Tuesday 29 October 2024

Seven budget measures I urge Rachel Reeve to adopt

 I have to admit I'm disappointed with Rachel Reeve, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I had high hopes. She is an economist by trade, so I assumed she'd understand the need to bring the tax system into the 21st Century to address the challenges that we are facing today, rather than sticking with something designed for a very different world. 

1. Add extra council tax bands for mansions etc, to bring in more dosh for local authorities. The top band is band H for properties worth over 320,000 in 1991. Barnet is full of properties that were worth ten or twenty times that at the time. They pay the same as someone just in a normal large house. Someone in a £50 million pad in Bishops avenue pays only around three times what someone in a flat in Burnt oak pays. Gotta be wrong.

2. Triple Council tax on dwellings left empty for over six months, unless going through probate or undergoing major renovations.

3. Charge business rates on people operting businesses at home. Online retailers with no address are clobbering small shops.

4. Allow anyone to sell craft beers from specialist breweries without having to apply for a license, to encourage small breweries

5. Cut employers NI rate for all SME's by 50% on employees under 30  to encourage small businesses to take on more staff

6. Charge council tax on all land that has received planning permission for housing, but has not been developed after 2 years, to discourage land banking by developers. This would help address the housing crisis as there would be a cost to developers for not building.

7. Set up a national infrastructure fund, to pay to bring the UK's infrastructure up to standard. Zero rate all investments in this fund for inheritance tax, so long as the investment has been inthe fund for a minimum of seven years. If a person dies, allow the relatives to leave the cash in the fund for teh seven year period to avoid the charge. This would give the UK a huge amount of cash for projects. Give a garnateed return at the rate of inflation. 


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