Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
I identify as a libertarian, tee hee.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
Your rant about CGT sounded very like the inside of my own head. I have terrible cognitive dissonance, I keep saying to all and sundry "the problem in this country is that work is taxed too heavily and rent seeking is taxed too lightly" but I am sitting on unrealised capital gains that are now roughly 10-20 years on from the point in time where I was actually taking serious risk and working serious hours to generate the seed of them and I'm coasting and maybe now I am the problem, but at the same time I feel defensive and threatened and a little voice is saying "I refuse to be a slowly boiling frog, I'm definitely going to jump if they put up CGT/widen IHT/limit business asset reliefs just once more..." .
Yes, precisely.
In most people's heads, capital gains is a thing paid by billionaire plutocrats and people with generational wealth who have never worked a day in their lives, when in reality it is largely paid by people like me who chose to invest the PAYE salary we were already being taxed at 40%+ (thus CGT is a kind of double dipping), or people like yourself, who worked hard and took a lot of risk and are now seeing that bear fruit 20 years later.
As others have noted there is also the problem of the small business owner who builds their business every year for 20 years and sells in retirement, paying far more than they would had they just had a PAYE job for those 20 years as they pay money on the lump sum rather than the lower PAYE rate every year. While there are forms of business asset disposal relief these have been curtailed in recent years and there is no guarantee they will exist at all in 20 years so why would anyone set up a business if CGT = Income tax rates at all? All the risk, far less reward.
As @kyf_100 has said a non-inflation indexed CGT of 40+% is pretty mad. But then again this is the administration that has been briefing about price caps for weeks.
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
You're making the mistake of assigning morality to money (IMHO!).
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
Everyone misses the point of the Golgafrincham B ark.
Although it was supposedly about getting rid of the useless. What happens to the Golgafrincham when the B Ark left.
After the departure of the B Ark the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
The telephone sanitisers weren’t so useless after all.
Hmmm. Did this occur before or after BT moved to the KX100 easily washable kiosks which were designed with a hap under the sides so that they could be hosed down to no longer smell like a drunk's toilet on a Saturday and Sunday morning, unlike the red boxes?
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
You're making the mistake of assigning morality to money (IMHO!).
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
Thank you. I think we are agreed about the nature of the debate and its difficulties and probably the morally precarious nature of trying to sort relative goods, and that governments should tax and spend less anyway.
Yes, I assign morality to money and I am going to continue to do so!
I think that's fair.
I bring up my grandfather's carers because I often felt infuriated - even enraged - that people doing such important work (and somehow doing it with a smile) were paid so little. While I was earning probably ten times what they were to shuffle papers in an office.
So I absolutely get the moral arguments around higher taxation. I'm a capitalist red in tooth and claw but I'm not a monster, and I want to live in a society where everyone has a reasonable quality of life, rather than a gated community in some kind of anarcho-capitalist dystopia. But I do not believe taxing productivity more and more is the way to get there.
To Taz's point, I often think I'm *less* valuable to society than a telephone sanitiser to be honest! Then I remember my old employer took on 8 new staff as a result of the work I did, just to give one example of economic productivity. So this is why I think it's wrong to pay people or tax them based on perceived morality - economic outcomes are what matter, not just for the individual, but for society as a whole.
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
Think of the joy of that extra three minutes you can have in Birmingham when its running.
I'm going out for the afternoon, but here's another interesting transport project in Oxfordshire (County, not City, I think)
It's called Quiet Lanes, and is a trial looking at filtering through traffic out of "duplicate roads" to make them more liveable. The idea is that where a street / lane exists parallel to a through route it can have through traffic filtered out, and speeds reduced *, and only access traffic being allowed.
I'm sure we have PBers in some bits of Oxfordshire Here's a short segment about it. They are looking for 10 trial sites. These have to come from a Parish Council, and be supported by the County Councillor. So now you know what to do. Here's a one minute outline:
I live on one of these in Notts, which is an old 4-5m wide lane subsumed into the near-town-centre, which has had No Motor Vehicles signs on it since the 1970s, but because it is not filtered or ever enforced we get a couple of hundred rat runners each day.
* Guessing, that means 20mph, which is the accepted UK threshold where motors can mix more safely with pedestrians etc.
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
Great British Summer Savings sounds like half a good idea but I suspect it will help already engaged parents take their children on day trips they'd have taken anyway, while doing very little for those struggling with day-to-day living costs.
+1 - it seems to be making trips to museums (if they charge) and eating out cheaper. I suspect for those with little money it will make no difference (because they never went to such things) and those who do such things they won't notice the probably not that significant savings it makes.
There is another potential issue, because VAT is a hidden tax in the UK there might not be as many savings offered.
1) you are struggling hospitality business facing high turn over taxes, higher enegy bills, etc, so you have no margin. Do you keep same prices and make some profit?
2) most businesses have already done pricing and summer holiday offer strategy. A restaurant isnt going to reprint the menu or a tourist attraction redo a sign, especially if just had it done and cut is only for a few weeks. Are the taxpayer just going to paying for the summer promo Alton Towers was going to run anyway?
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
@rcs1000 when are we going to tell him that we are manipulating the contractors into digging up his street all the time?
Dan Neidle's TPA outfit has published a very long document which I've not read but that's the headline.
There is a blatant "questionable call" (aka error) right at the start - surely Mr Farage's profession and employment is that of a political campaigner?
"It’s connected to Mr Farage’s historic and current political campaigning activity, and not to any trade, profession, employment or office that he carries on or holds."
That is not a questionable call or error. Political campaigning is not classed as a trade, profession or vocation for tax purposes if the activity is primarily carried out on a voluntary, non-commercial or purely ideological basis. If you are a consultant, a PR provider, campaigns agency or similar, your income is taxable. If you are a politician, donations to support you or your campaigning are not classed as taxable income. Politicians generally do not pay income tax on donations or gifts provided they are given to support their political activities rather than being a reward for specific employment-related services.
The donation wasn't made to support him or support his campaigning but in his own words as a reward.
Yes, but not for employment-related services, so still not taxable. It would only be taxable if it was a reward for Farage providing some kind of professional service to Harborne.
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
Great British Summer Savings sounds like half a good idea but I suspect it will help already engaged parents take their children on day trips they'd have taken anyway, while doing very little for those struggling with day-to-day living costs.
+1 - it seems to be making trips to museums (if they charge) and eating out cheaper. I suspect for those with little money it will make no difference (because they never went to such things) and those who do such things they won't notice the probably not that significant savings it makes.
