are too fragmented
The MiC poll makes things very tight at the margins. Its MoE from an effective dead heat for second (or conversely Ref or Lab marching into a strong solo second place) With SNP winning the bulk of constituencies, a 16/16/14/12 list split will see them all win 1 list seat in most regions with the odd second seat in best regions The Tories could easily be adrift in fifth or cling on to third place in seats on this sort of position LDs could get their best ever result or a close but no cigar Labour a good second or disaster Reform will have a good result regardless but maybe not a breakthrough to serious contender at the low end.
Hanging on to constituencies will be key and that probably favours the LDs most. Labour might struggle to get more than 3 and the Tories might hold 3? LDs maybe 5 or 6, Reform could draw a blank
2024 Reform voters more likely to say than new Reform voters that those partictipating in riots and protests speak for them, it is not important for the UK that Ukraine can defend its sovereignty against Russia, to oppose net zero, less likely to prefer a system where people are as wealthy as possible even if the gaps between rich and poor are bigger.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Commercial charging companies do not just have to pay by the kWh / MWh but by the kW / MW. Multiple fast chargers means they might cause sudden demand spikes even if they are unused at other times. The sensible business model is hence is collocate with large scale storage to smooth out their demand spikes. They then also have another potential income source of selling power back to provider during grid demand spikes.
The price of energy storage coming down will be revolutionary at some point, as it reduces the size of the incoming power cable needed for a given number of chargers.
I wonder how easy it will be to recycle old EV batteries into applications such as this in future. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Tesla do this first, stripping batteries from retired taxis or written-off cars, whihc will become much more available in the next few years.
Yes occasionally you still see biased hit pieces against EVs in the media that mention the cost and environmental waste of disposing of batteries. When the reality is most retired battery packs will be perfectly functional for stationary storage, a use case where energy density by weight / volume does not really matter. A quick once over and rehabilitation, whip the cells or modules into a new pack for a second life.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
I predict they’ll chicken out on fuel duty rises yet again.
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
One of the small mercies I was thankful for in the last budget.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
The EV cost is a combination of high electricity prices and demented ripoff as a standard tactic. Charge at home and it is much, much cheaper.
Public chargers have to add 20% VAT, whereas at home charging pays 5% VAT as well. One of the problems for the government is that the shift to EVs is going to gut the revenues from fuel taxes, but if they put up VAT on home electricity to compensate it’ll be a political shitshow.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
that doesn't explain 8p vs 80p/kwhr though, even home charging at peak rates would be 25p
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
Commercial charging companies do not just have to pay by the kWh / MWh but by the kW / MW. Multiple fast chargers means they might cause sudden demand spikes even if they are unused at other times. The sensible business model is hence is collocate with large scale storage to smooth out their demand spikes. They then also have another potential income source of selling power back to provider during grid demand spikes.
In France there are charging stations at BESS sites... as you say double bubble
French public chargers ranged from around 25-45c per KwH when I was last there. Cheaper than here though still more than home (my home electricity in france is 19c per kWh, and my solar FIT is 12.5c).
Comments
There has been an earthquake in Afghanistan. There are credible reports from that country that women and girls trapped under the rubble are being left there and not rescued because the Taliban has decreed that no man can touch a woman he is not related to. Some are being pulled out by their clothes or by other women. But even if pulled out their injuries are not being treated because male doctors are not allowed to treat them.
They are being left to suffer and die.
This is not just because of the earthquake. Women are now forbidden from any sort of education or accessing medical care or training as doctors or nurses. So as time passes there will be fewer and fewer women left to provide any sort of medical care at all. Women and girls will simply suffer and die. They are being treated worse than livestock.
This is what sex-based oppression leads to. Afghan men seem not to be bothered by this aspect of the society they have created and live in.
There is nothing we can do. Alas. But it is still worth recording one of the utterly abominable ways in which male populations in this world find to torment women.
It’s one of the deepest fracture points of the party, a point of inconsistency between the interests of the floating voters on whom we rely and the ideology of the party base.
No the Lib Dem party members are not NIMBYs, especially the young. Quite the opposite, the national party platform is one of the most pro-development out there. But the older rural swing voters who often seal the deal for the party very often are. Which then acts as an irresistible temptation for local politicians come election time.
We’re not alone in this sort of inconsistency. There’s the obvious one between big-government Reform voters and their slash and burn DOGE ideology, the remainer Labour base and their many leave voting constituencies, or historically the nationalist Tory vote and their globalist leadership. It’s a tricky balancing act.
