That more are having to pay tax on share dividend income should be no surprise. The allowance, the amount you can earn from shares or take out as dividends from your own company has fallen from £5,000 to £500 (under the Conservatives!). So you’re likely to have tax to pay if you have just £15,000, rather than £150,000 in the average portfolio, whether or not you’re actually taking the dividends. One of the drivers for this is to make every which way you can earn money tax-neutral, so there are no benefits to company owners taking dividends over salary, or being self-employed. A great boost to entrepreneur-ship. And it will get worse rather than better, my prediction being that there will be no distinction between dividends, interest or any kind of income in future. Simples, perhaps, for them; but not for the likes of most of us.
“When will Labour’s first Budget be – and when will tax changes come into effect?”
‘Should we be panicking? What taxes will go up and when, because Labour always put up taxes, don’t they?’ What we do know is that they have pledged that they ‘will not raise taxes on working people’, which means the holy trinity of income tax, NI and VAT.
