There’s much speculation about ‘how we’re going to pay for all this’. You can bet HMRC are going to be called on to rake in as much as they can in the next few years, and IR35 is back on their list of priorities. Its principle is that anyone supposedly self-employed and working for one person is actually an employee. It’s been around for ages but has been really difficult to enforce; in fact, HMRC lost a court challenge on it just last week. And its strict enforcement will impact what some call the ‘gig economy’, others (IDS again) the ‘flexible working practices which make us the envy of the rest of Europe’. So we’ll see.
“Rachel Reeves may be forced to raise taxes”
Why did she/they (in the old sense) think that tinkering around with IHT and CGT would be enough to sort out the NHS; and the potholes; and…and the list goes on. My guess is that they asked the Treasury for a list of anything not involving income tax that they could get away with lightly, although they should already have learned from the winter fuel stuff that all publicity is not good publicity.