Budget Oct ’24

As the financial experts dig deep into the first Labour budget for 15 years, the headline is that each and every one of us will be £300 per year worse off.

Businesses have been hammered with higher NI employer contributions which will have the result of reducing the appetite of employers to employ. Combine this with the increased workers rights being introduced and the increase in the minimum wage and costs will rise meaning prices with have to rise which will drive up inflation once again.

This is not a budget for growth. Business owners take risks building their businesses, the risk of employing people is now less enticing, especially for SME’s many of whom are already struggling to meet their commitments.

This was a budget created by people who had never run a business. They see the private sector as a cash cow to fund an ever increasing, bloated state.

Inheritance Tax

What is the point of building for the future if the government is going to empty your pockets. Farmers will be especially hard hit with generational family businesses unable to pay the death duties imposed in the budget.

Farms are strange businesses, they require massive capital outlay to set up which in most cases has been paid off over many, many years. The imposition of a 20% death duty on a farm will lead to farmers having to sell some land to pay the bill. So each generation the farm will shrink by 20%, making it less viable in the process.

Farmers feed the country, the government seem to have forgotten that fact.

£40 Billion Tax Increases

This budget was one of the largest tax increases in modern times. We already had the highest tax take in over 70 years, this budget pushes that to stratispheric levels.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but the proposed NHS reforms, widely touted ahead of the election have now been replaced with an instant cash injection of over £10 Billion. No reform, no restructuring, just another £10b poured into the financial black hole that is the modern NHS.

I hope that the budget delivers a reduction in waiting lists, in more GPs, in more dentists, in faster operations, in better healthcare, but I suspect that it will make little difference.

VAT on Private Education

For the first time in history a UK government is taxing education. Private education admittedly, but taxing education none the less. Unlike in Germany where parents who send their children to private schools receive a rebate on their tax bill that would go to their childs state education, in the UK parents already pay twice, now following Robber Reeves budget, they will pay for a state education they don’t use, and then pay private school fees + vat.

Every privately educated child frees up a place in a state school, reducing the class size and thus improving the standard of teaching in that state school. Parents should be rewarded for their financial sacrifice, not be penalised twice over.