While England makes its first foray into unfamiliar territory, it’s proved a boon for Italy’s cash-strapped municipalities
A nightly tourist tax may be unfamiliar territory in the UK, but countries in continental Europe have been cashing in on these kinds of levies for decades.
Tourists usually need to pay the tax on the day they check out of a hotel or holiday let, and are often surprised by an extra fee on top of their accommodation costs.
Continue reading...Critics say threshold pushes higher-paid staff to cut back on work and often mothers to stop working to avoid losing entitlement
John Healey has been urged to fix the £100,000 childcare “cliff edge”, that means some higher-paid employees cut back on work to avoid losing their entitlement.
Since the latest expansion of taxpayer-funded childcare in 2024, families with young children in which both parents earn less than £100,000 a year can be entitled to 30 hours a week of care - or none at all, if one of them cross that threshold.
Continue reading...Hamza Chowdhury says he will challenge party leader and has received nominations from other Green councillors
Healey says Andy Burnham set out in his statement to MPs last week what he thought had gone wrong
The fundamentals of our economy [were] hollowed out through a series of past policy decisions, political power was centralised, weakening the relationships between the people, the businesses and the institutions who can make things happen beyond Whitehall. The economic enablers were privatised and outsourced, leaving accountability to a thicket of arm’s length bodies and regulators, too often without the predictability or the pace that underpins a thriving market economy. And our country was deindustrialised as the cost to make anything, to build anything here soared, and our dependence on unreliable sources grew, including in areas critical to our national security and sovereignty.
Let me be clear, I recognise that the costs of business, its energy bills, regulation, burdens, planning constraints, labour costs, have grown since Covid and I want to draw the line.
And whether it is the cost of business or the cost of living, the only way we deal with these in the long term is growth.
Continue reading...Labour chair says uch cuts ‘could mean vital public services like hospitals, schools and law enforcement are put at risk’
The Electoral Commission has released political donation figures for the second quarter of 2026. They show that Reform UK continues to rake in far more than other parties. Nigel Farage’’s party had declared donations worth £5.3m. Labour got £3.6m, and the Conservatives £2.8m.
Most of Reform UK’s money came from Ben Delo, who gave £4m. As Rowena Mason reported earlier this year, Delo is a British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business.
Continue reading...Resolution Foundation argues that UK’s internationally low ‘tax wedge’ must rise to pay for defence ambitions
The chancellor, John Healey, must be prepared to raise taxes for middle earners if he wants to fund significantly higher defence spending, the Resolution Foundation thinktank has said.
Healey resigned from Keir Starmer’s government in June, protesting against what he argued was the then prime minister’s failure to adequately fund defence.
Continue reading...PM says he has a ‘clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong’ with UK, and pays tribute to Keir Starmer after his predecessor quit parliament
My colleague Richard Partington, the Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, grew up, like Andy Burnham, in the Warrington suburb of Culcheth. He has been home to find out what people there are saying about the new PM.
Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch announced a reshuffle, replacing Mel Stride with Andrew Griffith as shadow chancellor and Priti Patel with Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary.
Continue reading...July data shows total public debt was £2.98tn, or 94% of GDP – up £96bn on a year earlier
The UK government ran a larger than expected £1.8bn deficit in July, underlining the challenges facing the chancellor, John Healey, as he draws up his first budget.
City economists had expected a shortfall of zero for July, a month when Treasury receipts tend to be swollen by self-assessment income tax payments.
Continue reading...PM wants to reduce department’s stranglehold on public purse and bring long-term thinking to economic policy
Andy Burnham is far from the first prime minister to dream of taming the power of the mighty Treasury.
Boris Johnson all but forced the resignation of Sajid Javid by handpicking his team; Margaret Thatcher favoured her economic adviser Alan Walters over Nigel Lawson, prompting the latter’s furious resignation; and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s power struggle was the stuff of Whitehall legend.
Continue reading...Some want the chancellor to exploit newly flexible fiscal rules – others want a more creative approach, such as borrowing from markets
With just 12 weeks to go until his first budget, new chancellor John Healey is seeking ways to ramp up public investment, without busting the Treasury’s fiscal rules – and some economists are urging him to be bold.
As he settles into No 11 Downing Street, the former defence secretary’s most immediate challenges concern day-to-day government spending.
Continue reading...Some want the chancellor to exploit newly flexible fiscal rules – others want a more creative approach, such as borrowing from markets
With just 12 weeks to go until his first budget, new chancellor John Healey is seeking ways to ramp up public investment, without busting the Treasury’s fiscal rules – and some economists are urging him to be bold.
