So, yes, it will cost a lot to give all those strikers and others decent, or at least cost-of-living pay rises. But there’s a silver lining/sting in the tail, depending whether you’re the government or a now-better-paid worker. The freezing of tax allowances means that many who never dreamed of entering the elite ranks of high rate taxpayers will find themselves returning some of their hard-won extra pay as extra tax. I’d guess the books would rebalance fairly quickly, if nothing changes in the meantime. Noone who’s not a high rate taxpayer has much sympathy for those that are, and a future government anywhere to the left of the current bunch isn’t going to do much to reverse things. The same is true of the other stealthy rises/freezes in Inheritance, Capital Gains and Dividend tax, where the plan is the same, to pick our pockets, in the words of Mr Scrooge, rather more than once a year, and without us realising. Or so they think.
“HMRC scraps plans to tax pensions after death”
A couple of other Statement Highlights (in my world, anyway). A welcome ‘nothing happened’ on the treatment of pensions on death. They were never going to be liable to IHT (too complicated with trusts and trust law) but there was talk of making them income-taxable on the recipients at whatever age you die.
