Grinch Rachel Reeves has introduced a wave of tax rises in her Grim Reaper Budget
The Chancellor’s brutal Budget hikes to fund £30billion will include a mansion tax on expensive homes, 20% VAT slapped on private taxi fares and a £3billion raid on pensions
Grinch Rachel Reeves has announced a wave of tax rises in her Grim Reaper Budget of broken promises.
The Chancellor confirmed she will tax everything from work, pensions and houses to taxis, milkshakes, betting and hotel stays.
Her brutal hikes to fund £30billion will include a mansion tax on expensive homes, 20% VAT slapped on private taxi fares and a £3billion raid on pensions.
There’s also a 3p-a-mile levy for electric cars, tax hikes on betting firms, slashing the ISA saving limit and a revaluation on high council tax bands.
Workers will be hit with a stealth £8bn raid as tax thresholds are frozen to 2030, while the two-child benefit cap will be scrapped. Tourists face paying a £2 a night levy for hotel stays and duty on fags and booze will go up by at least 4%.
In scant good news, drivers will see the fuel duty freeze continue and rail fares will be frozen for the first time in 30 years. And the average annual energy bill will be cut £150 from April by reducing green levies that make electricity pricier than gas.
But she failed to scrap the 5% VAT on gas and electricity.
Influential economic think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), accused the chancellor of breaking a key Labour manifesto commitment on taxes by freezing income tax thresholds. The think tank’s director Helen Miller said: “As the Chancellor acknowledged, it clearly represents a tax rise on working people.
“A grand tax-reforming Budget, this certainly was not. The Chancellor continues to show no real appetite for using tax reform to boost growth.”
Ruth Curtice, chief executive at the Resolution Foundation think tank, called it “extending Britain’s biggest stealth tax rise”.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Millions of workers are being forced to live hand to mouth, surviving rather than living. Communities are being ground down by surging energy bills and baked in high food prices, while at the same time profits soar.
“Energy companies have made over £30 billion in profits, costing households £500, while supermarkets led by Tesco – which made £3.1 billion – are coining it in. The Chancellor has picked a side. Health workers, engineers, and tanker drivers will pay through stealth taxes, while city bankers and billionaires go largely unscathed.”
Mean Ms Reeves says “ordinary people” will have to pay “a little bit more” as she defended her Budget tax rises. She said: “This Labour Government is changing our country.
“In the face of challenges on our productivity, I will grow our economy through stability, investment and reform. I’ve met my fiscal rules and built our economic resilience for the future.
“I have asked everyone to contribute, yes, for the security of our country and the brightness of its future. But I have kept that contribution as low as possible by reforming our tax system making it fairer and stronger for the future.
“Those are my choices. Not austerity, not reckless borrowing, but cutting the debt, cutting waiting lists, cutting the cost of living. Those are the Labour choices. Promised and delivered by this Government.”
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