Darling: bankers’ super tax failed

charles hercock

You incentivise and do not tax for social ends

What we need is a sufficient incentive to thwart the bonus culture

This needs a man with imagination Mr Alexander

Tiberius

I repeat, David, it is not a tax break for marriage. It is a reversal of the couple penalty.

Chris lancashire

This is a perfect example of the principle that people will only pay tax at a rate and a level which they judge as fair. Company Car taxation is another one but I will not go further here.

Bankers' remuneration is patently wrong but it is down to the Directors and Shareholders fix - not government through the tax system. And Darling should have noted that the tax system is for raising revenue - not sending messages.

Nickle

New taxes solve nothing.

New taxes create problems.

If you believe Darling, you would be advocating 100% taxation as the means to a socialist utopia

Cuffleyburgers

Setting taxes to achieve social aims is patently wrong.

And usually a mistake.

James Sproule

Taxes should be low, universal and unavoidable (as Nigel Lawson set out). In that way taxes distort the economy as little as possible, and over time lead to a stronger economy and hence more revenue. If governmental incentives are to be given, that is what the welfare state is there to do. Our extraordinarily complex tax system is a legacy of Brown trying to run departmental budgets from the Treasury, why on earth would anyone want to preserve any of Brown’s legacy?

TrevorsDen

Indeed if you work on the fairly safe principle that anything Brown thinks of as clever is actually a disaster then we should totally undo his policies.

But I think is wrong to think that these bankers etc actually themselves think along the lines of being in the same world as us. I am a Tory and a capitalist but that does not mean I trust these people or agree with the way they operate. They are totally selfish and 'out of it' in the same way that footballers and their wives are.

The system needs correcting and if I had my way they themselves would be 'corrected' in the same manner that Delbert Grady had in mind in 'The Shining'

denis cooper

I'm not so much bothered by the size of bonuses paid to senior staff, bankers or others, as the short term basis on which they're supposedly justified.

The government has much more of a legitimate interest in influencing the method adopted to reward such staff, which should be designed to promote longer term thinking, rather than the magnitude of the rewards.

One method would be through a new class of shares, Incentive Shares, which would be personal to the recipient and non-transferable, would have no capital value and would not be legally acceptable as collateral for loans, but each of which would entitle the holder to receive the same dividend as that paid on an Ordinary Share for a long period in the future, say twenty-five years, so more closely aligning his financial interests with the long term interests of the business.

Suitable tax benefits could be offered to encourage the use of Incentive Shares for bonuses, rather than handing over lump sums of cash or Ordinary Shares which can be sold for cahbonuses or

Thomas Cussans

A whole series of intelligent and to-the-point comments here, chiefly that tax is the crudest of all ways of changing society (which no doubt explains why the crudest of all PMs, to wit G. Brown, favoured it).

But there's another equally obvious point. Darling, by convention the only 'decent' member of the same G. Brown's government, scarcely ever spoke out against the havoc Brown was so dementedly imposing. His protestations now ring hollow.

As chancellor, he had every opportunity to halt the tide of Brown's lunacy. He flunked them all.

I have no doubt that he is, at least by the standards of the last government, almost normal. But why didn't object at the time?

He doesn't convince.

Baron

the idea of the tax stank, the end result was predictable. Individuals with big money will always find a way of escaping the taxman’s net.

the only way to deal with insane bonuses is to ensure that the institutions paying them don’t get bailed out if they (the institutions) fail. It will then be up to the shareholders of such institutions to watch out for excessive bonuses, if they don’t, their money will go up in smoke. Taxing bonuses only encourages the institutions finding new ways of fleecing the unwashed in order to pay the taxes.

Hugh Janus

I do not subscribe to the idea that Darling was somehow a knight in shining armour in the otherwise sordid ranks of NuLiebour. Either he saw what Brown was doing but took the coward's way out and chose to ignore it, or he failed to understand and has therefore booked his place in history as an ignorant and inept operator. Either way, it's not very impressive, is it?

Quite frankly it comes as no surprise to any of us that his tax on the banks has failed to change behaviour. When you dream up a scheme that is based on a false premise - let's punish the banks for a good headline - is it any wonder that they found ways around it?

A spotty teenager with some basic arithmetic skills could run rings around a government as ignorant and deluded as the last one.

Holly

After three...1 2 3..
WE TOLD YOU SO.
Stupid man.

James

This is a trap for the Tories. By admitting it didn't work the Tories won't be able to use it as a tool. Limits the options available and labour will be able to bang on about the budget not being progressive

Clear Memories

What with Blunkett now 'seeing' he gave too much away in the extradition treaty and this member of the Scottish political mafia admitting he got this tax wrong, all on top of Bliar admitting he got pretty much everything wrong and everything else was the Scottish Bigots fault, the Coalition might as well introduce a Bill to remove all Labour's actions against the British people from the statute books.

Socialism - a complete waste of time and effort.

DarlingVictim

On the 8th of October 2008 Alistair Darling stole the savings of thousands of British Citizens (See www.theukgovernment.com). All based on a lie. The Government of the day had forced British citizens living abroad into the grubby hands of the Isle of Man (or 'Overseas' as Mr Darling described it when telling all we were tax dodgers) due to the ill thought out 'Know Your Customer' banking rules.

Ever since the 8th of October, neither Darling nor any of his side-kicks (McCarthy-Fry, Sants, Myners, Pearson) has even acknowledged the effect Darlings 8th October 2008 actions had, let alone apologise. Why does anyone still listen to him???