A war on two fronts could be taxing for Brown

As any military tactician, or historian for that matter, will tell you, fighting a war on two fronts is a disaster waiting to happen. But the government could be storing up such a war over its tax schemes. On one side is the new plan to leverage higher taxes on the low paid (just to persuade them benefits could be the way forward). That’s the first front and the heavy artillery is only just opening up on Gordon Brown.

Now the automatic presumption among the good people of the Left is you can make up for taxing the lower paid less by hammering the higher paid. Herein lies that pesky second front, according to research out today. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says increasing tax rates for the wealthy wouldn’t actually raise extra revenue. Rather it would lead to diminishing returns as they would be discouraged from working so hard, would go and live somewhere else or ask their accountants to get serious about loopholes.

It just remains to see if the government mobilises on this latter front as quickly as it was willing to do against the non-doms. One way or another, Gordon Brown must be wishing it was all quiet on the Westminster front.