Autumn Budget 2021: investors split between cut taxes, raise taxes, leave tax alone

A significant 40% of respondents to our poll want Rishi Sunak to focus on doing social good.

• Chancellor between a rock and a hard place but a significant 40% of respondents want Rishi Sunak to focus on doing social good
• A quarter of respondents want Rishi Sunak to cut tax - either income tax or possibly scrap business rates.

interactive investor research, conducted between Friday 22 October and Monday 25 October among 2,751 website visitors, highlights what a difficult job Rishi Sunak has to please everyone – and balance the books.

Asked what they would most like Sunak to do, there was an even split between respondents: cut taxes, raise taxes, leave tax alone, green initiatives and care funding.

Lee Wild, head of Equity Strategy, interactive investor, says: “What’s interesting from the responses is the very even spread across a number of the possible policy decisions covering treatment of tax, green initiatives and care funding. It demonstrates what a difficult job chancellor Rishi Sunak has pleasing everyone in this Budget.

“We all have our reasons for preferring particular fiscal policies, but what stands out is that over 40% of respondents in this survey want to do some social good. This selfless and altruistic bunch would like to see more money for either the care sector, greater incentives for green initiatives or higher taxes to pay off the UK’s pandemic debt.”

The research

While 16% of investors want taxes leaving alone for the rest of this Parliament, and 15% want taxes cut to give the economy a boost, some 14% want to see taxes rise to pay for the pandemic. A further 14% want to see extra funding for the long-suffering care sector.  And with an impending COP26, and a climate emergency, some 12% want to see more green initiatives. And on the wish list for 8.5% of respondents was the preservation of the lifetime allowance on pension contributions.

Some 25% of respondents want Rishi Sunak to cut tax - either income tax or possibly scrap business rates.

In terms of social good/social responsibility, 40.1% of respondents would like to see more money for either the care sector, more incentives for green initiatives or higher taxes to pay of the UK’s pandemic debt.

Apart from a whacky plea to “Hand over Cornwall to the grey squirrels”, there were plenty of ideas suggested in ‘Other’. Among the most popular were requests to scrap inheritance tax and simplify the country’s tax system.