230. Dan Neidle on how Reeves’ tax reforms will work

0:10Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me Steph McGovern. And with me Robert Perston and we're delighted to have one of our favourite guests, tax expert, all round good egg, Dan Needle with us. And we were always keen to have you on because, you know, we've been preparing for this blooming budget for months. and the budget turns out to be even more. I mean, people use the word smorgasbord. Is smorgasbord the right way to describe the dizzying number of tax changes? No, no. Smorgsbord's this elegant Scandinavian thing of neatly arranged morsels that you eat in a particular order. This is a mad Las Vegas buffet where someone walks around drunkenly, grabs stuff randomly, shoves it on the plate.

0:59And without mad, I suppose the question we want to ask you in general, is given that it is a mad Las Vegas buffet, how much of what we eat tonight is going to make us sick? Well, the good news is you're eating very little tonight, but in 2029, you're getting stuffed. I love this analogy. But that point about this is the backloading we were talking about, isn't it? What are your thoughts on that, Dan, and the fact that a lot of these tax rises come in so far into the term? So I go back and forth on this. One possibility is that it's simply the way the OBR scoring worked, and this is how it adds up.

1:36What do you mean by that? Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. She decided what she wanted to spend. The OBR calculations, projections meant the headroom. That plus a headroom means she needed to raise tax in a certain way. And that profile happened to end up looking like this. So this is the result rather than the cause. But I think that's probably wrong. I think probably the reason is simpler, that once you've ruled out increasing individual taxes, which they've done, you're left with complicated technical changes and complicated new taxes. And those take time. People forget how long it takes to create a new tax.

2:10Sugar tax, super easy tax paid by about a dozen companies, took two years to come in. So that's why we're seeing mansion tax taking years to come in. That's why we're seeing the salary sacrifice not going to be until 2029. Electric vehicles as well is another really tricky one to work out how you're going to do it. Exactly. It's another consequence of their foolish promises during the election that even if they wanted to raise lots of tax now, they kind of can't. Let's just talk about something like this reform to the tax or national insurance status of pension contributions, these salary sacrifice schemes.

2:51Why can't you just say to companies, by the way, as of next April, you're going to be charged nationally? I don't understand why that one is regarded as so complicated. But broadly, they're simply saying national insurance will be charged on pension contributions if you go the salary sacrifice route. I mean, that seems really easy. Why don't you just do it? It does, doesn't it? And my immediate reaction when I saw it is, oh, they deliberately pushed that out for political reasons. But asking around, it seems that the payroll stuff really is very complicated. Lots of ancient computer systems need to be creaked into gear and changed.

3:34And it does take a long time. So apparently that is real. Yeah. I mean, there's loads of other things coming in for businesses as well at the minute with like making tax digital. And, you know, you can understand that you can't just do a switch and everything changes for them. But this one's complicated by two things. You're going to have£2 ,000 a year. What happens if you change jobs in the middle of the year, as I guess most people will? How does your new employer find out what your inherited maximum is? And the second complication is if you end up contributing too much, if that happens with income tax, so you make too big an income tax, too big a pension contribution, then it can be corrected in your self-assessment.

4:15There's no such thing as national insurance self-assessment. Your employer has to do it. And all this makes it complicated. And then there's the other point which I'm gripped by, which is if people continue to have their contributions paid by companies on their behalf, as they do under the salary sacrifice approach, and that then incurs national insurance. What about more conventional pension arrangements? How do you how on earth can you force companies to pay national insurance on one set of pension contributions and not on all the other pension contributions they make for employees who are not in salary sacrifice schemes?

5:00It is super weird. It's super weird. Imagine Robert working for a company where they make a six percent pension contribution a year deductible for national insurance purposes. Steph works for a company that makes eight percent. Robert decides he's going to make another two percent contribution this year by salary sacrifice. No, no, no. No national insurance deduction for that, even though it would just put him in the same position as Steph. So I have to distinguish, I expect, between what's in your employment contract and what's a discretionary top up. To understand that, then, does that mean you could formally reduce the amount you put in in a salary sacrifice and then top it up yourself to avoid the national insurance on it on the greater amount?

5:40No, because once salary sacrifice goes, you'll still be able to make pension top ups yourself or indeed get a sip, put money in the sip. You don't get a national insurance deduction for that. That's with your post national insurance wages. The reason that the reason the salary sacrifice was so efficient is because companies do not make national insurance contributions on their pension contributions. So the way that it, I mean, it's sort of, I always thought it looked a bit like a scam, except HMRC accepted it. You know, broadly, there was this sort of weird situation where you would basically say, rather than the employee making a pension contribution, the amount they would have put in would be put in by their company.

