Category Archives: Inheritance tax

Tories attack BBC for questioning farming lobby’s inheritance tax claims – UK politics live

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Row over issue continues with questions likely at PMQs as Angela Rayner faces shadow minister Alex Burghart

Good morning. Keir Starmer is travelling back from the G20 summit in Brazil, but he won’t be in the Commons in time for PMQs, and so Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, will be taking questions on his behalf. In line with recent practice, Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative leader, won’t go up against a deputy, and she will miss the session too. The Tories don’t have a deputy leader, but Badenoch is getting Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, to stand in for her.

The PM might not be answering, but that does not mean the questions get any easier. The situation in Ukraine is looking increasingly perilous, inflation is going up, and figures out yesterday have reignited the row about the government’s decision to cut the winter fuel payment. But the Conservatives may also want to ask about farmers, and the plan to extend inheritance tax to some farms. Traditonally the Tories have liked to think of themselves as a pro-countryside, pro-farming party, and they will have been reassured by the fact that, when they lined up alongside farmers at yesterday’s rally, they did not just have Jeremy Clarkson with them; the Liberal Democrats, the Green party, Greenpeace and even Just Stop Oil were on the farmers’ side too.

The job of BBC Verify is to do exactly that but they’ve failed on their own terms.

The government is refusing to say how many family farms are subject to their tax raid, only offering partial and out of date statistics which fail to account for the full scale of their reforms.

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Starmer says most farmers won’t be affected by inheritance tax change as Clarkson tells rally it’s a ‘hammer blow’ – UK politics live

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Jeremy Clarkson tells Westminster protest that government should admit plans weren’t ‘thought out and are a mistake’

In an interview with the BBC, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, defended imposing inheritance tax on some farms when Labour said in opposition that it was not planning to do that. Asked why the government changed its mind, he replied:

After we won the election, we discovered that the Conservatives have left a £22bn black hole in the public finances. And if we want to fix our National Health Service, rebuild all schools, provide the affordable housing that rural communities and across the country rely on, then we’ve had to ask those with the broader shoulders to pay a little bit more.

I’m sure we all feel betrayed because of the state that the Conservatives left the economy in. A £22bn pound black hole isn’t a small problem. It’s massive, and fixing that is necessary if we want to stabilise the economy and rebuild our public services.

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Reeves accused of betraying small family firms with inheritance tax rises

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Chancellor also criticised for letting the very rich off the hook with a lower than expected rise in capital gains tax

Tax rises aimed at inherited wealth are at risk of backfiring, after the chancellor was accused of betraying small family businesses while letting private equity bosses off the hook.

Labour’s first budget in 14 years included measures to close inheritance tax (IHT) loopholes and press ahead with scrapping the controversial non-dom tax status, as well as levying higher taxes on private jet flights.

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London’s Aim shrinks to smallest since 2001 amid fears of tax relief changes

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UHY Hacker Young says 92 companies have delisted and only 10 floated on junior stock market in past year

The UK’s Alternative Investment Market (Aim) has shrunk to its smallest size in 23 years as business owners and investors anticipate an abolition of inheritance tax relief in the budget this week.

The accountancy group UHY Hacker Young calculated that 92 companies have delisted from Aim, London’s junior stock market, in the past year, reducing the total number of companies on Aim to 695.

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Rachel Reeves has promised not to raise taxes, so how can she fill budget coffers?

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Chancellor said to be planning measures including raising employer NI contributions and capital gains tax rates. We consider the likelihood of each and the potential for a row

During the general election campaign, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal studies repeatedly accused both main parties of indulging in a “conspiracy of silence” over their economic policies. Neither Labour nor the Tories would admit, he complained, that if they won they would have to announce huge tax rises or spending cuts to restore the public finances to anything resembling good health.

On Wednesday, 118 days after Labour won the election, Rachel Reeves will prove Johnson right. In her first budget she will spell out plans to raise an eye-watering sum of about £40bn from tax rises and spending reductions to wipe the slate clean and to pump funds into public services. She will also confirm changes to debt rules that will release up to £50bn more to borrow for long-term investment in new national infrastructure.

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Rachel Reeves will tax businesses to plug £9bn black hole in NHS

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The chancellor is set to announce a revenue-raising budget designed to reset Britain’s public finances

Rachel Reeves is set to use one of the most pivotal budgets of recent times to call on businesses to pay more tax to help restore the NHS, amid warnings that the health service has been left with a £9bn hole in its finances.

The chancellor is expected to stake her reputation on a tax-­raising budget designed as a reset of the public finances. She has already had to deal with cabinet skirmishes over funding unveiled alongside the statement. However, Reeves is understood to believe that the public will accept a multibillion-pound hike in business taxes if it is linked to repairing the health system’s finances.

