Labour has today released it’s 43-page manifesto document outlining plans to re-nationalise key industries, boost worker’s rights and reverse a number of benefits cuts. Health & social care comes high on the list with £37bn pledged for the NHS, approximately £8bn for social care, a £10/hour minimum wage pledge, 30 hours of free childcare for children between the ages of two and four and university tuition fees to be abolished.
The list of pledges, at a sum of £48.6bn is to be funded almost entirely by tax revenue.
For individuals, those on more than £80,000 will be paying the 45p tax rate and the 50p rate will be applied somewhere just below the £150,000 mark. Meanwhile salaries above £330,000 will command an “excessive pay levy”.
But the biggest proportion is to come from the increase in corporation tax. The rate, currently 19%, would increase by almost a third to its previous level of 26%. That would generate about £19bn.
What does it mean for the small business? For companies with annual profits below £300,000, proposals are to reintroduce a small profits rate at 20% in 2018–19, rising to 21% in 2020–21. So, from April 2020 most profits would be subject to corporation tax at a rate of 26%, substantially higher than the 17% rate that would apply to most profits under the government’s current plan.
The manifesto, the first to be announced by one of the major parties ahead of the 8 June election, also includes:
- The “reasonable management” of immigration and no “bogus targets”
- Building 100,000 affordable homes a year
- Supporting the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system
- Offering an immediate guarantee about the status of EU nationals in the UK
- Refusing to leave the EU with no deal in place
- A review of council tax and business rates, in favour of options such as a land value tax.