There is another potential issue, because VAT is a hidden tax in the UK there might not be as many savings offered.
1) you are struggling hospitality business facing high turn over taxes, higher enegy bills, etc, so you have no margin. Do you keep same prices and make some profit?
2) most businesses have already done pricing and summer holiday offer strategy. A restaurant isnt going to reprint the menu or a tourist attraction redo a sign, especially if just had it done and cut is only for a few weeks. Are the taxpayer just going to paying for the summer promo Alton Towers was going to run anyway?
Yep - I probably wasn't clear enough - this entire plan makes zero sense and I can't work out the reason for it...
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
You're making the mistake of assigning morality to money (IMHO!).
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
Everyone misses the point of the Golgafrincham B ark.
Although it was supposedly about getting rid of the useless. What happens to the Golgafrincham when the B Ark left.
After the departure of the B Ark the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
The telephone sanitisers weren’t so useless after all.
Hmmm. Did this occur before or after BT moved to the KX100 easily washable kiosks which were designed with a hap under the sides so that they could be hosed down to no longer smell like a drunk's toilet on a Saturday and Sunday morning, unlike the red boxes?
More to the point the B Ark people designated leaves as their unit of currency then started burning the forests to clamp down on rampant inflation and spent their time making documentaries of themselves.
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
@rcs1000 when are we going to tell him that we are manipulating the contractors into digging up his street all the time?
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
At least there’s an ultimate benefit and we’re not just doing it merely to beat the Russians in building their railway to Birmingham first.
Accordimg to Dan Farah, whom Leon quoted earlier, there's a major battle going on within U.S. officialdom on whether or not more UFO. information should be released. Who knows where the truth lies.
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
Rather than bury you, it will then be cheaper to stick your corpse on a cargo train, trundling up and down the H2S network, until the heat death of the Universe...
Accordimg to Dan Farah, whom.Leon quoted earlier, there's a major battle going on within U.S. officialdom on wherher or not more UFO information should be released. Who knows where the truth lies.
There is nothing to release of any actual evidence.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
@rcs1000 when are we going to tell him that we are manipulating the contractors into digging up his street all the time?
HS2 are digging up my street again. At least I have the solace of knowing this is almost done, and work will be completed eighty years after I die, and it's only cost twice as much as putting a man on the moon
@rcs1000 when are we going to tell him that we are manipulating the contractors into digging up his street all the time?
2039 - when the work is finally finished..
Why stop then?
Because in 2039 I’m sure we will have a more annoying (to Leon) reason for the next bit of work
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
We are about to run out of fertiliser to grow things and diesel to drive what we can't grow to the supermarkets.
What I found odd was that amidst all the pb pearl clutching, no-one remembered that both parties tried something similar in the 1960s and 70s. Prices and incomes policy was one of the things Mrs Thatcher was reacting against.
Plus our control freak government is wetting itself at the thought of Ration booksApps.
“Young Britons turn their backs on Starmer’s high-tax UK “Net migration at its lowest level in five years, as 136,000 more British nationals leave country than return”
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
Great British Summer Savings sounds like half a good idea but I suspect it will help already engaged parents take their children on day trips they'd have taken anyway, while doing very little for those struggling with day-to-day living costs.
+1 - it seems to be making trips to museums (if they charge) and eating out cheaper. I suspect for those with little money it will make no difference (because they never went to such things) and those who do such things they won't notice the probably not that significant savings it makes.
There is another potential issue, because VAT is a hidden tax in the UK there might not be as many savings offered.
1) you are struggling hospitality business facing high turn over taxes, higher enegy bills, etc, so you have no margin. Do you keep same prices and make some profit?
2) most businesses have already done pricing and summer holiday offer strategy. A restaurant isnt going to reprint the menu or a tourist attraction redo a sign, especially if just had it done and cut is only for a few weeks. Are the taxpayer just going to paying for the summer promo Alton Towers was going to run anyway?
Yep - I probably wasn't clear enough - this entire plan makes zero sense and I can't work out the reason for it...
The reason for it is to “be seen to be doing something, no matter how pointless it is”. Remember Osborne’s Eat Out To Help Out? Killed quite a few people at the margin, but it was good for his ratings, so who’s to say it was bad, actually?
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
1. It would still leave the UK with the highest rate of CGT in Europe. Why would you set up a business here when you could do so elsewhere? 2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already. 3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above). 4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
I identify as a libertarian, tee hee.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
Your rant about CGT sounded very like the inside of my own head. I have terrible cognitive dissonance, I keep saying to all and sundry "the problem in this country is that work is taxed too heavily and rent seeking is taxed too lightly" but I am sitting on unrealised capital gains that are now roughly 10-20 years on from the point in time where I was actually taking serious risk and working serious hours to generate the seed of them and I'm coasting and maybe now I am the problem, but at the same time I feel defensive and threatened and a little voice is saying "I refuse to be a slowly boiling frog, I'm definitely going to jump if they put up CGT/widen IHT/limit business asset reliefs just once more..." .
Yes, precisely.
In most people's heads, capital gains is a thing paid by billionaire plutocrats and people with generational wealth who have never worked a day in their lives, when in reality it is largely paid by people like me who chose to invest the PAYE salary we were already being taxed at 40%+ (thus CGT is a kind of double dipping), or people like yourself, who worked hard and took a lot of risk and are now seeing that bear fruit 20 years later.
As others have noted there is also the problem of the small business owner who builds their business every year for 20 years and sells in retirement, paying far more than they would had they just had a PAYE job for those 20 years as they pay money on the lump sum rather than the lower PAYE rate every year. While there are forms of business asset disposal relief these have been curtailed in recent years and there is no guarantee they will exist at all in 20 years so why would anyone set up a business if CGT = Income tax rates at all? All the risk, far less reward.
As @kyf_100 has said a non-inflation indexed CGT of 40+% is pretty mad. But then again this is the administration that has been briefing about price caps for weeks.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
I identify as a libertarian, tee hee.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
Your rant about CGT sounded very like the inside of my own head. I have terrible cognitive dissonance, I keep saying to all and sundry "the problem in this country is that work is taxed too heavily and rent seeking is taxed too lightly" but I am sitting on unrealised capital gains that are now roughly 10-20 years on from the point in time where I was actually taking serious risk and working serious hours to generate the seed of them and I'm coasting and maybe now I am the problem, but at the same time I feel defensive and threatened and a little voice is saying "I refuse to be a slowly boiling frog, I'm definitely going to jump if they put up CGT/widen IHT/limit business asset reliefs just once more..." .
