Latest news with #ChancellorOfTheExchequer
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Why UK Tax Hikes Loom as Reeves Looks to Plug Fiscal Black Hole
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is heading into a difficult autumn budget as economists make a common prediction: tax rises are in store. Reeves had said she'd stabilized the country's finances at her inaugural budget last year, when she increased levies by £40 billion ($54.2 billion) to fund extra spending on public services and fill a budget hole left by the previous Conservative government.
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
UK's Reeves Seeks Fresh Planning Overhaul in Growth Push
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans for another overhaul of Britain's planning rules, in a bid to speed up the delivery of infrastructure and boost economic growth. Reeves has asked officials to consider options for a potential new planning bill, with measures including raising the bar at which infrastructure projects can be challenged by judicial review and limiting the number of legal challenges any project can face, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not be named discussing internal conversations. The plans were reported earlier by the Financial Times.
Wall Street Journal
22-07-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
U.K. Government Will Stick to Budget Rules, Treasury Chief Says
The U.K. government will continue to stick to its budget rules despite a series of challenges that include big changes in geopolitics and trade, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said Tuesday. Figures released earlier in the day showed the government's June borrowing was the second highest for that month on record, exceeded only in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic pushed government spending sharply higher and lowered tax revenues.
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gordon Brown Redux? UK Reportedly Mulls Sale of £5B in Bitcoin
Led at the time by Gordon Brown, the U.K.'s Chancellor of the Exchequer in the period from 1999-2002 famously sold off about half of the country's gold reserves at what turned out to be a generational bottom of roughly $275 per ounce for the yellow metal. In a bit more than two decades since, the price of gold has risen roughly 12-fold to its current $3,350 per ounce, the U.K. thus missing out on a substantial windfall. Is the sceptered Isle about to repeat that mistake? Facing the need to come up with as much as £20 billion this year to narrow the government budget gap, Rachel Reeves — the country's current Chancellor of the Exchequer — is eyeing the sale of what might be £5 billion or more in seized bitcoin (BTC), according to a weekend article in The Telegraph. While it's uncertain how much bitcoin the government controls, the Telegraph report noted one raid in 2018 recovered 61,000 Bitcoin from the proceeds of a Chinese Ponzi scheme. At the current price of roughly £90,000, that would be worth more than £5 billion. Differences between the Brown gold sale and the current possible bitcoin sale abound. Most importantly is the stage of the cycle. Bitcoin might go way up, way down, or remain flat from here, but — ahead 75% year-over-year and more than 1,000% over the past five years — the price is at anything but a generational bottom the way gold was at the turn of the century. Sign in to access your portfolio
Bloomberg
17-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
UK Jobs Hit from Reeves' Budget Tax Hike Less Severe Than Feared
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves' first budget appears to have cost fewer jobs than previously estimated, casting fresh doubt over the state of the British labor market after a string of data issues in recent years. Tax data from the Office for National Statistics on Thursday showed the number of employee payrolls fell again in June by 41,000 to the lowest in almost two years. However, they declined just 25,000 in May, rather than the 109,000 drop previously estimated, with prior months also revised lower.
