Preparing your finances for a Labour government (or not)
A good few people say they are happy to pay more tax. They are about to get their chance. If that's not you, there are a few things you might want to do over the next 6 weeks.
Regular listeners to the Merryn Talks Money podcast will not have been surprised to find out that the next general election is to be on July 4th. The rather brilliant Helen Thomas forecast the exact date when she was on last month (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-25/will-britain-have-a-surprise-summer-election-ex-conservative-adviser-sees-risk?srnd=merryn-talks-money-podcast). Others may be slightly thrown to find they are likely to have a Labour government rather sooner than expected. What does that mean for your money? Hard to tell. Lots of promises have been made (no income tax rises etc) but any new government could easily find that things are so much worse than they thought that said promises must be abandoned. Standard political stuff. That said we do know some things - and with that in mind there are a few things you can do to mitigate some possible tax rises.
You will need to take advice on much of this but if the age at which you can start to withdraw your personal pension might rise, you might want to take it when you can. If the pension annual allowance might fall perhaps you should top up while you still can. You can also make a start at taking capital gains earlier rather than later and, if you are a landlord, thinking about how to manage rent controls. More on all these things in our emergency election podcast here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-24/podcast-what-kind-of-fireworks-does-labour-have-planned-for-july-4?srnd=merryn-talks-money-podcast
And more on tax mitigation in my latest column here (subscription to Bloomberg needed for this one). https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-05-24/uk-election-protecting-your-assets-from-a-labour-government?utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_content=view&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter