How will Labour try to soak the rich?

Sally Chatterjee

Perhaps this is just being floated so we'll be "relieved" when a 60% rate is introduced. Or, as suggested above, the 50% rate is applied to more earners. But it would explain why Gordon Brown has been smiling and it would mean a new dividing line for Brown. As well as an exodus to Switzerland!

barry

I would like to see a new government introduce a new tax set at 70%. The tax would be voluntary and would go by the name of 'The toynbee tax'.

General Zod

If they were to raise the higher rate to 70 per cent., it would result in vastly lower tax receipts. The rate is so high that companies and individuals would undertake the most aggressive tax planning measures possible.

Most City firms would move from grumbling about the 50p rate to planning to move the majority of their people and operations offshore.

Surely even Labour are not that stupid, are they?

strapworld

Off the topic But should anyone want a really good belly laugh watch:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wtmxqWcG4&feature=player_embedded#

taxmonkey

Will the last taxpayer to leave the country please turn out the lights?

Wilhelm

Might as well leave the country. In the 1960s and 70s, liebour had the tax rate at 93%. Can you believe it ? Everyone was on cabbage soup, rubbish wasnt collected, rats jumping about, power cuts, you couldnt bury the dead.

It was a socialist utopian paradise. Happy days.

Hawkeye

I would like to see the reintroduction of SuperTax at 98% being announced by Darling.

Really!

Dungeekin

Taxation? Simples. They'll 'Tax the Toffs', as discovered in the part of their Manifesto leaked today:

LABOUR PARTY MANIFESTO LEAKED

A document leaked to Dungeekin has revealed the outline of the Labour Party Manifesto upon which the upcoming General Election will be fought.

The document, which was hand-written in black marker pen, was found in a minsterial Red Box left in a progressive Soho club, and explains in some detail the battle-lines that will be drawn by Labour as they fight for an unprecedented fourth term.

While the paper is currently being studied by graphologists to extract the detailed content from the PM's indecipherable heiroglyphics, Dungeekin can exclusively reveal those elements of the Manifesto which have already been decoded:

TAX:
Eton College is to be subject to a new 'Toffs Tax' on admission fees, expected to raise approximately £47m which will be paid as a one-off windfall to benefit claimants and Labour Party members;

All Old Etonians will be made subject to a 'Toffs Rate' of tax of 96% of all income, earned or unearned. CGT and IHT breaks will be withdrawn for OEs as well.

NATIONAL SECURITY:
Eton College is to be designated part of a new 'Axis of Toffdom'. All Old Etonians will be subject to Control Orders.

A re-elected Labour Government will drive forward in the 'War on Toffs' with a surge of 5000 troops sent to Windsor to effect regime change. A new Headmaster and Faculty will then be put in place, approved by the Government, with staff taken from schools scoring the lowest in their recent Ofsted inspections.

The Bullingdon Club is to be designated a 'proscribed organisation', and membership, past or present, will disqualify any person from holding public office or board-level positions in the private sector.

JUSTICE:
The right to trial-by jury is to be revoked in cases involving Old Etonians, and Parliament will debate the reconstitution of Capital Punishment for membership of the Bullingdon Club.

(a sub-clause in the manifesto indicates that this legislation would be made retrospective in the cases of Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron).

A new charge of 'Being A Tory Toff' will be introduced, which will mandate severe sentencing for repeat offenders.

ASBO's to be issued to any young person seen wearing formal dress in the Slough and Windsor areas.

HUNTING
The ban on hunting with hounds will stay in place. However, a re-elected Labour Government will introduce an amendment to the Hunting Act which will permit the capture and subsequent hunting of 'Tory Toffs' through council estates by chavs with pit-bulls.

The remaining parts of the Manifesto are largely illegible, but seem to descend into a tirade about how 'it's all the toffs, we hate Tory Toffs, kill the toffs killthetoffstoffstoffs toffs itsalltheirfault,killthemkillthemclasswarkillthetoffsnomoretophatsThey'lltakepowermypreciousssstoffsetonianswehatethemwehatethem" before a urine stain renders the remainder unreadable.

We approached an Old Etonian for comment, but he beat us with his cane before screaming, "get thee gone, peasant!" as we hadn't doffed our caps.

More details on the Labour Party 'We're Not Toffs' Manifesto will be released once editorial staff at Dungeekin can control their laughter.

Bocephus

Tony will be going nuts!!!

Tom Pride

A reminder – income tax rates the last time Labour left office in 1979 :

0 - 750 25%
751 - 8000 33%
8001 - 9000 40%
9001 - 10000 45%
10001 - 11000 50%
11001 - 12500 55%
12501 - 14000 60%
14001 - 16000 65%
16001 - 18500 70%
18501 - 24000 75%
over - 24000 83%

For so called “unearned” income I.E. savings income in the range £1,701 to £ 2,250 add 10% to the above rates and in excess of £2,250 add 15% - giving the infamous Labour top rate of 98%

Nimrod

One thing's for sure, Labour's tax rises won't just hit the "toffs". Labour thought everybody who hunted was a toff, which is not true (unless, despite being from a working class background, I'm a toff and don't know it!). Brown also thought the 10% tax band removal wouldn't hit the low paid!

Snowman

it would screw things up, but be popular with anyone far below the start line. Who says that class warfare is dead?

Fergus Pickering

Oh come on Wilhelm, The 1960s weren't like that at all. Everybody felt well off as I remember. And they were, compared to the forties and the fifties. Of course it wasn't Wilson but Macmillan who engineered it, but al the same. Cabbage Soup! Naw. I should say Sweet and Sour pork after a night in the pub.

Chuck Unsworth

Define 'Rich'.

It's a comparative term. Brown has to decide who he thinks is 'rich'. Anyone with assets of £1m or more? Anyone with aspirations to earn more than, say, £200k p.a.? What incentives are there for anyone to earn big money under such a punitive tax regime.

So, all ambition and drive is slaughtered in the cradle - and what does that do any prospects for an economic recovery? Are our best and brightest going to stay, or, being the best and brightest, realise that their own interests lie abroad?

seb

Soaking the rich will certainly make one hell of a difference to the lives of the seven million or more people of working age who are 'economically inactive'. Money raised by any future War on Toffs will add whole shillings to the giros many of these people rely on to eke out a living. Well done, Kirkcaldy's Leading Autist, I say!

Holly ......

Nimrod.
Anyone having the gall to work is a toff according to Labour logic.
Earn over thruppence and your screwed.

2trueblue

Lovely. That should get the brain cells going. Labour are really desperate and someone will have to pay. It could be you.