Wales considers 25pc income tax cut to tackle ‘brain drain’ crisis

17 comments

1. Uhm, nice, but Wales needs to have worthwhile jobs. North Wales definitely needs a city.

2. Great, we could do with a bit of fiscal competition within the Union.

3. So will this proposal result in an equivalent cut in the Welsh Government budget? If so it seems counter intuitive as it will reduce funding for public services.

   Or will it just result in a cut to the money going to HMRC while the Welsh Government budget remains the same?

   Either way its going to be a tough sell considering there is a big hole in the public finances at the moment.

4. Sums up this country. We have record population levels…record immigration levels…yet we still battle depopulation.

   It’s almost like the country is far too focussed on…London and one or two other places

5. Sound interesting until you realise it’s less brain drain and more welsh language nationalism. If they did something like this, from what the article says, it’d be for welsh speakers only. Because they’re the only people who matter to Plaid and much of our welsh leadership. Que us all lying to say how much welsh we speak.

6. Needs to be a 100% cut. I already pay income tax to the UK government.

7. Chris Etherington, of tax firm RSM, doubted whether tax breaks are the way to go. He said: “It’s clear that tax can be a significant motivator for people to move away from a country, so in theory the opposite could be true, but there is limited evidence to demonstrate this is effective.

   “Care would also need to be taken to ensure that any such policies are not subject to abuse and target the right people.”

   I’m all for evidenced-based policy making but this is the sort of nonsense that gives it a bad name.
   1. If people move to be paid more or pay less tax (and they do in their millions), then you clearly don’t need to waste time and money collecting data that specifically illustrates that people don’t move if they are paid more/taxed less where they already are.
   2. The state ‘taking care’ that tax policies are not taken advantage of by ‘the wrong people’ is the classic mistake the British state always makes and routinely ends up cutting off its nose to spite its face by devising massively over-complex, watered down incentives that achieve nothing, because the 1st principle is not ‘This must work as intended’ but ‘This Must Not Benefit Anyone Not Specifically Intended’.

8. This sounds like an interesting policy, but would it be particularly impactful? A 25% reduction in income tax for an employee on 30k will increase take home pay by about 875 per year. That’s nice in general, but is that enough to overcome the high paying job opportunities available in larger cities elsewhere in the UK?

9. While I understand the economic idea – lower taxes in areas you want to encourage people to live in – they seem to be coming at this from a preservation of the Welsh language perspective. Wouldn’t this encourage wealthy English, Northern Irish, and especially Scottish people to move to Wales? And those native residents earning poverty wages will still be incentivised to move out to seek better employment.

   I left, initially abroad and then to England, and back then minimum wage earners barely paid taxes anyway. And all the jobs available were minimum wage, and you were lucky if they were full time.

   I’m not saying it’s a *bad* idea to attract wealthy residents to your tax haven, but they seem to want to use it exclusively to incentivise people who are barely tax payers to stay.

10. Just implement UBI funded by a single land tax (Georgism) and solve all your problems immediately.

11. As an Welsh, I would love for it to be this simple. However, as a Product Development Engineer (specifically automotive, but transferable skills), I’d be hard pushed to find a job in Wales that a) wasn’t in the South, and b) paid an equivalent salary, even with the tax break. Now if there were robust WFH protections, an investment in the communications infrastructure throughout North and Mid-Wales, and a tax incentive for employers to base employees in the country, you might see more people sticking around.

    For context, of my ~100 classmates (left Sixth Form in 2008), only 2 that I’m aware of still live in Mid-Powys, and that’s due to them inheriting their family farms.

12. HMRC charging my retail-working ass a further £200 for not having paid enough tax(always been paye) ☠️☠️

13. Having read the article, wouldn’t this policy attract wealthier people rather than the young welsh?

    If I was a young welsh person looking to start my career, I’d still leave Wales despite the tax cut because one, I wouldn’t be paying that much anyways, and two, the job opportunities that London and other parts of the country provides are huge.

14. Ireland is pretty much the only country in the western world to not have a budget deficit (apart from a couple of oil countries, like Norway). Ireland has a budget surplus of ~3% of GDP, compared with the UK’s ~4% deficit. By not having a deficit, they then don’t have to pay interest on their debit which creates a virtuous cycle.

    How are they able to run public services at a surplus? With low tax rates. The corporation tax rate means that every serious company, investment fund etc. incorporates in Ireland. Profits made around the world are funneled through Ireland and the Irish government takes a cut. They do special deals with major companies for even lower rates.

    If Wales chopped income tax rates any business kind of near the border would look at relocating. Particularly if people can WFH from England 4 days a week. Income tax isn’t as helpful as corporation tax as it’s harder to move people around than money, but it’s a start.

15. Do you want Cardiff to become a tech hub? Add in a nice corporate tax scheme and that’s how you achieve it.

16. If they are going to do this there needs to be a cutoff point. Make it so you pay full taxes once you are at £75k or something. Otherwise it’ll just be abused by CEOs all moving into those areas which brings its own problems.

17. Even if this did come in I don’t think it would work. The people who want a career aren’t going to stay and work in the local supermarket just because they aren’t going to pay as much tax. People leave areas due to the lack of good jobs.