6:28And at that point, there's no national insurance liability. Whereas if the employee had put the money in, there would have been a national insurance liability. Do you see the issue? And that's for an employee, that's a saving of 2 % if they're a higher additional rate payer, 8 % if they're a basic rate payer. But for the employer, it's 15 % employer national insurance, which is big money. Yeah. And as we keep saying, Dan, what are your thoughts on encouraging people to save less, though? Because they just think, well, I'm not getting the tax incentive. So what's the point? I mean, at the margins, that must be right.

7:01I'm not sure that's a macro problem, because if you're someone for whom salary sacrifice is available, then by definition, you're working for a fairly big firm that will have a pension for you. Yeah. I mean, it seems to be that this is the one of the deferred tax increases where I really wonder whether when it comes to it, it'll actually be implemented. Because, you know, this is a genuine tax, effectively, on, you know, Keir Starmer's favourite group of people, the working people. Are they really going to put that in around the time of a general election? I mean, that just is nuts, isn't it? Yeah, but if they don't, they will then need to find in 2930 about 5 billion quid, which is real money.

7:46Can I ask you a bit about the council tax surcharge, Dan? Because just to remind everyone, this is to be applied to homes worth more than 2 million pounds coming in from April 2028. I saw on Twitter you were suggesting maybe it's a good idea. Is that fair or you've probably got a lot to say on this? Yeah, I think it's a good idea. I think it's wrong that someone in a£100 million penthouse pays the same council tax as someone in a£2 million flat, or indeed someone in a£100 million penthouse only pays twice as much as someone in a very average, in a mathematically average house. So that's wrong.

8:25And it makes sense to have more council tax bans. Problem is council tax is based off 1991 valuations. Politicians are terrified of revaluation. So they can't just add more bans. They've had to create something new and different on top of council tax. The interesting thing about council tax as well is, is that, you know, the argument can sometimes be, well, hang on. It's about the services you get. And, you know, I don't have more bins than somebody with a much cheaper home. but it's much more than that, isn't it? This money, a lot of it goes into social care. So it feels right that people who've got assets worth more money should contribute more to social care.

9:03Yeah, I mean, council tax just doesn't do what it used to do and what I think I always assumed it did. It doesn't much pay for local services. About three-quarters of it is about social care. How we've ended up in the position that something that should be nationally funded and run is run by councils and funded by council tax. I have no clue. I guess that's Robert's territory. But the other thing about this, this kind of home's worth more than two million, it then stops at five million, doesn't it? So if you've got a house that's worth 20 million or whatever else, then you're only paying the same as someone who's got a five million home.

9:34I mean, literally anyone who's got a home worth over two million pounds has got a lot of money. But there's a big disparity there at the other end of the really rich, isn't there? I think we could easily be into a sort of situation where it's, you know, the opposite of the grass is always greener. You know, I think there are lots of parts of the world where, you know, literally next to each other, you get roads where houses are definitely over two million. And then next to them, there are roads that look quite similar, but for reasons that are never quite clear, the value is under two million.

10:07You could just imagine, you know, that the inhabitants of one of those roads sort of basically either bellyaching to the valuers or trying to shop their neighbours about the, you know, the extension they put on the back, which maybe has been done illegally. You know what I mean? It's going to be, this is going to drive communities apart in my view. Yeah. Also, already I've noticed, because I love a good look on the old right move for a bit of property porn, and already you've seen those kind of properties that were around the two million mark suddenly go down to like 1.7, 1.8. Right. Yeah. So this is, if there's any economist PhD students listening, this is your chance, boys and girls.

10:52Someone should look at what happened on right move the day before, the day after the budget. In a rational world, what should happen is when you are absolutely firmly, let's say, in the two to two and a half million category and there's no dispute about it, presumably the price of that property should be reduced by, you know, I don't know, you just look at the stream of payments over the next 30 years and you discount them. and you just take the money off the sale price for the additional council tax you'll have to pay in real terms. Isn't that right? Isn't that what should happen in a rational world?

