‘We earn £60,000 and want stamp duty scrapped’

There has been plenty of speculation about what the Budget will and won’t include.

Ahead of her speech on Wednesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed both tax rises and spending cuts are on the table.

BBC News has been speaking to people with a range of incomes about what they would like to see in the Budget.

If there are issues you would like to see covered, you can get in touch via Your Voice.

Wesley Thorne, 52, and his wife Toni live near Bristol with their two daughters.

They’d like a bigger house but say stamp duty would add £15,000 to £20,000 to the cost of moving so want that tax scrapped in the Budget.

Stamp duty is a tax due if you buy a property or land over a certain price in England and Northern Ireland.

“To me, that seems like an immoral tax just on having a home,” says Wesley.

He hopes the chancellor will “either scrap stamp duty altogether [or] just apply it to properties on a much higher valuation,” he says.

Wesley and Toni run an online sweet shop and market stall, and are members of the Federation of Small Businesses. They currently pay themselves about £60,000 a year, but that amount can vary.

He says cost pressures have “never been as bad”, adding “we’re hammered from every direction” by skyrocketing sugar and chocolate prices, national minimum wage increases and rises in business rates.

Currently small businesses like Wesley and Toni’s must register to pay VAT if their taxable turnover is over £90,000. Wesley would like that threshold to be higher.

Liam Davidson is a third-year student at the University of Aberdeen.

His student loan gives him a monthly income of £800 and he earns £1,000 a month working at a gym.

After his essential bills, he says he has £200-£250 of disposable income and has noticed food prices continuing to rise.

“Last month I was down to maybe about £50 for the month and there was a week left,” he says.

Under-22s in Scotland get free bus travel and Liam would like that scheme extended to students of all ages and to the rest of the UK.

“I’m spending £40 a week to get to and from uni – it’s cheaper to drive,” he says.

Last month, the government said trialling free bus travel for under-22s in England would be “unaffordable”.

Fatima Tehan Jalloh is a single mum who lives in council housing in north London.

She says she loves her job as a level 4 apprentice construction site supervisor.

She works full-time and her daughter goes to nursery which costs £600 a month.

It’s one of her largest costs, besides rent and bills, and she says the cost of everything has continued to go “up and up”.

Despite that, she feels like she is doing alright and thinks the chancellor should raise taxes and spend more on essential services.

“I would definitely be happy to pay more if I know it was going into schools and social housing would be on the increase,” she says.

Steve Williams is an IT contractor and his wife is a counsellor. They are both self-employed and he estimates they make a combined £150,000 a year.

They live in Basingstoke and both drive electric vehicles (EV).

Steve says he would have no problem with a rumoured EV tax.

“I use the roads, so I should pay for the upkeep of them at the end of the day,” he says.

“You can tax petrol cars on their usage per mile as well, even though talk at the moment is that it is just for electric cars, which is unfair,” Steve says.

Becki Oliver, 34, lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire, with her husband Tim and their two young children.

She works as a PA at an estate agency and says she wants the chancellor to tackle the rising cost of living.

“We can’t go out for meals, we can’t treat the kids; our last holiday was our honeymoon in 2019 – we’ve never been away as a family,” she says.

“I know these things are luxuries, but it would be nice to be able to afford those luxuries given how hard we work.”

Becki says she worries about the state of the NHS after having to take her son to hospital.

She says she would like the chancellor to increase funding for the healthcare system.

“I just think money isn’t being put in the right places,” she says.

“There’s a lot of people in this country, and we need to be looked after.”

Kat Watkins lives in Swansea and works for Disability Wales. Her earnings make up just under two-thirds of her income and she receives universal credit and personal independence payment (Pip).

Kat has osteogenesis imperfecta type 3, known as brittle bone disease, and says she faces higher energy bills as she needs to charge her wheelchair and other equipment.

She spends about £70 a month on insurance and food for her assistance dog, Purdey, and a recent wheelchair service cost her nearly £1,000.

Some months are tough, she says. “Without my Pip, I definitely would struggle a lot more.”

There is speculation that the Budget could include changes to the Motability scheme which helps those with disabilities lease cars.

Kat says she would urge Reeves “not to mess with Motability” as cutting the scheme “is not going to help people to get into work at all”.

Neal Stead and his wife Tara both work in administration – Neal in a contact centre, and Tara at a hospital.

With a combined income of about £100,000 and having paid off the mortgage on their Bradford home, Neal says they don’t have major financial pressures. But at 58, he is concerned about retiring.

“My worry now, as I’m approaching later life, is when can I actually afford to retire? Because the goalpost seems to move,” he says.

He does not want the chancellor to “touch pensions” by changing the tax-free lump sum allowance for withdrawing pension savings.