Starmer to urge world to ‘wake up’ to severity of illegal migration threat at Glasgow’s Interpol meeting
Sir James Dyson, the entrepreneur, has written an article for the Times today accusing the government of “spiteful” changes to inheritance tax rules.
Farmers are furious because farms used to be exempt from inheritance tax, but under changes announced in the budget the 100% agricultural property relief (the exemption) will no longer apply on farms worth more than £1m. The government is also changing the rules on business property relief, which means that some shares in family businesses will no longer be exempt from inheritance tax.
It beggars belief that Labour proudly boasts of trying to attract foreign investment, while at the same time eviscerating homegrown businesses. [Chancellor Rachel] Reeves killing off business property relief (originally introduced by a Labour government in 1976 and reinforced by the Brown government with entrepreneurs’ relief) means that British families are landed with an unpayable tax bill every time an owner dies.
Yet companies operating here but owned by overseas families won’t have to pay Labour’s tax. Private equity-owned firms won’t pay. Public companies listed on stock markets won’t pay. No, it is just homegrown, British family companies that will pay. This is a tragedy.
I think this was a budget that had to do three things. It had to deal with the public finance chaos that we inherited and had to put the public finances back on track. That’s fixing the foundations as Rachel has described it. Also make sure that we’ve got plans to boost growth for the future … And then thirdly, to make sure that we can start to repair the deep damage to our public services and particularly our national health service, which I am deeply worried about.
In order to do all of those things and to deal with that inherited chaos that we had, that has meant some difficult decisions, including on employers’ national insurance contributions. But it’s also been done in a way to protect people’s pay slips and you’ve got no increase in the national insurance for employees. Continue reading…
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