11:36If I'm a human calculating machine, then when I buy a£5 million house, I should be doing a net present value calculation on that stream of 7 ,500 payments. Depending on where my discount value is, that means the value of the£5 million house has dropped by between£200 ,000 and£300 ,000. but but people don't necessarily behave like that particularly if i'm buying a five million house i'm paying 500 000 pounds of stamp duty if i'm paying 500 000 pounds of stamp duty am i really going to spend a second thinking about a seven and a half thousand pound bill don't know again it's something economists will have lots of fun looking at it's a really interesting question but But it could also drive up the price of properties just below the threshold so that they remain just below the threshold.

12:25Because, you know, if you're thinking that you can't afford the increment, you know, the new so-called mansion tax, but you want a house in the same area that's sort of similar, you might be prepared to pay a bit more for the sort of cheaper house that doesn't quite get you into the mansion tax category. I mean, I don't think that, you know, the cash flow calculation could work in a positive rather than a negative basis, if you see what I mean. This is all melt in my head now. Yeah, so I'm melted too. That's both interesting and mad. Yeah, but think about it. Think about human nature. Think about human nature.

13:02You would be prepared to pay for a bit more for a property that doesn't incur the mansion tax, if you see what I mean, but is similar to the one that does. Pay extra for this house. Yeah, but why would you pay more for it? Why? Because it's a similar property to the one down the road that's just over, but you don't incur the mansion tax. You pay up to the two million or you pay up to the two and a half million because there'll be people who will want a property that doesn't quite tip over. Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems rational to me. My head's too melted by that. I'm going to refuse to respond.

13:38We'll get somebody cleverer than you on then, Dan. That sounds a great idea. If that's possible. I'm not sure that is possible. Dan, what's the thing that stood out to you most that you feel the kind of most strongly on? I'm going to slightly also tweak that, which is when I talked to you about it on the day, the thing that you were most angry about was no radical reform. Are you still angry about that? Yeah, I am angry. We've got a government that says they're committed to growth. We've now had two budgets with no pro-growth tax form. there are so many things you could do and they need to even cost any money you could reform vat you could fix the ridiculously small vat base and cut the rate at the same time wouldn't cost anything you could reform capital gains tax so the super rich pay more and yet there's more incentive for proper long-term investment reform corporation tax stop it being so bloody complicated reform income tax stop the marginal rates that that deter growth that put people off working and so on and so on and so on.

14:38Nothing. I mean, I think one of the things you also pointed out, I think it was you, that one of the extreme consequences of freezing thresholds is once you are firmly in the 45 % band, right, it's just irrelevant. It's, you know, it's sort of progressive up to the point where you're very rich, at which point it's irrelevant. Well, but that is the story of the last 15 years, really. If you look at, I mean, all these people angry with the government need to think about what's been happening for a long time now. The 40 % higher rate thresholds fallen by£18 ,000 in real terms since 2010. £18 ,000.

15:23The number of taxpayers paying the higher rate doubled. The number paying the additional rate quadrupled. The rate of stamp duty tripled. Pension tax relief cut. Child benefit restricted. generated marginal rates of 60 % or more, all of this under a conservative government. So it's a weird kind of progressive taxation that's much higher tax on the top 10%, but it kind of leaves the 0.1 % unscathed. If you're earning a million pounds, you could care less about where these thresholds are. And Labour, whilst you might think they'd have cared a bit more about the working 10 % and wanted to put more tax on the top 0.1%.

16:01No sign of it. Yeah. The thing that I am a bit obsessed about at the minute with the retail business I have, Dan, is business rates and how complicated they are. Because obviously coming out of COVID, we had the whole 100 % relief for retail and hospitality businesses. And then that has been kind of tapered down and then last year it was cut again and it's the reliefs at about 40 percent of rates and then it's now changing again but it's so complicated it's the thing that seems to be keeping my business partners awake at night is trying to work out what our business rates are going to be because they are getting more expensive at a time when you know there's a cost of living crisis and a lot of pressure on people when it comes to retail and hospitality what's your thoughts on business rates?

16:51It's absurdly complicated, counterintuitive, and doesn't seem to be properly explained anywhere that I can see. We've got at least four different things happening. The first thing, everyone who works in retail or owns business property will know this, but it may be a surprise to other people. Business rates work as a percentage of the rateable value, a percentage of the amount that a property would pay in rent on the open market. but every so often they do a revaluation the revaluation is on a particular date so the last revaluation was in 2023 the valuation date was 1st April 2021 that was what two weeks after people came went back to school so rents were super low so although not many people in small business are jumping up and down and clapping about it business rates have been artificially low ever since because they've been based off this low valuation.

