Jezza budget special, meh but early retirees watch yer class II NI

Jezza’s at it again. Much is made of a 2pc drop in National Insurance, which is all very well but given the £12570 tax threshold was frozen since 2021 and would now be worth £14874 you’re paying £400 more in tax anyway. Sure, every little helps as they say. You have to be earning £21k¹ before the 2% knocked off NI beats out the increased tax you pay due to fiscal drag.

A gotcha that FI aspirants may be in for is the final abolishment of Class II NI contributions. I had feared this since Nick Clegg’s crew had this in their gunsights pretty much as I retired. The devil is going to be in the detail I don’t have.

If you’re lucky, declaring as self-employed for a year would get you a paid-up year of NI subs for free rather than the £150 I paid, in which case I paid more than I needed to. I had seven years to make up. I can’t argue with that, I got 97% off what an annuity of equivalent value would have cost.

If you’re unlucky, there will be a minimum profit requirement to get those NI credits, in which case you will be SOL unless you meet that profit requirement. This was articulated in 2015.

the 2015 profits test. Freeloading self employed need not apply. This never happened, but you can see the thinking, qualifying years accrued at a profit of 52*LEL, which is £120 pw = £6240 p.a.

Historically this was £6725 in which case freeloading mustelids would have been given the order of the boot. It’ll be Class III voluntary or nothing, and they come in at £17.45 pw. Since only full years of NI count, that’ll be 900 sods, which is a bit more than Class II was at about ~£150. I am glad I have done with this. Presumably all of a sudden people who were on a low income or even nil will start to make £6240, which at least is safely below the personal allowance 😉

The Great British ISA never turned up. Shame, as I would have used it to get more ISA capacity, I could have displaced some UK stuff out of my normal ISA, things like ITs, since index fund ETFs are usually domiciled in Ireland so they don’t count. Oh well.

I am glad sense prevailed and the tax giveaway for rich bastards otherwise known as reducing inheritance tax has been dropped for now. I guess it’s not a good look what with the cost of living crisis and increasing destitution, even if the torygraph will be disappointed.

Oi, furriners, keep your filthy paws off the Tory Party house newspaper

Taking of which, WTF is this with the gov toying with stopping furriners buying the Telegraph? I thought Brexit Britain was open for business? Seriously, that media ownership boat sailed many years ago, when Thatcher lifted the restrictions on foreign media ownership in the 1980s, giving the Digger the nod on the QT in 1981. Which is why we have such a rabid yellow press in thrall to money now.

Sure, people of a certain age will remember when it was in thrall to the unions, and indeed Murdoch published this love letter to Thatcher in appreciation for, ahem, services rendered back in the day. So I am genuinely surprised by all the pearl-clutching. The Torygraph is but a pale shadow of its former self, all it seems to do these days is bang on about inheritance tax. ChatGPT seems to be doing the work in the newsroom as it is, take a bow² Harry Brennan on the tragedy of the impecunious Rich Kids of London.

Wot, no IHT abolition?

Disregarding the issues associated with favouring some rugrats over others, there’s a perfectly good way to favour the fruit of your loins without suffering the non-indiginities of being taxed six-foot under. If the HMRC come rapping on your coffin then crack the old lid a tad and tell them to eff off. Not in a position to do that due to being terminally indisposed? Well in that case not your problem, mate. The specific combination of death and taxes just doesn’t happen. It’s the lucky recipients that get to pay it, and if they are your spawn then typically only over £1mn. If they have that much then the kids are all right.

I reckon this one is gonna be served up as a a straight pre-election bribe, to keep all the old fossils in line and their undeserving rugrats too. You don’t want to shoot your load too soon, eh, Jezza?

Shame about that dispiriting growth forecast, eh? They may as well do the Dubya thang and say

this sucker could go down

Meanwhile, our friends across the Pond, who let’s face it have an orange ball of hatred spinning up for a second bite of the cherry, took time to tap their heads wistfully and wonder WTAF is going on with a small offshore island with no captain at the controls, in office but not in power. Rum old world, innit?

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1. Plus of course the extra NI you pay, but computing NI is the devil of a job so I didn’t bother qualifying that ↩
2. I’m not charging Hezza with inaccuracy about his article on the dire straits that the rich spenders of London. It’s the epic due diligence fail  in his citation of the book Uncomfortably Off, where a quick butcher’s hook at the publisher’s rubric on Amazon with the deathless social justice text “this book explains why, even if you are relatively near the top, it is in your interest that inequality is reduced and you can help make that happen” might have indicated to the old brain cell that the thesis of this book may not please his readers’ fur. Chat GPT is evil like that. I asked it to tell me something good about stoats, and it started referring to New Zealand websites. The highly invasive species known as New Zealanders have a really bad attitude to stoats on the grounds that stoats chomp their lazy good-for-nothing flightless birds, which is fair enough IMO, the whole point of being a bird is flight, and stoats have gotta eat, it’s not like they swam the Pacific ocean. ChatGPT has the same respect for truth and guidance as Boris Johnson, it’s always good to be aware of the character of your journalistic sources, and incorrigible liar/stochastic parrot isn’t a good look there. ↩