Yes, precisely.
In most people's heads, capital gains is a thing paid by billionaire plutocrats and people with generational wealth who have never worked a day in their lives, when in reality it is largely paid by people like me who chose to invest the PAYE salary we were already being taxed at 40%+ (thus CGT is a kind of double dipping), or people like yourself, who worked hard and took a lot of risk and are now seeing that bear fruit 20 years later.
As others have noted there is also the problem of the small business owner who builds their business every year for 20 years and sells in retirement, paying far more than they would had they just had a PAYE job for those 20 years as they pay money on the lump sum rather than the lower PAYE rate every year. While there are forms of business asset disposal relief these have been curtailed in recent years and there is no guarantee they will exist at all in 20 years so why would anyone set up a business if CGT = Income tax rates at all? All the risk, far less reward.
As @kyf_100 has said a non-inflation indexed CGT of 40+% is pretty mad. But then again this is the administration that has been briefing about price caps for weeks.
Does the plan not include indexation ?
Dan Neidle is saying it does so it’s more Nigel Lawson than the nutty Greens.
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
The prisons are full: If you want these people locked up then you need to let the government raise taxes sufficiently to pay for the building out of enough prison capacity & pay for staffing them.
People don’t want higher taxes, so the prisons don’t get built & staffed.
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
1. It would still leave the UK with the highest rate of CGT in Europe. Why would you set up a business here when you could do so elsewhere? 2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already. 3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above). 4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
An analysis here, which does suggest you might be right about large investors.
Wes Streeting has proposed equalising Capital Gains and Income Tax.
He reckons it could raise £12bn. His number is from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) at LSE.
Their proposal includes a Rate of Return Allowance and more generous treatment of losses (to avoid punishing risk-taking).
If the UK adopted this plan, it would give us the highest rate of CGT in the OECD (for long-and-short term gains) albeit with a much more entrepreneur friendly base.
Note: I am sceptical of CenTax's £12bn figure, because it is highly reliant on the top 0.1% of taxpayers and I don't think we have good enough evidence to suggest they'd stay. https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/2057371684773015868
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
The prisons are full: If you want these people locked up then you need to let the government raise taxes sufficiently to pay for the building out of enough prison capacity & pay for staffing them.
People don’t want higher taxes, so the prisons don’t get built & staffed.
Hang him, then.
Alternatively, put all the similar scum on an uninhabited Scottish island. With plenty of food, warm clothes - and weapons. Lots and lots of weapons.
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
1. It would still leave the UK with the highest rate of CGT in Europe. Why would you set up a business here when you could do so elsewhere? 2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already. 3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above). 4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
An analysis here, which does suggest you might be right about large investors.
Wes Streeting has proposed equalising Capital Gains and Income Tax.
He reckons it could raise £12bn. His number is from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) at LSE.
Their proposal includes a Rate of Return Allowance and more generous treatment of losses (to avoid punishing risk-taking).
If the UK adopted this plan, it would give us the highest rate of CGT in the OECD (for long-and-short term gains) albeit with a much more entrepreneur friendly base.
Note: I am sceptical of CenTax's £12bn figure, because it is highly reliant on the top 0.1% of taxpayers and I don't think we have good enough evidence to suggest they'd stay. https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/2057371684773015868
Indeed. Indexation doesn't make much difference if your plan is to scale a startup from 500k to 50m in 3-5 years. And that's the sort of business we need, more so than the local business owner who builds a nest egg of 1-2m over 20-30 years, in terms of bringing in tax revenue and lowering unemployment.
Honestly, I'm a Business Guy™ who went to Business School™ who likes doing Business Stuff™. So there is always going to be an element of Mandy Rice-Davies Applies to my outlook in life.
But despite that I'm also a bit of a patriot (partly why I haven't left the UK yet, though I would have if my partner was still alive) who wants the whole country to prosper, not just the wealthy few.
And I get why people are angry at the moment. I get why people say the system is broken. I get why people are furious that hard work isn't rewarded. That wages have been static or falling vs inflation for nigh on 20 years, and who cares if a basket of flatscreen TVs etc is coming down in price while your rent and basic food shop keeps going up and up?
There is an interesting *moral* case for higher taxes (see my discussion with Algakirk) during these hard times but I view things primarily through an economic lens and what matters is outcomes.
I see that the numbers aren't adding up for a lot of people at the moment. But I think that's because we keep making stupid decisions that make things even worse - like, say, putting up employer's NI (leading to, surprise surprise, more unemployment). To tax investment even higher than it already is would be the latest in a long line of bad decisions that have made the economy worse and the majority poorer.
Even floating ideas like CGT at 45% makes the UK investable at the moment.
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
1. It would still leave the UK with the highest rate of CGT in Europe. Why would you set up a business here when you could do so elsewhere? 2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already. 3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above). 4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
An analysis here, which does suggest you might be right about large investors.
Wes Streeting has proposed equalising Capital Gains and Income Tax.
He reckons it could raise £12bn. His number is from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) at LSE.
Their proposal includes a Rate of Return Allowance and more generous treatment of losses (to avoid punishing risk-taking).
If the UK adopted this plan, it would give us the highest rate of CGT in the OECD (for long-and-short term gains) albeit with a much more entrepreneur friendly base.
Note: I am sceptical of CenTax's £12bn figure, because it is highly reliant on the top 0.1% of taxpayers and I don't think we have good enough evidence to suggest they'd stay. https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/2057371684773015868
One day the penny will drop. You need far more very very rich.
They should pay for our healthcare. By paying less in tax than they would elsewhere on the planet. But still paying some tax - here. Give them Commercially Important Person status.
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
1. It would still leave the UK with the highest rate of CGT in Europe. Why would you set up a business here when you could do so elsewhere? 2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already. 3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above). 4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
An analysis here, which does suggest you might be right about large investors.
Wes Streeting has proposed equalising Capital Gains and Income Tax.
He reckons it could raise £12bn. His number is from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) at LSE.
Their proposal includes a Rate of Return Allowance and more generous treatment of losses (to avoid punishing risk-taking).
If the UK adopted this plan, it would give us the highest rate of CGT in the OECD (for long-and-short term gains) albeit with a much more entrepreneur friendly base.
