The Guardian’s subs could still improve
We’ve never been quite sure whether The Guardian did, once, manage to misspell its own name on the masthead of an issue or whether that’s one of those urban legends. Things have improved since then but perhaps further work would help:
UK high street bosses urge chancellor to cut cost of employing young people
Retailers call on John Healey to reduce national insurance contributions threshold in his first budget
That is not what is being urged, no. Rather, the desire is that the threshold be raised. Perhaps that’s not actually the subs at fault there, just the usual journalists and numbers thing:
At the No 11 event on Tuesday morning, the chancellor heard from sector leaders – including the boss of Marks & Spencer, Stuart Machin, and Sainsbury’s chief executive, Simon Roberts – about the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions (Nics).
Businesses want a partial reversal of the surprise move by Healey’s predecessor, Rachel Reeves, who lowered the earnings threshold at which they start to pay Nics from £9,100 to £5,000 a year. They argue the change contributed to the plunge in the number of high street jobs for young people and part-time workers and a rise in youth unemployment.
Lowering the threshold increases the tax bill that results from hiring young people. Therefore increasing it will reduce that cost and so, we’d all assume, increase the number employed.
As to the actual policy yes, of course the threshold should be raised. Given that Alan Milburn’s musing over how we require a pre-apprenticeship scheme to deal with no one being willing to hire apprentices given the government imposed costs of doing so an alleviation of those tax costs would be a very welcome return to some sort of contact with reality. Except, well, you know, for that raging thirst for ever yet more money for politics to spend. Or even more widely. We’ve seen a claim that the UK has the fastest rising youth unemployment rate in Europe. Any increase in the costs of employing people will be felt, first and worst, by the young, untrained and untried. So, yes, of course alleviate that burden.
For why would you tax people for doing what you want people to be doing - employing people?
Tim Worstall