What do you think of Reform UK's proposed immigration tax?

we need to make the UK utterly horrifying for the low-quality immigrants in the short and long term.

They want to raise the employer national insurance rate to 20% when hiring non British citizens. The NI rate for British citizens would remain at 13.8%.
This is what is said in their manifesto, but I wonder if they would apply this to ALL non British citizens, including those with ILR or settled status. If so, that would definitely violate the withdrawal agreement, so I can only wonder the EU's retaliation. But Nigel Farage is not above ignoring the withdrawal agreement, and he's made that clear.

What a ghoulish thing to say.

The irony is that Reform is it is lead by a man who told us to vote Brexit to reduce net migration.
Instead Brexiters pushed net migration to record levels.

To be fair to Brexit, it wasn't exactly a Brexiters dream to have insane immigration levels. That was the result of one man (Johnson) and his lackies (Tories) bowing to pressure from the markets. Rightly or wrongly I don't think those who voted for Brexit expect to get stabbed in the back like that.

sadly i cannot open the manifesto, but for the sake of argument, let's assume this policy means all non-british citizens as it likely does. granted, reform does sometimes use legal terms they don't really mean. for instance: calling their manifesto a 'contract', when it's not really a contract.
how does increasing the tax burden on employers 'definitely violate' the withdrawal agreement? you have a source that this?
have you considered the obligations under the employment rights act 1996 and the equality act 2010?
aside from that, well employers will do what they always do when faced with increased business expenses, and pass the burden onto employees. offer all new hires lower salaries, including uk citizens, because heck why not. sucks to be anyone in the uk who needs a job above minimal wage, of course, and perhaps the wider economy since employees will have less disposal income to spend it on, but won't change much in terms of the immigration issue.
btw labour raised employer nic to 15% a few months ago, so reform's contract there needs updating.

Because under the agreement, EU citizens with settled status must have the same rights to work as British citizens and not be discriminated.
I'm pretty sure the EU would retaliate if the UK made it harder for resident EU citizens to get a job here

that's what i thought you were going with this, which is why i mentioned the employment rights act 1996 and the equality act 2010.
this doesn't definitely violate the right to work tho. right to work means free from immigration control, ie those under the eu settlement scheme do not need a work visa; they enjoy the ability to apply for any job, pursue self-employment, and access full employment rights and protections as they did before brexit.
and it isn't direct discrimination cuz it's the employer who is is paying the national insurance contribution – not the employee. employees pay the same nic rate as anyone else who works in the uk.
it's up to the employer, then, to comply with era 1996 and eqa 2010. burden is on the employers? does that make sense. happy to elaborate tomorrow if you're up for it.

The withdrawal agreement wasn't just right to work. It was that EU citizens would be treated just like UK citizens in areas including employment, education, health, benefits etc.

There was nothing about Brexit that would address the British economy's dependence on migrant workers. It was obvious to many of us that non-EU migration would increase in the wake of Brexit. Sadly such voices of reason were drowned out by populist nonsense from the likes of Farage. Anyone who voted for Brexit or for the Conservatives in 2019 expecting a different outcome to skyrocketing levels of non-EU immigration did not make an informed decision.
The same goes for small boat crossings.
So it is frustrating that those who voted for the current circumstances are now some of the loudest voices complaining about it. They got what they voted for.

The irony is that Reform is it is lead by a man who told us to vote Brexit to reduce net migration.
Instead Brexiters pushed net migration to record levels.

I'm all for it, with a few carve outs for certain sectors ofc. However, it’s not a solution in itself it’s just part of a solution. Any meaningful solution needs to involve remigration, much stricter immigration requirements, much stricter welfare for immigrants, native engagement, tax breaks and so on. Overall, we need changes that make the UK very desirable for the top-quality immigrants in the short term, while focusing on engaging the native population to fill as many roles as possible long term. Conversely, we need to make the UK utterly horrifying for the low-quality immigrants in the short and long term.

Globalism is not your friend

What a ghoulish thing to say.

I don’t disagree but it misses the key cause. Britain only needs migrant workers because of things like the EU, globalism and immigration. Globalism is not your friend; it is the fundamental force responsible for everything wrong today. The EU was a microcosm of globalisation and like a drug the country became dependant on it, we took away the drug we needed the fix from elsewhere.
There were and are ways to mitigate the reliance on it, (20+% of the native working age population is inactive economically ffs) but they didn’t do that either.
If Reform were to turn off the tap, there will be a withdrawal period like with any drug, but its not the end and the economy will adjust. You don’t fix a drug addict by giving them more drugs.
On the topic of non-EEA immigrants, yes, there would have been a replacement of EU worker with non-EU worker if you didn’t want to adopt the correct long-term strategy of cold turkey, but that doesn’t explain the jump from 80-100k (already too high) up to 1million per year in the Boris wave or the 400k of 2024. The immigration system has been fundamentally broken for a long time; it exacerbates all the issues already being faced and until this is addressed you cant make things better. Then you have the costs of illegal immigration which are just a straight drain, because our system is too soft as a consequence of our own inability to be tough and the supranational like UN, ECHR.
It is all connected.
All this is before you factor in the other hidden costs of social unrest, breakdown of social cohesion, wage stagnation and so on.

I see you've gone down the populist globalist bogeyman route. Meanwhile you've completely overlooked Britain's productivity problem, which the British public spent 14 years voting not just to avoid the issue but actively contributing to it by stifling the nation of investment and reform under the guise of austerity, and our increasing pensioner to worker ratio that is hammering our finances. We're dependent on immigration because we've stuck our heads into the sand about these issues. If you want to see Britain resemble Poundland Japan, turning off immigration without economic reform is good way to go about it. Sadly a lot of mainstream political dialogue focuses on migrants rather than addressing the deeper structural economic problems of Britain.
We wouldn't be facing such high costs of illegal immigration if we hadn't voted to take back control of our borders. That caused boat crossings to skyrocket. Those "asylum seekers" are no longer the EU's problem. If Brexit voters had any sense of personal responsibly, they'd be picking up the hotel bills but instead it falls to mugs like me.