As he settles into No 11 Downing Street, the former defence secretary’s most immediate challenges concern day-to-day government spending.
Continue reading...Levy could raise £19bn to help pay for Andy Burnham’s support for those struggling with bills, say campaigners
Campaigners have renewed calls for a windfall tax on UK banks that could raise £19bn towards Andy Burnham’s cost of living agenda, after HSBC raked in $10.1bn (£7.5bn) worth of profits in the second quarter of the year.
Bosses at HSBC reported on Tuesday that profits rose 60% year on year in the three months to the end of June, helped by fees from wealth management and insurance business, as well as higher interest rates, which allow the bank to charge more for loans and mortgages.
Continue reading...Local leaders say plan will transform funding so English regions no longer rely on Whitehall handouts for projects
England’s regional mayors will be able to break out of the “death grip of the Treasury” by borrowing to invest in big projects under “transformational” plans to shift power out of Whitehall.
For the first time, mayors will keep a share of income tax generated in their area from 2028, as well as business rates totalling tens of millions of pounds by April 2027.
Continue reading...The prime minister says that current inefficiencies in the system will be tackled first, as he reveals final recommendations will be out by summer 2027
Andy Burnham is speaking now.
In a reference to how he started campaing for social care reform almost two decades ago, he says it is good to see faces in the room “who’ve been on this journey with me for a long, a long time”.
When someone in your family is receiving care, you look at everything through new eyes, don’t you? You notice things that maybe you didn’t notice before because you watch it so closely and so carefully.
And I’ve just been really overwhelmed by their care, the skill in what they do, the professionalism.
Can I just remind everybody that nobody thought we could get everybody in off the streets?
So we can do difficult in this country and we can do it well.
Continue reading...Introducing the legislation would be ‘very challenging’ until care system improved, PM says
Andy Burnham has said the assisted dying debate needs to wait until palliative care and social care are fixed, as he set out his path to resolving one of the most intractable problems in British politics.
The prime minister said he was not opposed to having the debate on assisted dying, but told reporters it would be “very challenging” to introduce the controversial legislation until the care system was in a better place.
Continue reading...California governor calls for national tax on super-wealthy and suggests the US should own a stake in AI companies
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called for a national “billionaires tax” on Friday as he fights a ballot measure targeting the ultra-wealthy in his home state.
Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, published his proposal the day after California officials certified a ballot proposal to levy a one-time 5% tax on residents worth more than $1bn. The proposal, called the California Billionaire Tax Act, was brought by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) and would fund the state’s healthcare, education and food assistance programs.
Continue reading...Make UK says manufacturers’ feedback shows sector at risk of collapse as it calls on Treasury to take action
Britain’s industrial sector is at risk of collapse as thousands of companies warn that they could face bankruptcy within the next year because of high energy prices, according to an industry survey.
The manufacturers’ body Make UK said the latest feedback from its members found that many would not be able to cope for much longer with energy costs that were twice the average in continental Europe and four times higher than in the US.
Continue reading...Chancellor’s measure to help families save money during summer holidays ‘won’t make any difference’
Cutting tax on children’s meals is a political “soundbite” that will make little difference to families or businesses, restaurateurs have said.
This week, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced a temporary reduction in VAT on the children’s menu in restaurants from 20% to 5% between June and September, in order to help families with the cost of living crisis and offer a boost to the hospitality sector.
Continue reading...Prime minister launches impassioned argument in favour of much-maligned reforms announced in last week’s federal budget
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A visibly emotional Anthony Albanese has launched an impassioned defence of Labor’s proposed changes to negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount and family trusts, saying he will “not allow Australia to become a country where aspiration is only for some”.
The prime minister has faced sustained criticism to the reforms, which include limiting negative gearing to new-builds while grandfathering existing properties, changing how CGT is calculated and imposing a new 30% minimum tax on discretionary trusts.
Continue reading...National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’
The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.
Continue reading...Credit can be used to offset future bills as full-year losses at UK division widen to £41.3m and it adds 92 stores
Starbucks’s UK retail arm received a £13.7m corporation tax credit last year, even as its sales increased 6% and it added more than 90 stores.
The credit, which can be used to offset future tax bills, comes after losses widened to £41.3m in the 12 months to the end of September – almost matching the £40m it paid in royalty and licence fees to its parent company.
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