This is the best summary I could come up with:
Rishi Sunak is considering a tax cut for the 5 million highest earners and reducing stamp duty in an attempt to ease the pressure on his leadership after two historic byelection defeats, it has been reported.
The Conservatives may raise the 40% income tax threshold after Labour’s victory in Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries’ former seat.
The Daily Telegraph reported that surveys have been carried out by Downing Street to ascertain which tax reduction could give the party the biggest political pre-election boost with the 2024 spring budget considered the earliest it could be announced.
The Conservatives are also planning to reduce stamp duty for their general election manifesto next year if the economy has strengthened, the Times reported.
A senior Tory told the Times that reducing stamp duty would be “aspirational” and improve the economy in addition to attracting middle-class voters who had left the party.
Official figures showed that public sector net borrowing was £14.3bn last month, lower than the £20.5bn that had been forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
The original article contains 304 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 43%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Wait, wait, wait… The average middle-class voter who is struggling to get by is starting to turn away from the Tories and their leader’s suggestion is to reduce taxes on the wealthiest people? Not to improve services or perhaps address the issues that drove former conservative party voters to Labour. No. Cutting the taxes of the elite, further reducing funding for services that the majority of voters use or rely on is the obvious answer.
It’s probably more to stave off a rebellion from Tory MPs and to keep donations flowing, not as an electoral strategy.
I am not from the UK do allow me a question: From what yearly income on, do you guys have to pay the „top tax“ and how high is it at the moment?
£125,140 a year you pay 45% income tax. But it’s not quite that simple because you don’t pay 45% on everything, just whatever is earned above that and the other thresholds https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates
Depends how you look at it. You lose £1 of PA for every £2 earned over £100k, which is an effective 50% tax rate.
Plus it adds the irritation of having to file a tax return even though you’re on PAYE
You also lose £2k worth of tax free childcare instantly as soon as you earn £100k, a rare instance of it actually being possible to earn less money by getting a payrise
It’s worth fiddling with your pension contributions to avoid that.
Also I’m not sure how the new childcare policy factors into it. I really need to look into it.
Yeah it’s not quite as simple as I put in my comment
Interesting- compared to my country Germany where you have to pay 42% for everything you earn above (!) 62.810 €
Guess Germany hates its middle class even more than the UK…
In Ireland it’s about 48% on everything above €40k, then 52% above €70k.
That by itself could be misleading though, the overall effective tax rate for someone on €40k is 18%, around 30% at €70k. The thresholds will rise next year.
What is the break down of this? Is it the higher USC band? I’m not familiar with a 52% tax rate.
Yeah after about €70k there is a higher rate of USC. The 52% includes PAYE, PRSI and USC at the highest bands for a regular employee.
Per the article it’s not the top rate he plans to edit but the middle 40% rate which currently starts at £50,270. It’s a little more complex because there is also National Insurance to pay which drops when you hit the 40% tax rate so effectively you go from paying 32% total below £50,270 to 42% above £50,270 (for income above that level). There is a tax free band below £12,570 as well.
I’m simplifying because tax is complicated but roughly that’s how it works. As you move up tax bands you also lose amounts of other allowances like free dividend interest. Above £100k income it gets more complex because even more allowances are removed, especially the tax free band gets reduced.
We also have national insurance and a tax free allowance, so the effective rate for someone at say £54k (about €62k) would be about 25% https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tax-calculator/ I think I’ve worked that out right.
The Tories are out of touch. Middle class only exists on paper anymore, and the Tories’ answer is to cut taxes for the rich?
Smash&Grab tactics with… do I smell a hint of Scorched Earth in the mix there?
Person 1: Smash n Grab with a side of Scorched Earth?
Person 2: Sounds like a recipe for destruction.
Person 1: but the heat would be so intense
Person 2: (Whispers) I’m a fire starter.
Person 1: (Laughs) I know.
He wants to increase the threshold of where you start paying 40%. The title of this article makes it sound like it’s 45% but it’s not. Currently this threshold is at about £50k. So this would make the biggest difference to exactly the middle classes.
Figured it was The Onion for sure…
Maybe one day I will be making lots of money and will want to pay less tax. I better start voting tory… Is that how they think people think? Or even worse, are there people who really think like that?
It works on enough people, unfortunately.
I mean, that’s the US GOP in a nutshell, that whole “temporarily embarrassed
millionairesbillionaires” bit.I
hatelove that you had to strike through “millionaires”…
What a ghoul.
When tf is there supposed to be another election in the UK? It almost feels like a strategy from the Tories to continually have their PMs resign so they stay in power. It would be nice for the UK to have some sanity again
The last election was in 2019, so the next one must be no later than 2024.
Jan 2025 is the latest they can hold it, if I remember correctly.
Though it would be beneficial to evict Starmer from the red Seat before that happens too.
It absolutely wouldn’t be. What are you on about? A big part of why Labour are polling well because they look like a safe pair of hands. Starting an interparty factional war over who the new leader should be will completely damage that and possibly lose there election.
Half of the Tory base are either indifferent to a Labour victory or would actively vote for them. If you throw another Corbyn in the mix that will change and the base will come out again. It’s simple electoral math. Please stop advocating for more Tory rule.
January 1st 2025 assuming they don’t call an earlier election.
Waiting until January would be a mistake though because it would mean that your campaigning over Christmas which is a terrible time to be doing campaigning. Everyone’s busy with other things and no one wants to be thinking about politics.
There’s 5 years between elections unless the ruling party calls one early so a pm resigning doesn’t help but calling an election early and winning does. We’re still on the clock from Johnson’s 2019 landslide win - which he called 3 years early because they were way ahead in the polls. Truss and Sunak didn’t call early elections because they already had a big majority and would probably lose seats.
How do you look at an election defeat and think: “That’s what we need. More of exactly the same.”
Easy conclusion to reach when you weren’t there to help common people in the first place
Because this way, the Tories will definitely take the struggling middle class on their side during the next elections.
They might. 50k threshold is not really all that high.
Tax cuts for votes. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.
60% of the time it works every time
Blah blah blah
Rats know they’re losing so they want to give farewell gifts to their cronies before leaving and punish the poors for not voting Tory.
Also helps to harm economy and national redources as much as possible so that the next administration fails to do anything and Tories can return in a further election cycle.
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Give the top 10% a tax cut or rejoin EU? Choices, choices.
Do the UK old people have lead in their brains too? Stop voting for Tory shitbags.
We don’t need lead to hate foreigners, it’s our God-given right as rulers of the Empire!
Uh… I mean… “we value our traditions” or something…
