Labour Govt Future Tax Policy

Broken off from Conservative Party Manifesto thread (Mods plz move relevant posts in if you think fit!)

Basic background - the outcome of the initial Labour spending review indicates a c£20bn annual shortfall. Around 1/3rd of this will be reduced by reducing spending on large projects, covering the remaining 2/3rds is expected to be from a mixture of sources including some tax rises.

No details at all are known, however based on Labour ruling out changes to income tax, VAT & NI, it's expected that the most likely taxes that may be changed are capital gains tax, and pension reliefs. Any further detail beyond this is unknown so far.

Ok Wired - as a starter on your comment:

"Some of the actions included moving investments from commercial vehicles to non-commercial vehicles (if you get my drift)."

Others have been to shift investments overseas (to safer havens) and away from what they consider to be ‘at risk’ asset classes.

My friend’s papa is also in finance and he divested some of his holdings in risky UK industries when Labour’s lead was baked in several months ago."

None of those changes would affect CGT or pension liabilities, so if your family are making these sorts of changes it's for reasons that have nothing to do with the new government.

If an industry in the UK is risky it's almost certainly because the *industry* itself is risky, nothing to do with the change in government. Labour have put out a pretty consistent pro-growth message and markets and the city have responded pretty positively.

There is absolutely no chance that financial or other professional advisers are classifying the UK as a politically high risk jurisdiction, no chance at all. As for tax risk, the UK remains on the lower side for our peer nations, even if there were substantial increases this would still only take the UK to a "normal" level.