Note: I am sceptical of CenTax's £12bn figure, because it is highly reliant on the top 0.1% of taxpayers and I don't think we have good enough evidence to suggest they'd stay. https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/2057371684773015868
Anything that involves absolutely rinsing a few thousand or even a few hundred people, is likely to go horribly wrong in terms of revenue.
Doubly so with many of the largest startups having global revenue and often being software-based, they can be headquartered almost anywhere on the planet. Governments elsewhere are competing hard for them.
Are they really going to try and put CGT up to 40%? Surely someone in the treasury will sit them down and explain that it will be a huge net revenue loss.
The headline doesn't explain the actual story - which is to align with income tax rates but the original investment price uses indexation (as it used to be back to at least 2004).
1. It would still leave the UK with the highest rate of CGT in Europe. Why would you set up a business here when you could do so elsewhere? 2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already. 3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above). 4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
An analysis here, which does suggest you might be right about large investors.
Wes Streeting has proposed equalising Capital Gains and Income Tax.
He reckons it could raise £12bn. His number is from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) at LSE.
Their proposal includes a Rate of Return Allowance and more generous treatment of losses (to avoid punishing risk-taking).
If the UK adopted this plan, it would give us the highest rate of CGT in the OECD (for long-and-short term gains) albeit with a much more entrepreneur friendly base.
Note: I am sceptical of CenTax's £12bn figure, because it is highly reliant on the top 0.1% of taxpayers and I don't think we have good enough evidence to suggest they'd stay. https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/2057371684773015868
Anything that involves absolutely rinsing a few thousand or even a few hundred people, is likely to go horribly wrong in terms of revenue.
Doubly so with many of the largest startups having global revenue and often being software-based, they can be headquartered almost anywhere on the planet. Governments elsewhere are competing hard for them.
"Rate of Return Allowance" - is this the equivalent of inflation?
I would caution in all this discussion about "theoretical" tax plans from Wes, Andy and Ed etc.
These guys are only focused on one thing at the moment: how to win the Labour membership should it get to a vote for the leader.
They will be briefing every kite known to man that can sway the progressive urban, indeed majority metropolitan iirc, membership in next three months.
It would be really useful to get some demographic information about the membership categories, especially how these have changed since Starmer was elected in 2019.
The Greens say they have 100k members, how many of them used to be Labour members for example?
The Union members are now IIRC almost all public-sector or public-sector-adjacent, who have been well looked after by Starmer.
Accordimg to Dan Farah, whom Leon quoted earlier, there's a major battle going on within U.S. officialdom on whether or not more UFO. information should be released. Who knows where the truth lies.
The question seems to be: should the truth be out there?
HS2 is why we need to change planning law. No appeals and no rejections. Suck it.
You don’t need to change anything.
Just revive the old style Railway Acts.
They were primary legislation.
You COULD solve all the planning problems, or reduce them by two orders of magnitude by two measures.
(1) Remove anonymity from ALL Planning Complainants
(2) Charge every complainant a fee of say £100 to register their complaint. A fee which they get back if, but only if their complaint is upheld.
I'm not even sure that would need to be £100. The optimal threshold may be closer to £10 - but only if there are no exceptions for the unemployed/elderly/students etc.
And don't get me started on those who failed to intervene.
Those charged with protecting children preferred a quiet life, and looked the other way.
Same old, same old.
They do appear to be quite selective. Some cases they try to take away your children for misgendering one of their classmates, but in others seem to have little trouble ignoring or batting away very legitimate concerns of abuse.
Accordimg to Dan Farah, whom Leon quoted earlier, there's a major battle going on within U.S. officialdom on whether or not more UFO. information should be released. Who knows where the truth lies.
The question seems to be: should the truth be out there?
Stephen Spielberg has a film called Disclosure Day coming out next month. Hollywood or coverup ? Who knows.
“Young Britons turn their backs on Starmer’s high-tax UK “Net migration at its lowest level in five years, as 136,000 more British nationals leave country than return”
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
They had a good old go today, castigating the current Government for a net 100,000 people a year. They were suggesting that if we had left the ECHR we could kick everyone we don't like out.
Have we heard from Honest Bob yet? Farage was saying the figures are terrible because the people who have left are people Farage likes and the people who have arrived Farage doesn't like, so he was implying the net number is irrelevant.
Sems an excellent plan to boost both hospitality industry and "staycations", at a time when cost pressures may mean people do not want to fly abroad. This is independent on whether it boosts footfall or profits.
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
They had a good old go today, castigating the current Government for a net 100,000 people a year. They were suggesting that if we had left the ECHR we could kick everyone we don't like out.
Have we heard from Honest Bob yet? Farage was saying the figures are terrible because the people who have left are people Farage likes and the people who have arrived Farage doesn't like, so he was implying the net number is irrelevant.
I suspect that a Farage government with a working majority would see an exodus of the young and talented Brits who find his politics anathema. If I were 25 years younger I would be off to the antipodies even before Farage got to the Palace.
I would caution in all this discussion about "theoretical" tax plans from Wes, Andy and Ed etc.
These guys are only focused on one thing at the moment: how to win the Labour membership should it get to a vote for the leader.
They will be briefing every kite known to man that can sway the progressive urban, indeed majority metropolitan iirc, membership in next three months.
It would be really useful to get some demographic information about the membership categories, especially how these have changed since Starmer was elected in 2019.
The Greens say they have 100k members, how many of them used to be Labour members for example?
The Union members are now IIRC almost all public-sector or public-sector-adjacent, who have been well looked after by Starmer.
And don't get me started on those who failed to intervene.
Those charged with protecting children preferred a quiet life, and looked the other way.
Same old, same old.
They do appear to be quite selective. Some cases they try to take away your children for misgendering one of their classmates, but in others seem to have little trouble ignoring or batting away very legitimate concerns of abuse.
No child has ever been taken away for misgendering a classmate. Don’t be silly.
The Sky story is horrific. At least some justice has now arrived.
Accordimg to Dan Farah, whom Leon quoted earlier, there's a major battle going on within U.S. officialdom on whether or not more UFO. information should be released. Who knows where the truth lies.
The question seems to be: should the truth be out there?
Stephen Spielberg has a film called Disclosure Day coming out next month. Hollywood or coverup ? Who knows.
Right, off out to enjoy the gorgeous weather.
Spielberg is responsible for a lot of UFO sightings - you always get flaps drawing on film and TV.
And don't get me started on those who failed to intervene.
Those charged with protecting children preferred a quiet life, and looked the other way.
Same old, same old.