17:44Now, this year, we have another revaluation. It takes effect from April next year. It's looking at rents in 1st of April 2024. Well, by 2024, COVID was ancient history. Rents are normal. So suddenly, we'll have an increase from COVID-era rates to normal rents. and that could triple rateable values in in some cases that's the first thing that's going on a super big increase that isn't a you can't really blame the government for it and it's a return to normalcy really but if you're a business looking at that it means that on the face of it your business rates triple overnight so it's the first thing and it's already taking me a long time second thing if anyone's still still still listening to this is but because that's clearly a big problem there's a transitional relief and that says that your when it comes the first of april they'll cap your increase to either 800 pounds or if greater 25 of the increase so whilst on paper you might think your rates are trebling actually they won't go up more than 25 and there's another transitional limit the year after that another year after that but but you know let's let's let's be real after after three years or so you will be at that tripling point so then we've got the third thing which is their supporting small business scheme from yes small business relief yeah and then the fourth thing new lower rates for retail hospitality and leisure which is funded by higher rates than everyone else so none of this stuff is raising money for the government it's all kind of broadly neutral and it's a bit of a shuffling around but they ended up increasing rates less for big business which means a smaller reduction for small business so that's four things the rental values go up transitional relief supporting retail business supporting small business and retail hospitality and leisure lower rates put them all together what have you got don't know but i need to make some pretty charts so i understand this just and just that in the context of what i'm doing at the minute because i've got a new business that we're opening in newcastle um soon and we cannot forecast the rate like it's so impossible to work out what our costs are going to be on the basis of business rates being so complicated because it is a big chunk of money especially as a new business when you're not sure yet how much you're going to you know when you're trying to forecast everything it's really hard if that rate is so variable this is something that policymakers just don't get that for business the rate of attacks is sometimes not the most important thing but having certain years yes Yes, exactly.

20:22Because you need to be able to plan. If someone told you rates are£100 ,000 a year, you'd work it out. You'd take the property, take a different property, put you in your business plan. You'd do the deal or not do the deal. Fine. But if you genuinely don't know if they're going to be£50 ,000 or£150 ,000, you can't. And too much of our tax system has so much change, so much complexity, so much uncertainty. It makes it very hard to plan. And that's an issue if you're a coffee shop. It's also an issue if you're a foreign sovereign wealth fund looking to invest a billion into the UK. uncertainty is the killer yeah and just to widen out as well you know if you're looking at high streets in terms of you know the kind of you we've seen the the fall of the high street in a way in terms of lots of empty shops and things like that it makes it really difficult for any new business people to try and reinvigorate a high street because they just it's really impossible to work out uh work out costs and things so it's not great for you know the bit the government's big plans to try and, you know, make us more prosperous if that's what they want to do.

21:20Anyway, should we look at some of the other things, Robert? What else are you wanting to pick Dan's brain on? Well, we haven't really talked about these ISA reforms. I mean, I personally have never been in favour of tax breaks for cash savings. I mean, I, you know, I happen to think essentially, you know, because on the whole, people who've got 20 grand's worth of savings per year typically are quite well off anyway. And, you know, it's not it's not at all clear to me why you want to subsidize, essentially handing over cash to banks and building societies in that way. The origin of ISAs were, I think, personal equity plans, which were a Tory invention, I think, from the 1990s.

22:1680s. Was it 80s? It was Thatcher. Nigel Lawson, yeah. Okay, it was Lawson. Okay, it was Thatcher and Lawson. And I'm pretty sure that when they started, they did what the name said, and they were tax inducements to invest in the stock market. I don't think they started as tax inducements to, you know, save cash at a bank. Correct. Correct. And that always struck me as being a worthwhile form of subsidy, as it were, because I think it is good to encourage people to, you know, invest in assets that can increase in value over time. And it's also, you know, it's also good for businesses to have retail money going into them, might reduce the cost of capital for businesses a bit.

