Tag Archives: stamp duty

While it was right for Jeremy Hunt in his statement on Monday to cancel £32bn of the mini-budget it was wrong to end in April 2023 the energy cap price freeze. It is predicted that the energy price will now increase to £4,347 in April 2023. This is an increase of 73.9% which is much higher than the 54.2% increase of April this year which might have been the cause of the 2% increase in inflation in April. Therefore by ending the energy cap price freeze inflation might increase by 3% in April 2023. Jeremy Hunt stated that the energy cap price freeze would have reduced inflation by 5%.

If the support is only for the poorest in society then average households will have to find £2247. For someone on average earnings of £32,084 this is about 8.7% of their net earnings. Most people can’t afford to find 8.7% of their salary to pay for energy on top of the general inflation rate in the economy of over 10%. These pressures on household income even without the Bank of England increasing interest rates making them worse will lead to an economic recession possibly in the region of a 5% decline in the size of the economy.

Jeremy Hunt has talked of public spending cuts and this will have a further adverse effect on the economy. He should have gone further with the mini-budget reversals and cancelled the changes to Stamp Duty, the increase in the Annual Investment Allowance to £1 million, and the wider reforms to investment taxes which next year would have increased government revenue by £3.8bn and more after that according to government figures.