They do appear to be quite selective. Some cases they try to take away your children for misgendering one of their classmates, but in others seem to have little trouble ignoring or batting away very legitimate concerns of abuse.
No child has ever been taken away for misgendering a classmate. Don’t be silly.
The Sky story is horrific. At least some justice has now arrived.
It's very disconcerting when certain posters politicise such a vile story. Although there hasn't been quite the same consternation as some other similarity horrible stories have been met with on here. I am not sure why?
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
They had a good old go today, castigating the current Government for a net 100,000 people a year. They were suggesting that if we had left the ECHR we could kick everyone we don't like out.
Have we heard from Honest Bob yet? Farage was saying the figures are terrible because the people who have left are people Farage likes and the people who have arrived Farage doesn't like, so he was implying the net number is irrelevant.
I suspect that a Farage government with a working majority would see an exodus of the young and talented Brits who find his politics anathema. If I were 25 years younger I would be off to the antipodies even before Farage got to the Palace.
It’s already happening. According to Migrationbase 70% of British emigrants are 16 x 34.
So it would hardly be a new phenomenon, assuming it happened.
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Peter.
The problem is that “visual intrusion” is a common reason to reject masts.
Like the one that was blocked for Cornerstone in Tooting Common on the site of a railway shed.
Visual intrusion they said. No that will be the massive train line that runs through it.
‘ 🚨 NEW: Five people have been arrested in Manchester over allegations of election fraud
It follows an investigation into the Tameside Labour group which put forward fake independent candidates in the local elections to split votes for opposition parties ’
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
They had a good old go today, castigating the current Government for a net 100,000 people a year. They were suggesting that if we had left the ECHR we could kick everyone we don't like out.
Have we heard from Honest Bob yet? Farage was saying the figures are terrible because the people who have left are people Farage likes and the people who have arrived Farage doesn't like, so he was implying the net number is irrelevant.
I suspect that a Farage government with a working majority would see an exodus of the young and talented Brits who find his politics anathema. If I were 25 years younger I would be off to the antipodies even before Farage got to the Palace.
And some not so young, if I can find anywhere that will have me!
And don't get me started on those who failed to intervene.
Those charged with protecting children preferred a quiet life, and looked the other way.
Same old, same old.
They do appear to be quite selective. Some cases they try to take away your children for misgendering one of their classmates, but in others seem to have little trouble ignoring or batting away very legitimate concerns of abuse.
No child has ever been taken away for misgendering a classmate. Don’t be silly.
The Sky story is horrific. At least some justice has now arrived.
Such stories are not confined to the UK. This was reported from Florida a couple of days ago.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article315443888.html ..The twins and their older brother Tal Alexander were convicted in March of multiple federal sex crimes, including sex trafficking. But a Miami Herald investigation found their pattern of drugging, raping, and videotaping their abuse of girls began decades earlier – when they were as young as 15 and still in high school.
Six women told the Herald they were raped or assaulted by one or more of the brothers between 2002 and 2004, while the three brothers were attending Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School near Aventura. One spoke to police, and despite her accusations, police did not interview all the boys, and the school appears to have taken no disciplinary action.
The women said the assaults were rampant, and occurred at teen hangouts devoid of parental supervision, at the homes of the Alexander brothers or their friends. Half of the women spoke to the FBI about what happened to them when they were younger.
The women were students at Krop, a large Miami-Dade public high school, or nearby Miami Country Day School, a private school. One was in eighth grade when a group of boys, including Tal, “dragged” her into a bedroom, she said. She believes she was drugged.
“It just seems like the adults completely f—--- abdicated their responsibility,” that woman told the Herald.
In the 2003 report, which notes that Krop’s principal was informed after a school resource officer called law enforcement, police did not interview the brothers, and the State Attorney’s Office declined to press charges...
‘ 🚨 NEW: Five people have been arrested in Manchester over allegations of election fraud
It follows an investigation into the Tameside Labour group which put forward fake independent candidates in the local elections to split votes for opposition parties ’
"Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has adopted an immigration policy that every EU airport should follow. It allows Britons who have registered for the new biometric checks to use the e-gates, whereas most EU airports force them to queue to see an immigration officer. Better yet, when flights from the UK land, its immigration staff open more e-gates for Britons, converting EU lanes into all-passports ones."
‘ 🚨 NEW: Five people have been arrested in Manchester over allegations of election fraud
It follows an investigation into the Tameside Labour group which put forward fake independent candidates in the local elections to split votes for opposition parties ’
‘ 🚨 NEW: Five people have been arrested in Manchester over allegations of election fraud
It follows an investigation into the Tameside Labour group which put forward fake independent candidates in the local elections to split votes for opposition parties ’
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
WTF is up? Are they just getting crazier?
It's a distraction from real news.
Epstein? Maybe
That's the obvious motivation for Trump, but this goes far far beyond Trump
The Japanese are also doing it. A form of Disclosure
"BREAKING: Japan’s government admits it possesses UAP data, including video footage, and says public disclosure will begin within the limits of national security restrictions."
"Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara says Japan possesses footage and information related to UAP sightings, with possible future disclosures depending on security considerations."
When I was growing up in the late 70's and 80's I was hooked on all things Fortean and I still am. At the time I wanted there to be a world with cameras everywhere, so that no longer would we have blurring single shot film photos from hundreds of yards away, but would finally get proper evidence. Well we have arrived at that world now, and the evidence is getting worse. Mick West talks about UAP's being in the low information zone and he is right. Like the ghost we see in the corner of our eyes, when we look more closely we see the dressing gown on the door. All these videos are ultimately shown up to be artefacts and misidentifications. There is also a disturbing tendency to ascribe extra weight to 'trained observers' such as pilots or police officers as if they are somehow immune from being fooled.
There is an enormous market for telling tall tales about Aliens, UFO's, Skinwalker ranches and so on. There is the constant promise of the good stuff to come and yet what do we get? A green egg on a piece of string purporting to be an alien craft retrieval.
There is a strong suggestion that many of the origin tales about the US government having crashed UFO's comes from a hazing exercise regularly carried out on people.
At heart many people want to believe, and thats all it takes for some to be able to spin yarns and make money out of lies.
Since Russia is no longer seen as an enemy by Trumpian USA, NASA, Boeing and the rest of the industrial/military complex need something to justify the money wasted on them.
"Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has adopted an immigration policy that every EU airport should follow. It allows Britons who have registered for the new biometric checks to use the e-gates, whereas most EU airports force them to queue to see an immigration officer. Better yet, when flights from the UK land, its immigration staff open more e-gates for Britons, converting EU lanes into all-passports ones."
