The Tories must ready themselves for the coming tax battle

Robert Eve

If the cuts are deep enough taxes don't need to change.

Victor Southern

When the water is pouring out of a burst pipe and running to waste, the answer is to fix the break and stop the waste - not to increase the flow.

Most Tories are becoming quite angry with the concept that huge tax increases are unavoidable. We want the waste stopped, rapidly and mercilessly. That is how to reduce the water bill.

luke

I expect the tories to do 3 things:

1) VAT at 20% or even 22%
2) Freeze all personal allowances and bands
3) Say none of this before the election

Simon

Danny Finkelstein and Jackie Ashley quoted here at the Heffer House blog. Wotever next.

RobertD

Jackie Ashley nearly gave me a heart attack. Claiming the idea of pushing up CGT back 40 or even 50% would improve employment and that the Tories would resist to protect their friend's gains on second houses.

Who moved the CGT rate on second houses down from 40% to 18%. Step forward one Gordon Brown and his house flipping MP's.

However by putting the rate on long held business assets up from 10% to 18% at the same time he discouraged people from starting and building new businesses. Moving it up to 50%, good for employment! Only if your business is moving companies out of the UK.

The real tax battle needs to be on which party can set up a tax regime that maximises investment in new jobs and wealth generation. How you cut the cake is largely irrelevant if nobody has made the cake in the first place.

Jonathan_T

Suspect reducing the top rate rate of income tax to 35% would lead to increased revenue. (Anyone know if there is any decent modelling on this? IFS perhaps?)

On a more politically viable note, simplicity, ease of collection and lack of economic distortion should drive tax policy.

Therefore, merger of income tax and NI, equal personal allowances for all and a coherent pension contributions deduction system should be priorities.

DavidDP

"If the cuts are deep enough taxes don't need to change."

Utter rubbish. You'd never be able to cut that much without a severe effect on services and people, liekly to result in higher spending needed down the line.

The short termism of the cut taxes now brigade never ceases to amaze.

oldtimer

No doubt Brown will attempt new tax traps for the Conservatives; whether they will work is another matter. This country is now overtaxed by an over complicated tax regime. People will find ways round new taxes. They are beyond the threshold of tolerance.

There needs to be tax reform:
(a) to simplify and reduce the existing tax code by a few thousand pages;
(b) to change the incentive/disincentive structure of the present tax regime.
Intelligently applied, such steps would offer a good chance of raising tax revenues.
(c) to get tax down to the sustainable level of a max of 38% of GDP.

Proposals to think up new taxes and/or to add to the existing burden reveal a poverty of imagination by their proponents in the political class and a comprehensive lack of understanding of how the rest of us live outside the Westminster bubble. The Lib-Dem proposals for a property wealth tax are but the latest example.

DavidDP

"Suspect reducing the top rate rate of income tax to 35% would lead to increased revenue. (Anyone know if there is any decent modelling on this? "

GIGO. Fraser is quite happy to talk about the limitations of assumptions in Treasury models, but is reticent about them with his. I'm sure there is a model that shows this, but the assumptions would have to be made clear before we could take it seriously or not.

mac

"Jackie Ashley says . . ."

'So what', is the obvious retort. She's flailing around for something, anything, for the shameless, discredited party of mendacious spendthrifts for whom she cheerleads to present as radical politics.

"Fair taxation?" So, 'fairness' is to be the latest, and intensely subjective, socialist rallying cry to accompany 'equality', is it? No need to guess what partisan lefties envisage when they trumpet 'fairness'.

Ian Walker

Been mooted before, but I think a "Brown Tax" surcharge on top of all other taxes is the way to go - set it at 1% in the first year, escalating to 5% or so, and targetted specifically at reducing debt. You then manage the rest of the economy almost as if the debt wasn't there. Once the £175bn has been paid off, the surcharge disappears.

It would resonate with the voters, and have the nice effect of laying the blame for the debt at the feet of the man responsible.

For someone who's obsession with being a global figure and creating a legacy has ruined a country, I can't think of a more fitting millstone than a hated tax named after him.

DavidDP

"So, 'fairness' is to be the latest, and intensely subjective, socialist rallying cry "

I wasn't aware fairness was intrinsically socialist or something to be dispensed with.
Conservatism always about being fair to all from what I can see.

Anne Wotana Kaye

I regret that on learning that Mandelson mocked Osborne, accusing him of "being a boy in a man's job", I was so rude that the usually tolerant "Spectator" censor banished my posting. Can other bloggers provide a reply to the disgusting Mandy which doesn't exceed the bounds of decency?

mac

"I wasn't aware fairness was intrinsically socialist or something to be dispensed with."

Are you suggesting that I implied that it was?

TGF UKIP

Oh good! I enjoyed that last para in your post, Pete.

With policy in the hands of The Mekon and Loony Toons Letwin that spells out more "green taxes" which in turn spells out lots more disaffected Tory votes going, along with mine, to UKIP.

Mar

This is really simple, just implement a moratorium on payments to the EU!

Hysteria

David - you reply "The short termism of the cut taxes now brigade never ceases to amaze."

misses the point - the original post was to the effect cut the waste - it said that do this well we do not need to raise tax. It did not saym as you imply, that we should cut taxes. (BTW even I, a died in the wool small-state advocate recognises cuts in taxes are unlikely in the near term)

The problem we have , and as others have posted the default position seems to be to cast about for more ways to screw money out of the system.

Whereas the default should be "what does the state HAVE to do" and how do we fund that requirement,,,,

Clive S

The most painless taxes are those on the dead. It cannot be fair that someone earning just over £5000 a year will pay income tax yet under a future Conservative government its ok for others to inherit mum's £1,000,000 house tax free. You don't have to be a raving leftie to see that. Taxes are a necessary evil, one small concession would be higher taxes on the resting dead to give some relief to the working living. Or do you want Osborne to have his Gordon Brown 10% tax moment.

michael

What a consoling thought as you square up to the GR......... GB purloins up to half of your families future/lifetimes careful nest building, and proceeds to fritter it away....sensitively.

(... no doubt feathering the futures of those cuckoo style cronies.)

Apathy Taxes, I dont know why I bother.

Alun Reynolds

Clive S: Mum's £1,000,000 house will have been purchased with money on which she paid Income Tax once already.