He’s already shot Vince’s fox to some degree on the scaling back of tax relief on pension contributions, and may do the same by raising capital gains tax next March, to judge by the media noises. In which case, once again we will find ourselves uncomfortably looking around for more sources of revenue to fund the redistributive tax cuts, and no doubt flirting with more tax populism as a result.

Totally agree with you about unintended consequences – but that is directly related to the horrendous complexity of the tax system, which is why we should be proposing radical simplification and not merely redistribution. Remove market-distorting reliefs (thereby also closing loopholes), reduce rates, simplify tax credits and subject our tax policies not only to the test of fairness, but also whether they are more or less likely to support economic growth and improve the supply-side of the economy.

On the article – couldn’t agree more.

I’m also not convinced by the costing assumptions, particularly the idea that we’re going to raise nearly £5bn in “anti-avoidance measures”. This is the same kind of thing Vince complains about when the Tories or Labour claim they can save large amounts through cutting “waste and bureaucracy” in public services. We’ll see whether the Institute for Fiscal Studies has anything to say about the costing.

It’s also worth noting that the revised mansion tax still only raises £1.7bn towards the £18bn or so required, so it looks suspiciously like a token piece of populism rather than a shift towards taxing property (or preferably land value) more and income and enterprise less. It’s come to something when Clive Anderson has to make the case for LVT on Question Time and Vince looks faintly bemused…

I’m concerned that we’re putting too much emphasis on redistributing income/wealth and not enough on creating it. For example we seem to have no proposals on National Insurance, corporation tax or improving the climate for the wealth-creating businesses that the UK’s future prosperity depends on.

Arguably a more limited tax-cutting package aimed at supporting job creation (say by cutting payroll tax and maybe the corporation tax rate) would be more credible and appropriate for these times. Then, once it is affordable, we should look to progressively raise the threshold for both income tax and NI (thus keeping them aligned and not complicating the personal tax system).

Other than aligning income and capital gains tax rates, we also seem to have abandoned any real effort to reform the horrendously complex tax system to make it simpler, more economically neutral and less prone to loopholes. The best way to tackle tax avoidance is to simplify the tax system and reduce the opportunities to game it.

The arch-Tory Maurice Saatchi once wrote a pamplet calling for the same.