I don't think the Telegraph is accurate. I still quite a lot of travelling, and in my experience most EU airports allow UK citizens to biometric gates. I would reckon it's about 75:25.
Personally, I've had more trouble abroad (like Mexico) where eGates are for US and EEA citizens, and I'm forced to see an immigration officer.
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Peter.
The problem is that “visual intrusion” is a common reason to reject masts.
Like the one that was blocked for Cornerstone in Tooting Common on the site of a railway shed.
Visual intrusion they said. No that will be the massive train line that runs through it.
These people are stupid.
Visual intrusion is a valid planning reason - if the benefits aren’t explained to the level that it trumps the visual impact you aren’t getting planning there.
See for another example the OAP wanting a 15m high but thin short radio mast is Stockton that I mentioned last week. Impacts people, councilor gets involved so gets rejected
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Peter.
The problem is that “visual intrusion” is a common reason to reject masts.
Like the one that was blocked for Cornerstone in Tooting Common on the site of a railway shed.
Visual intrusion they said. No that will be the massive train line that runs through it.
These people are stupid.
Visual intrusion is a valid planning reason - if the benefits aren’t explained to the level that it trumps the visual impact you aren’t getting planning there.
See for another example the OAP wanting a 15m high but thin short radio mast is Stockton
It could be a valid planning reason but why is it valid in Tooting Common next to a railway line? Surely context matters?
Bearing in mind it was less tall than the shed it replaced, it seems crazy to me this was legitimate grounds for rejection.
Unless you think sheds are somehow less "intrusive" than a mast that is less tall, this was a genuinely insane reason to reject it. Again, whilst it's a common, this is London.
And don't get me started on those who failed to intervene.
Those charged with protecting children preferred a quiet life, and looked the other way.
Same old, same old.
They do appear to be quite selective. Some cases they try to take away your children for misgendering one of their classmates, but in others seem to have little trouble ignoring or batting away very legitimate concerns of abuse.
No child has ever been taken away for misgendering a classmate. Don’t be silly.
The Sky story is horrific. At least some justice has now arrived.
Such stories are not confined to the UK. This was reported from Florida a couple of days ago.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article315443888.html ..The twins and their older brother Tal Alexander were convicted in March of multiple federal sex crimes, including sex trafficking. But a Miami Herald investigation found their pattern of drugging, raping, and videotaping their abuse of girls began decades earlier – when they were as young as 15 and still in high school.
Six women told the Herald they were raped or assaulted by one or more of the brothers between 2002 and 2004, while the three brothers were attending Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School near Aventura. One spoke to police, and despite her accusations, police did not interview all the boys, and the school appears to have taken no disciplinary action.
The women said the assaults were rampant, and occurred at teen hangouts devoid of parental supervision, at the homes of the Alexander brothers or their friends. Half of the women spoke to the FBI about what happened to them when they were younger.
The women were students at Krop, a large Miami-Dade public high school, or nearby Miami Country Day School, a private school. One was in eighth grade when a group of boys, including Tal, “dragged” her into a bedroom, she said. She believes she was drugged.
“It just seems like the adults completely f—--- abdicated their responsibility,” that woman told the Herald.
In the 2003 report, which notes that Krop’s principal was informed after a school resource officer called law enforcement, police did not interview the brothers, and the State Attorney’s Office declined to press charges...
Yes, there is a subset of men who are total shits. And if they think that there are no consequences for bad beheviour will act in ways that are almost incomprehensible.
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Peter.
The problem is that “visual intrusion” is a common reason to reject masts.
Like the one that was blocked for Cornerstone in Tooting Common on the site of a railway shed.
Visual intrusion they said. No that will be the massive train line that runs through it.
These people are stupid.
Visual intrusion is a valid planning reason - if the benefits aren’t explained to the level that it trumps the visual impact you aren’t getting planning there.
See for another example the OAP wanting a 15m high but thin short radio mast is Stockton
It could be a valid planning reason but why is it valid in Tooting Common next to a railway line? Surely context matters?
Bearing in mind it was less tall than the shed it replaced, it seems crazy to me this was legitimate grounds for rejection.
Unless you think sheds are somehow less "intrusive" than a mast that is less tall, this was a genuinely insane reason to reject it. Again, whilst it's a common, this is London.
If that’s the case your consultant did a crap job writing their report and discussing the case with the planner at the council then
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Peter.
The problem is that “visual intrusion” is a common reason to reject masts.
Like the one that was blocked for Cornerstone in Tooting Common on the site of a railway shed.
Visual intrusion they said. No that will be the massive train line that runs through it.
These people are stupid.
Visual intrusion is a valid planning reason - if the benefits aren’t explained to the level that it trumps the visual impact you aren’t getting planning there.
See for another example the OAP wanting a 15m high but thin short radio mast is Stockton
It could be a valid planning reason but why is it valid in Tooting Common next to a railway line? Surely context matters?
Bearing in mind it was less tall than the shed it replaced, it seems crazy to me this was legitimate grounds for rejection.
Unless you think sheds are somehow less "intrusive" than a mast that is less tall, this was a genuinely insane reason to reject it. Again, whilst it's a common, this is London.
If that’s the case your consultant did a crap job writing their report and discussing the case with the planner at the council then
They aren't "my" consultant.
But in any case, do you agree or disagree with my point? Surely context matters?
And also @eek in your example, how does a 15m high mast impact anyone? This is what I don't understand, what is that people don't like about it?
Lots of things are visible, like trees, or other houses, I just don't get the logic whatsoever. That's why I would take it out of the hands of people and just default approve.
I know we won't agree on this but surely in an urban area like London you must concede the current arrangement is silly.
And also @eek in your example, how does a 15m high mast impact anyone? This is what I don't understand, what is that people don't like about it?
Lots of things are visible, like trees, or other houses, I just don't get the logic whatsoever. That's why I would take it out of the hands of people and just default approve.
I know we won't agree on this but surely in an urban area like London you must concede the current arrangement is silly.
It’s not about logic.
It’s about human perception and personal perceptions of change.
Charging every person £100 to object is an excellent idea. Would stop all of the pointless mast objections from "local residents".
Planners don't weigh objections. If twenty people make the same point "It will spoil our view!" that counts as a single reason not 20. I good reason carries more weight than 100 daft ones!
Peter.
In theory yes, in practice definitely no.