MY recollection from the mists of time was the belief allowing more migration from other parts of the world would offset the ending of Freedom of Movement when we left the Single Market as part of our departure from the European Union.
I suspect Johnson was advised of our dependence on cheap imported labour to grow the economy and thought if we closed the flow completely we would suffer economically as a result and so much of what he wanted to achieve was predicated on economic growth. We granted 4 million or so EU citizens settled status within the UK under EUSS as well as the 1.7 million granted pre-settled status so many of those who came before we left the EU stayed and were allowed to stay.
I don't know if just as we made the mistaken assumption very few would come to the UK once Freedom of Movement was introduced in 2004, we thought far more EU citizens would leave as a result of Brexit and the requirement for further migration from other partds of the world was not what was envisaged.
And that he will seek more defections to plug the experience gap
It’s now often more expensive to charge an EV out and about than to fill up with petrol. We’re about 30p cheaper than France.
Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/15/brexit-lies-curry-vote-leave-restaurant-industry?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.
The essence of the Britain that knows how to queue is precisely a self-regulated orderliness that involves people not doing things just because they can.
Now, imagine Reeves pulls out a real confidence inducing stunner in November. With the red lady out the running, her fortunes could be transformed !
Churchill the Insurance Dog never defected from the Tories, so as Boris is closer to him than the original Churchill, he may not either.
So she got her deposit by selling to the trust but the structure of the trust came back to bite her on stamp duty
So the issue would come down to how close to the affordability limits were they at
One left field idea would be to treat all corporations with sales under £1m as transparent for tax purposes, with the profits being taxed as income tax and NI on the shareholders.
Very common in other countries, either by election (in the US) or law (take French SCI property companies).
Would wipe out the distortions, massively reduce tax administration, and raise a handy amount of money.
It would also be hugely unpopular.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/averaging-for-creators-of-literary-or-artistic-works-hs234-self-assessment-helpsheet/hs234-averaging-for-creators-of-literary-or-artistic-works-2025
Note to Rachel from accounts, such high tax rates cause market distortions and behavioural changes to avoid them.
How do you feel about deporting female Afghan refugees there?
As I understand it Reform plans to even return those with settled claims.
All very Mother Shipton
Farage was a large part of the cause, and now he reaps much of the benefit. A symbol of the illiteracy of Britain's media class, in turn.
I imagine there are a bunch of civil servants putting position papers in front of ministers, who are in turn looking at them, going a bit pale & deciding to make it a problem for the next minister to occupy the role.
That's not to say the economy isn't under threat. The US economy under his mate Trump is doing terribly (e.g., https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliamdur/2025/08/06/what-the-worst-jobs-report-in-15-years-means-for-all-americans/ ) and that could have shockwaves for us.
He's just been to America to help facilitate it.
Didn't you vote for Johnson? Your anger should be directed at him, though to be fair he did deliver for the Bengali community.
Has Farage given any details as to what he would do ?
Lib dems polling very well in that poll, 6 seats looks very low for the Greens. If the Lib Dem vote is concentrated in former heartlands, NE, Highlands, SoS, they can win a few list seats back and challenge Tories for 4th place
There will be a bun fight over the top place list seats for the Tories, even that may not save some of them.
On the current polling the SNP vote goes down 4/5k in many constituencies but they still hoover up the seats as the opposition are too fragmented
Then there's the unreliability, taking a deposit on your card then crapping out before final payment leaving you out of pocket even at the 80p rate. From my public charging experience I'd try to use Tesla or EV on the move chargers rather than any others.
I've been roped into helping a relative with her decision making and want to get some sort of reality check.
The optics are very poor given the previous comments she has made on tax avoidance/evasion, but it's almost impossible to prove she did this deliberately.
It's likely now way too far gone for her to be considered a serious candidate for future PM. I'd have agreed with those who thought she would replace Keir Starmer at some point. Personally, I think Starmer will have had enough by 2029, and likely hand onto a successor around a year before the next election.
From memory, when Hazel Blears paid back money during the MP expenses scandal, I remember her waving a cheque (or imaginary cheque) but think it was capital gains, higher rate stamp duty for second homes didn't exist back them. Don't think the decision to repay made her any more popular
Reform and X are not Britain, as John Curtice shows, though this loud minority voice thinks it is
Migration bad for economy?
32% of public - but 73% of Reform
Bad for our culture?
31% of public - 81% of Reform
Rights for ethnic minorities have gone too far?