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Wealth taxes could raise £10bn to help plug Tory budget hole, say economists

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Reforms to inheritance and capital gains taxes could reduce £20bn shortfall and combat UK’s widening wealth gap

Rachel Reeves could quickly find around £10bn a year to plug half of the fiscal hole left by the Conservatives if she were to raise taxes on soaring levels of unearned wealth, according to leading economists.

New research by the independent Resolution Foundation published today finds that Britain is a country of “booming wealth” but “busted wealth taxes”, leaving ample potential for the chancellor of the exchequer to raise desperately needed funds by raising taxes on the richest.

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Tory plans to abolish non-dom status riddled with loopholes, Labour says

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Analysis suggests wealthiest would save millions and Sunak’s own family could benefit to tune of £250m

Conservative plans to abolish non-dom status are riddled with loopholes worth hundreds of millions of pounds for the wealthiest people in the country, Labour has claimed.

Analysis by the party found that the policy, announced by Jeremy Hunt in this month’s budget, could theoretically see Rishi Sunak’s family benefit from tax savings of nearly £250m.

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Rishi Sunak says his ‘working assumption’ is that general election will take place in second half of 2024 – UK politics live

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PM appears to rule out spring election after recent speculation it could be held in May

Starmer says being in opposition is frustrating, and he accuses the Tories of treating it as performance art.

He is now on the passage about his career in public service that was posted earlier. See 9.12am.

If you’ve been breaking your back to keep trading, steering your business through the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, the challenge of Brexit and the chaos of Westminster.

If you’ve been serving our country, whether in scrubs or the uniform of your regiment and what you want now is a politics that serves you, then make no mistake - this is your year.

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Jeremy Hunt faces red wall revolt if he delivers ‘a budget for the rich’

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The chancellor’s potential inheritance tax cut in Wednesday’s budget would aid millionaires amid a cost of living crisis

Jeremy Hunt faces a backlash from “red wall” Tory MPs if he uses a fiscal windfall of up to £20bn to deliver tax cuts for the rich rather than to help ordinary families with the cost of living, the Observer has been told.

The chancellor and Rishi Sunak are this weekend finalising an autumn statement on Wednesday that could include a major reduction in inheritance tax – four-fifths of which would benefit those with more than £1m at their death, according to a new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). Each person with more than £1m would receive an average tax cut of £180,000, the IFS states.

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Scrapping inheritance tax would cost £15bn a year by 2032, says IFS

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Thinktank carried out analysis as calls mount among Tory MPs for the tax to be abolished

Scrapping inheritance tax would cost the government almost £15bn a year in lost revenue by 2032, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that follows calls from Tory MPs for the main tax on inherited wealth to be abolished.

The thinktank said the latest figures from HMRC showed fewer than 4% of estates paid inheritance tax (IHT) in 2020–21, but the rapid growth in wealth among older individuals meant this number was set to rise to more than 7% over the next decade.

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Jeremy Hunt defends pensions giveaway as Labour vows to scrap it

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Shadow chancellor says decision to axe lifetime allowance is ‘wrong priority at the wrong time for the wrong people’

The Labour party has vowed to reverse the chancellor’s £1bn budget pensions tax “gilded giveaway” for the wealthiest 1% if it wins the next general election, as Jeremy Hunt defended his decision to scrap the lifetime pensions allowance.

The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said Labour would seek to force a Commons vote next week on the decision, which critics argue will allow the wealthiest people to put a limitless amount into their pension pots, which can then be passed on to their heirs without paying inheritance tax.

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Labour accuses Sunak family of avoiding tens of millions in taxes

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Chancellor obfuscated while imposing steep tax rises on ordinary Britons, says shadow minister

Rishi Sunak and his family potentially avoided paying tens of millions of pounds in taxes through his wife’s “non-dom” status while the chancellor imposed tax rises on the public, Labour has said.

The chancellor’s wife, Akshata Murty, gave in to mounting pressure on Friday, announcing she would pay UK taxes as Sunak’s position began to appear increasingly tenuous.

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Super-rich prepare to leave UK ‘within minutes’ if Labour wins election

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Wealthy see potential taxes imposed by Jeremy Corbyn as bigger threat than Brexit

The super-rich are preparing to immediately leave the UK if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, fearing they will lose billions of pounds if the Labour leader does “go after” the wealthy elite with new taxes, possible capital controls and a clampdown on private schools.

Lawyers and accountants for the UK’s richest families said they had been deluged with calls from millionaire and billionaire clients asking for help and advice on moving countries, shifting their fortunes offshore and making early gifts to their children to avoid the Labour leader’s threat to tax all inheritances above £125,000.

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