You get 200 objections, as often happens, in varying degrees of writing styles. You have to summarise them all. Now 120 will be exactly the same. Another 60 will be illiterate versions of the same, but 20 will be fantasies on a theme of the sound objections. If you charge £100 this will cut it down to perhaps 10 or 15 real objections. Thus most mundane applications will have no objections. The officer time which would be saved would be astounding. Maybe that is why planning officers would be aghast at such an idea.
As someone who was last year, in my 66th year for the first time in my life the victim of a malicious planning complaint from someone who the planning authority won't name, what do I do. As a former councillor I suspect a political opponent, but don't know, although I can put 2 and 2 together and get 17. If complainants had to be named I could, and almost certainly would sue for defamation as the complaint was untrue. But the planning authority has spent months taking witness statements etc wasting their time and money. Now we have heard nothing for over 6 months. My threat that I would go to court, where the complainant would be named has had some effect. I said if it was an opponent and there were any of the same flavour in the room when they decided to continue then I would name them all before the Standards Board seems to have had some effect.
Comments
What's this? Rachel's Rates?
I bring up my grandfather's carers because I often felt infuriated - even enraged - that people doing such important work (and somehow doing it with a smile) were paid so little. While I was earning probably ten times what they were to shuffle papers in an office.
So I absolutely get the moral arguments around higher taxation. I'm a capitalist red in tooth and claw but I'm not a monster, and I want to live in a society where everyone has a reasonable quality of life, rather than a gated community in some kind of anarcho-capitalist dystopia. But I do not believe taxing productivity more and more is the way to get there.
To Taz's point, I often think I'm *less* valuable to society than a telephone sanitiser to be honest! Then I remember my old employer took on 8 new staff as a result of the work I did, just to give one example of economic productivity. So this is why I think it's wrong to pay people or tax them based on perceived morality - economic outcomes are what matter, not just for the individual, but for society as a whole.
Dan Neidle has a decent overview https://x.com/DanNeidle/status/2057384176865681632
It's called Quiet Lanes, and is a trial looking at filtering through traffic out of "duplicate roads" to make them more liveable. The idea is that where a street / lane exists parallel to a through route it can have through traffic filtered out, and speeds reduced *, and only access traffic being allowed.
I'm sure we have PBers in some bits of Oxfordshire Here's a short segment about it. They are looking for 10 trial sites. These have to come from a Parish Council, and be supported by the County Councillor. So now you know what to do. Here's a one minute outline:
https://youtu.be/L7CisqbxSjY?t=102
I live on one of these in Notts, which is an old 4-5m wide lane subsumed into the near-town-centre, which has had No Motor Vehicles signs on it since the 1970s, but because it is not filtered or ever enforced we get a couple of hundred rat runners each day.
* Guessing, that means 20mph, which is the accepted UK threshold where motors can mix more safely with pedestrians etc.
1) you are struggling hospitality business facing high turn over taxes, higher enegy bills, etc, so you have no margin. Do you keep same prices and make some profit?
2) most businesses have already done pricing and summer holiday offer strategy. A restaurant isnt going to reprint the menu or a tourist attraction redo a sign, especially if just had it done and cut is only for a few weeks. Are the taxpayer just going to paying for the summer promo Alton Towers was going to run anyway?
Accordimg to Dan Farah, whom Leon quoted earlier, there's a major battle going on within U.S. officialdom on whether or not more UFO. information should be released. Who knows where the truth lies.
How is Farage top although nice to see Walter Titty slipping
Party Leader Approval Ratings:
Nigel Farage (REF): 30% (+1)
Kemi Badenoch (CON): 28% (-1)
Ed Davey (LDM): 20% (=)
Keir Starmer (LAB): 18% (-1)
Zack Polanski (GRN): 16% (-3)
https://x.com/oprosuk/status/2057399223604101427?s=61
booksApps.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/21/young-britons-turn-backs-on-high-tax-uk/
“Young Britons turn their backs on Starmer’s high-tax UK
“Net migration at its lowest level in five years, as 136,000 more British nationals leave country than return”
2. HMRC's own projections show that raising the current rate of CGT significantly would reduce tax take, not increase it. We are probably at (or above) the optimal point on the laffer curve already.
3. Allowances can and will be reduced - BADR was historically £10m and is now £1m, so if you plan on creating a £50m startup with £500k equity you will still be on the hook for 45% for 99% of it (see point 1, above).
4. Indexation relies on the government not telling porkies about the true rate of inflation. Ho-hum.
"Girl begged for help at window as officials drove away from 'beastie house', paedophile ring report says"
https://news.sky.com/story/girl-begged-for-help-at-window-as-officials-drove-away-from-beastie-house-paedophile-ring-report-says-13545820
And don't get me started on those who failed to intervene.
Which I failed to predict.
https://x.com/arf84648947/status/2057235416743309641
Just revive the old style Railway Acts.
They were primary legislation.
34 Celsius on Monday in London.
https://www.landmarkchambers.co.uk/news-and-cases/blog/aarhus/80-the-aarhus-convention-in-planning-appeals-revisited
Wes Streeting has proposed equalising Capital Gains and Income Tax.
He reckons it could raise £12bn. His number is from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) at LSE.
Their proposal includes a Rate of Return Allowance and more generous treatment of losses (to avoid punishing risk-taking).
If the UK adopted this plan, it would give us the highest rate of CGT in the OECD (for long-and-short term gains) albeit with a much more entrepreneur friendly base.
Note: I am sceptical of CenTax's £12bn figure, because it is highly reliant on the top 0.1% of taxpayers and I don't think we have good enough evidence to suggest they'd stay.
https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/2057371684773015868
Honestly, I'm a Business Guy™ who went to Business School™ who likes doing Business Stuff™. So there is always going to be an element of Mandy Rice-Davies Applies to my outlook in life.
But despite that I'm also a bit of a patriot (partly why I haven't left the UK yet, though I would have if my partner was still alive) who wants the whole country to prosper, not just the wealthy few.
And I get why people are angry at the moment. I get why people say the system is broken. I get why people are furious that hard work isn't rewarded. That wages have been static or falling vs inflation for nigh on 20 years, and who cares if a basket of flatscreen TVs etc is coming down in price while your rent and basic food shop keeps going up and up?
There is an interesting *moral* case for higher taxes (see my discussion with Algakirk) during these hard times but I view things primarily through an economic lens and what matters is outcomes.
