General Election 2024: Plaid Cymru push for tax devolution and funding reforms

Additionally, the party proposes to introduce a wealth tax, increase the windfall tax and (potentially) higher earners’ National Insurance contributions, reform business rates and impose VAT on private school fees.

Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, leader of Plaid, suggests in their manifesto – published on Thursday 13 June – that: “Being tied to Westminster means all risk and no reward for our nation. Wales is languishing at the bottom of too many league tables, our economy is stagnating, our transport network is creaking, and the lack of control over our natural resources means that we are energy-rich but fuel-poor”.

The manifesto's three key themes are :

• Fair funding for Wales: this demands a fair funding system for Wales, based on Wales’s needs.
• Fair play for patients: which asks for fair funding from Westminster, to invest in Wales's NHS workforce.
• Fairness for families and communities: this aims to increase windfall taxes and devolve the Crown Estate in order to create green jobs and build prosperity.

Plaid Cymru’s tax and related proposals

(NB. This section generally uses the party’s own wording, though in places text may have been abridged or truncated. All characterisations of proposals or suggestions of their impacts are the party’s own.)

Personal taxes:

• More powers for the Senedd to set income tax bands and thresholds (as in Scotland) to create a system that fits Wales’s circumstances.
• Equalise capital gains tax with income tax - the party suggests that this move should raise £12bn - £15bn.
• Investigate increasing higher earners’ National Insurance contributions.
• Abolish loopholes for non-doms.
• Introduce a wealth tax.
• Crack down on tax evasion and avoidance

Business and indirect taxes:

• Increase windfall tax on energy companies and ‘close the loopholes’.
• Reform Business Rates to establish a system which better supports small businesses.
• Reverse the reductions in support to small businesses and amend the multiplier to better support high street businesses.
• Scrap private school charitable status charge VAT on fees and remove the exemption from business rates.
• Increase Air Passenger Duty and kerosene tax for private jets.
• Remove the tax on renewable liquid fuels, to make them more affordable for rural households.

Business and employment policies:

• Increase government investment in Research and Development. Seek to devolve Wales’s share of UK Research and Innovation expenditure with a block grant allocated based on population.
• Close loopholes which allow holiday homes to pretend to be legitimate lettings businesses so that genuine self-catered accommodation businesses can be protected.
• Instigate a Welsh Freelancers Fund to support the creative sector - apply the lessons learned from the Basic Income for the Arts scheme in the Republic of Ireland.
• Create a Welsh Green New Deal. This deal would create work in the emerging green and net-zero sector, and includes re-skilling and supporting Welsh employees and apprentices in these sectors.
• Establish a Just Transition Commission.
• Support the devolution of employment law to Wales.
• Support legislation to tackle insecure work, abolish compulsory zero-hours contracts, and reform Shared Parental Leave.

Benefits and personal finances:

• Implement an apprenticeship living wage and support colleges to deliver projects that reduce students' financial burden, such as free travel and free meals.
• Pay social care workers at least £1 above the Real Living Wage.
• Plaid Cymru supports the principle of a universal basic income and related pilots.
• Increase child benefit by £20 per week for all children.
• Scrap the ‘two-child’ limit on universal credit payments and end the benefit cap which stops families from claiming the full amount.
• Keep the triple-lock pension increase, which means that the state pension will keep pace with price increases and the cost of living.
• Introducing a Welsh Benefits System, with a particularly strong case to devolve those benefits which are most closely aligned to existing devolved policy areas, such as health and housing benefits.
• Review the provision of non-universal or automatic benefits to understand which can be made easier to access through auto-enrolment or through informational campaigns

Other measures:

• Set new targets for the Welsh economy to better understand the impact of policy decisions and investment choices through their outcomes.
• Propose an Economic Fairness Bill “that will make levelling up a meaningful phrase… ensuring that the impact of fiscal decisions are considered on a wider level than just what is best for the City of London”
• Work towards a target of 75% of Welsh public sector spending being with companies located in Wales.
• Introduce a Green Paper on the path to independence, and create a National Commission.
• Protect the Senedd’s powers through a government of Wales (Devolved Powers) Bill, which will require a super majority of two-thirds of Senedd members for any reduction in powers.