23:10Just in general, I regarded that as a sensible, a sensitive initiative. I think it was under Brown that it became a much broader wrapper and you were allowed to put the money into either shares or cash. cash, my own preference would have been, again, to get back to your point about, you wish the Chancellor had been a bit more radical. I think the radical reform would have simply been to say, if you want to save 20 ,000 and you want to get the tax breaks, it's got to go into the stock market. But she didn't. She's saying that only 8 ,000 has to go into the stock market, unless you're retired in which case the whole 20 can still go into um cash but for most people the cash maximum is 12 and uh you know i don't know why you need to have a tax incentive to put money in the bank uh just don't get it yeah i mean just to the thing i i don't disagree on on the i don't think we need 20 grand um you know tax-free cash uh savings because you're right anyone who can afford to put that much money into um into savings every year would be pretty well off anyway my issue is the motive for doing it for me i think would have been better yeah fine reduce the cash isa uh limit but we just need some type of more education around what risk is and how and how you can invest and and what it actually means because you know this is only anecdotally but everyone who talks to me about where they should put their money say oh no stocks and shares i don't want to lose it all and it's like you and even though if i get a chart outgoing well historically if you look at the footsy 100 it's outperformed rather they don't care they just go no you might lose it all so it's that i think that's a bigger problem and they don't realize they lost 20 percent and then 15 during the pandemic years from inflation yes exactly the problem we've got and this again goes back to the lack of bravery.

25:11On the one hand, one of the reasons she backed off was because the building societies in particular warned her that they had become too dependent on cash from this sort. I disapprove of that kind of lobbying so strongly. Yeah, but that's what happened. So our tax dollars are providing a hidden subsidy to building societies. Yeah, that is what she was warned. And that's one reason why she backed off. And the other reason she backed off is, and we've seen a bit of this because the Daily Mail, I think, has had a bit of a go over these reforms in advance of them being announced. She was very, very worried that in particular, older people who have got a lot of cash in ISIS would get very angry.

25:57angry. And it's one of the reasons why older people, retired people can still invest the full 20 grand. This goes to the heart of the greatest part of all parties' cowardice, actually, with the sort of exception of reform, actually, weirdly. But both the Tories and Labour are way too frightened to have any kind of public conversation about, you know, the one part of government spending that is way out of control, which is spending on the basic state pension and other financial support for older people, which is rising. Just in the course of the five years covered by the latest OBR report, it's rising by£35 billion financial support for older people.

26:49And if you look at the OBR's longer term projections, it is support via the triple lock, that is going to add other financial support for older people, which is going to bankrupt Britain. And yet the only party that is prepared to even talk about possible reform of the triple lock is reform. And Labour's making it worse because we had that interview yesterday with the Chancellor, I think, when she was suggesting that pensioners wouldn't pay any tax, even when their pension grew beyond the personal allowance. Oh, you're right. It was absolutely that was shocking. She went on another ITV show, Martin Lewis.

27:27And, you know, I mean, it was extraordinary. It was really extraordinary that, you know, she she she said that in 2028 on current projections, given the freezing of income tax thresholds, at that point, older people on the state pension might have to pay a bit of tax. And she said, don't worry, none of you will pay any tax. And you're just thinking, but this is, I mean, this is mad. It's like a throwaway sentence is going to cost the country billions and probably create an anomalous marginal rate at the point that a pensioner starts getting other income. Let's pick up in just a couple of minutes after the break.

28:06This episode is brought to you by Google. Now, if you ran a small business, what would you do with an extra three weeks a year? That's how much time the average small business could save with AI, according to Google's latest AI Works report. Three weeks isn't spare time, it's the ability to get the day-to-day done faster, giving you time to plan for the future. So why aren't more people using AI? Google's research found it's mainly a lack of training and confidence. That's why they launched AI Works, a people-first training pilot that helps small business workers understand how they can use AI tools like Google Gemini to do more.

28:47In a matter of hours, people were using AI as a super assistant, instantly unlocking productivity gains. They were using it to write documents, crunch numbers, brainstorm, and even role-play new business ideas. If every SME in the UK gained those three weeks, that's a serious lift to job satisfaction, innovation and national productivity. Just one example of how Google's AI is fueling growth and transformation. Find out more at google.google.com. Na, schwingst du mal wieder deinen Pinsel? Wir von Lohnlackierung Lippe bieten hochwertige Lackierungen für Schreiner, Tischler und Holzbetriebe. Automatisiert, präzise und wirtschaftlich.

29:30Jetzt Website besuchen und den Preisrechner für dein nächstes Projekt nutzen. www.lohnlackierung-lippe.de I'll see you in the bathroom. I think I'll get a heat. Oh, then take a heat. I have only the first signs. Just, you can set up the water before the water goes over. Stimmt. Emopret N can at the beginning of the heat, prevent the heat, prevent the heat, prevent the heat and prevent the heat. When a heat, Emopret. Now buy your own home. More info on emopret.de To Risiken and Nebenwirkungen, read the package and ask your doctor to your doctor.