I see that the numbers aren't adding up for a lot of people at the moment. But I think that's because we keep making stupid decisions that make things even worse - like, say, putting up employer's NI (leading to, surprise surprise, more unemployment). To tax investment even higher than it already is would be the latest in a long line of bad decisions that have made the economy worse and the majority poorer.
Even floating ideas like CGT at 45% makes the UK investable at the moment.
They should pay for our healthcare. By paying less in tax than they would elsewhere on the planet. But still paying some tax - here. Give them Commercially Important Person status.
Doubly so with many of the largest startups having global revenue and often being software-based, they can be headquartered almost anywhere on the planet. Governments elsewhere are competing hard for them.
These guys are only focused on one thing at the moment: how to win the Labour membership should it get to a vote for the leader.
They will be briefing every kite known to man that can sway the progressive urban, indeed majority metropolitan iirc, membership in next three months.
The Greens say they have 100k members, how many of them used to be Labour members for example?
The Union members are now IIRC almost all public-sector or public-sector-adjacent, who have been well looked after by Starmer.
(1) Remove anonymity from ALL Planning Complainants
(2) Charge every complainant a fee of say £100 to register their complaint. A fee which they get back if, but only if their complaint is upheld.
The Malmesbury Legalisation of Outrageous Bribery In Planning Act
“It shall be mandatory that a developer shall pay into locals a suitable sum in low denomination, non-sequential bills in a compact brown envelope”
“Here’s £100 in fivers. If I get a solar farm”
Same old, same old.
Right, off out to enjoy the gorgeous weather.
Have we heard from Honest Bob yet? Farage was saying the figures are terrible because the people who have left are people Farage likes and the people who have arrived Farage doesn't like, so he was implying the net number is irrelevant.
We. Need. To. Grow. Wealth.
Start from that, Labour. Evertything else is a fail that leads to closed hospitals.
All we need is good weather...
https://greenparty.org.uk/2026/03/01/the-green-party-of-england-and-wales-surpasses-200000-members/
The Sky story is horrific. At least some justice has now arrived.
Hatred and lies spread by social media is a defining problem of the decade.
So it would hardly be a new phenomenon, assuming it happened.
Peter.
Like the one that was blocked for Cornerstone in Tooting Common on the site of a railway shed.
Visual intrusion they said. No that will be the massive train line that runs through it.
These people are stupid.
‘ 🚨 NEW: Five people have been arrested in Manchester over allegations of election fraud
It follows an investigation into the Tameside Labour group which put forward fake independent candidates in the local elections to split votes for opposition parties ’
https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/2057470914485268916?s=61
This was reported from Florida a couple of days ago.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article315443888.html
..The twins and their older brother Tal Alexander were convicted in March of multiple federal sex crimes, including sex trafficking. But a Miami Herald investigation found their pattern of drugging, raping, and videotaping their abuse of girls began decades earlier – when they were as young as 15 and still in high school.
Six women told the Herald they were raped or assaulted by one or more of the brothers between 2002 and 2004, while the three brothers were attending Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School near Aventura. One spoke to police, and despite her accusations, police did not interview all the boys, and the school appears to have taken no disciplinary action.
The women said the assaults were rampant, and occurred at teen hangouts devoid of parental supervision, at the homes of the Alexander brothers or their friends. Half of the women spoke to the FBI about what happened to them when they were younger.
The women were students at Krop, a large Miami-Dade public high school, or nearby Miami Country Day School, a private school. One was in eighth grade when a group of boys, including Tal, “dragged” her into a bedroom, she said. She believes she was drugged.
“It just seems like the adults completely f—--- abdicated their responsibility,” that woman told the Herald.
In the 2003 report, which notes that Krop’s principal was informed after a school resource officer called law enforcement, police did not interview the brothers, and the State Attorney’s Office declined to press charges...
"Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has adopted an immigration policy that every EU airport should follow. It allows Britons who have registered for the new biometric checks to use the e-gates, whereas most EU airports force them to queue to see an immigration officer. Better yet, when flights from the UK land, its immigration staff open more e-gates for Britons, converting EU lanes into all-passports ones."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/french-fixed-immigration-chaos-british
https://x.com/crewkernegaz/status/2057474802953126170
AI political satire is getting really good.
Personally, I've had more trouble abroad (like Mexico) where eGates are for US and EEA citizens, and I'm forced to see an immigration officer.
See for another example the OAP wanting a 15m high but thin short radio mast is Stockton that I mentioned last week. Impacts people, councilor gets involved so gets rejected
Bearing in mind it was less tall than the shed it replaced, it seems crazy to me this was legitimate grounds for rejection.
Unless you think sheds are somehow less "intrusive" than a mast that is less tall, this was a genuinely insane reason to reject it. Again, whilst it's a common, this is London.
But in any case, do you agree or disagree with my point? Surely context matters?
Lots of things are visible, like trees, or other houses, I just don't get the logic whatsoever. That's why I would take it out of the hands of people and just default approve.
I know we won't agree on this but surely in an urban area like London you must concede the current arrangement is silly.
General Election Voting Intention
Con 17%
Lab 20%
Lib Dem 11%
Reform 28%
SNP 5%
PC 1%
Green 13%
Other 6%
W/ Burnham
Con 15%
Lab 28%
Lib Dem 8%
Reform 27%
SNP 5%
PC 1%
Green 10%
Other 6%
https://deltapoll.co.uk/polls/burnham-260521
It’s about human perception and personal perceptions of change.
Read some books by Prof. RL Gregory
You get 200 objections, as often happens, in varying degrees of writing styles. You have to summarise them all. Now 120 will be exactly the same. Another 60 will be illiterate versions of the same, but 20 will be fantasies on a theme of the sound objections. If you charge £100 this will cut it down to perhaps 10 or 15 real objections. Thus most mundane applications will have no objections. The officer time which would be saved would be astounding. Maybe that is why planning officers would be aghast at such an idea.
As someone who was last year, in my 66th year for the first time in my life the victim of a malicious planning complaint from someone who the planning authority won't name, what do I do. As a former councillor I suspect a political opponent, but don't know, although I can put 2 and 2 together and get 17. If complainants had to be named I could, and almost certainly would sue for defamation as the complaint was untrue. But the planning authority has spent months taking witness statements etc wasting their time and money. Now we have heard nothing for over 6 months. My threat that I would go to court, where the complainant would be named has had some effect. I said if it was an opponent and there were any of the same flavour in the room when they decided to continue then I would name them all before the Standards Board seems to have had some effect.