National Insurance changes to be evident from Tuesday

The Secretary of State said the news is welcome for workers in Northern Ireland
Author: Chris BrennanPublished 29th Apr 2024

Millions of workers checking their payslips on Tuesday, April 30th will see a tax cut.

It is as the government's Spring Budget cut to National Insurance will appear in April's pay packets.

Since Autumn 2023, National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for workers have been slashed by a third - the largest cut to employee and self-employed NICs in history.

The main rate of employee National Insurance has been cut for 27 million workers from 12% to 8%, saving the average employee on £35,400 over £900 a year.

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris said: “This National Insurance cut is good news for over 800,000 Northern Ireland workers, who will be hundreds of pounds better off each year as a result.

“Rewarding work in this way will put £769 back in the pockets of hard working people, which, in turn, have a knock-on positive effect on the economy.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said:“At the start of last year I made to pledge to half inflation. And because of the difficult decisions we have taken, inflation has more than halved and we are now able to reward work, and cut taxes for millions of workers who are seeing the benefit in their pay checks today.

“We have now cut National Insurance by £900 because it’s unfair that workers pay double tax on their income. We need to make it much simpler and much fairer and we are going to continue cutting this tax until it’s gone – while continuing to protect pensioners with the triple lock and providing record levels of funding to the NHS."

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said: “We’re on the right track – we’ve been able to slash National Insurance to return hundreds of pounds back into the pockets of hard-working Brits because of the decisions we’ve made to manage the economy responsibly.

“Over the years ahead we want to get rid of National Insurance completely for workers – it is an unfair double tax on work and we’ve shown we can protect spending on public services while eliminating it.”