30:33up in i guess not smoke the opposite of smoke go up in sparks uh within a few years and the good thing to do would be road pricing so you you have a tax which is linked to how much you drive when you drive and where you drive it so drive in london and the peak times get charged loads drive in the worlds of norfolk where i am in at midnight get charged not much that's an economically be efficient sensible tax it would however require an it build it would require a way of tracking the miles people drive in a secure way that doesn't ever reveal where they were who trusts government to do the it build and the privacy thing actually as it as it as it happens i am on you i am slightly unusual i just think there are so many now big organizations that know where we are even when you turn off all the trackers on your phone you know that we i'm afraid the the idea that that good and bad people who want to find us can't find it was was you know the gps digital all the rest of it you know we are no longer the private citizens that we hope to be so they didn't do that yeah because we can't even get the infrastructure good enough yet for electric vehicles really if you know you still get range for you quite often when you go on any long journeys on the basis of not being able to find a charger that works and i know things are improving so i don't see how we're going to get to a level where they can even you know build the infrastructure to be able to achieve all this it just but the good news is they're doing it in a way that requires no infrastructure so how it works is you you come to pay your vehicle duty for the year you will estimate how many miles you drive and you'll pay duty on that basis then next year you'll type in your odometer and there'll be like a catch-up payment if you're underpaid you'll have to pay more and if you're overpaid you'll get a refund and you'll be reporting yourself no little box in your car reporting and you note privacy implications if you cheat then your mot garage will snitch on you and during the first is it the first three years that you have a new car when there's no mot um there'll be new mini mot's paid for by the government so they can check and snitch on you oh wow so basically when you go and get your mrt they'll type into some database that the actual mileage and then they'll do some type of comparison and then they'll know and i can't remember where i read or heard somewhere that they're reviewing the rules around criminal offenses about odometers because the obvious thing that will happen is lots of people spending 10 quid on chinese websites to buy devices that zero their odometer so i expect they'll make it but if you do that your car gets thrown at the bottom of the tent yeah that always makes me just think of Matilda and you know the dad who used to turn back the um you know the mileage on cars that he that was his dodgy side hustle um so you so that's interesting because that's how that does sound much more straightforward then it is but it's compromised it's it's kind of a slight hallmark of this budget there's a thing they wanted to do which was absolutely good and made sense but kind of didn't want to have the political hassle the practical hassle so they've done something else which okay works but it's not road pricing it doesn't have the economic benefit of road pricing and also one of my arguments against it is i think it further divides the you know the nation in the sense of it's going to cost a lot more in the north isn't it and in the places rural areas and where there's a real serious lack of infrastructure and if people have absolutely so that you know it kind of plays into that problem of the the divide which road pricing wouldn't do because road pricing would recognize there's not much externality not much harm of me driving across an empty field in norfolk and there is if i if i drive an enormous land rover through chelsea yeah but there is there is a sort of middle ground and this is the bit which i do think is absolutely nuts right which is you know i do sort of get the anxiety about road pricing where you're being tracked through gps but i mean it's just weird that they're not you know twice a year, taking a reading from the car, you know, automatically over the mobile network.

34:49It would be so easy to do. Yeah. And I wondered if there's a middle ground here, that they could go with what they're planning. They can give you the option of installing a box in your car, not made by the government, but the government could certify devices made by third parties, which you'd pay to 10 quid a month for. I mean, you don't have the hassle of checking and reporting your mileage. I don't even think you'd have to put a box in. I imagine with most EVs, there's simply a software upgrade that they could do to the existing system and it would just automatically happen. That requires government to build a system that links into all the different EVs.

35:25I'm sceptical about government's ability to do that. All right. That seems perfectly reasonable. What have we missed, Steph? I mean, I don't know. Is there any big thoughts on any of the other things? Like, I guess, online gambling level, probably that's all fair, isn't it? And tobacco duty and things like that. The thing about online gambling level is I cannot work out why they've been so timid. I mean, that is another example where the big companies have sort of basically threatened to move abroad. And, you know. Drives me nuts, that one. Sorry, I'm going to be grumpy again. So if we're about to impose a tax, I don't know, widget makers, you'd say, well, hang on.