18% of public - but 49% of Reform
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3ly37gkqksk25
By historical standards, Reform and their attitudes are not that popular. They look that way because their opponents are scattered and even less so.
Certainly in the couple of years after June 2016 there was endless fake stories about attacks on European migrants, European migrants 'pouring out' of the country, crops 'rotting in the fields' because a lack of agricultural workers.
One thing though that the Johnson government got wrong was in the number of dependants workers and students were allowed to bring.
Whether immigration rules were changed, and if so by whom and why, is something I'm curious about.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy853rj2kzo
https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/accessing-your-pensions/your-options-for-cashing-in-your-pension/pension-calculator-how-much-money-youll-have-a9DH71u5ilAl
There is also a world where she develops a bit of self awareness, goes on a journey and softens her visible hatred of the centre, the centre right, aspirational people etc where she reflects that she was doing what she believed best for her family, where she has more money than a large chunk of the electorate and actually she has more in common with a lot of conservatives than she might have realised. Then she would be dangerous and not just a caricature.
From the outside, I think fast charging is reasonably fairly priced: Look at what Tesla charges as a floor.
What is egregiously priced is on street lower power charging - 76p / unit is not unusual to see for a 7kW overnight charger. That’s nuts & makes buying an EV for a household without off street parking completely uneconomic.
'According to the latest British Social Attitudes survey, 81% of those who voted Reform last year believe that migrants have undermined rather than enriched the country's culture. Equally 73% feel that migrants have been bad for the country's economy. These figures are very different from those among voters in general, just 31% of whom believe that migration has undermined Britain's culture, and only 32% feel it has been bad for the economy.
Meanwhile, 53% of Reform voters believe that attempts to give equal opportunities for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals have "gone too far". Some 49% say the same of equal opportunities for black and Asian people, while 71% express that view in the case of transgender people. The equivalent figures among the general public are 33%, 18% and 50% respectively.
Only 33% of Reform voters believe that climate change is being caused mainly by human activity, far fewer than the 54% figure among the public in general. As many as 25% state that the climate is largely changing as a result of natural processes, a view shared by just 8% of all voters. Reform voters are less supportive than other voters of virtually any measure designed to address climate change.'
Opposition to immigration, equal opportunities policies, and climate change measures feature prominently in Reform's campaigning – which often cites spending on these issues as alleged examples of government waste. Indeed, Reform voters are noticeably less keen on government spending too. Only one in four (25%) believe taxes should be increased in order to spend more on "health, education and social benefits", much lower than the 46% of all voters who take that view.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy853rj2kzo
https://x.com/claudiawebbe/status/1963549666403840509
To paraphrase, assets of billionaires are £620bn, taxing them 3% raises £40bn which funds the entire NHS.
Err no Claudia, 3% of £620bn is £18.6bn, and the NHS budget is more than £200bn.
(Assuming of course that the billionaires don’t relocate to Delaware or Dubai, and just happily pay 3% of their wealth every year).
There are very few Afghan women on the boats. But obviously they should not be returned to Afghanistan. There is a charity which helps Afghan women, especially judges, escape. Funded in part by the estimable JK Rowling. There are some other charities which are still trying to do what they can for Afghan women. Taliban leaders send their daughters to Dubai to be educated, I understand. Ghastly hypocrites on top of everything else.
“Farage claimed last year to have “bought a house” in his constituency but the property is actually owned in the name of his partner, meaning he legally avoided higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home – given he already owns other properties”
@worgztheowl.bsky.social
In some ways it might be a good strategy for Rayner to resign, take the hit, then repeatedly ask why Farage isn't doing the same.
I wonder how easy it will be to recycle old EV batteries into applications such as this in future. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Tesla do this first, stripping batteries from retired taxis or written-off cars, whihc will become much more available in the next few years.
Its MoE from an effective dead heat for second (or conversely Ref or Lab marching into a strong solo second place)
With SNP winning the bulk of constituencies, a 16/16/14/12 list split will see them all win 1 list seat in most regions with the odd second seat in best regions
The Tories could easily be adrift in fifth or cling on to third place in seats on this sort of position
LDs could get their best ever result or a close but no cigar
Labour a good second or disaster
Reform will have a good result regardless but maybe not a breakthrough to serious contender at the low end.
Hanging on to constituencies will be key and that probably favours the LDs most. Labour might struggle to get more than 3 and the Tories might hold 3? LDs maybe 5 or 6, Reform could draw a blank
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1963876881989575069/photo/1