Tag Archives: tax

97% of Lib Dem members back Nick’s call for raising income tax allowance to £10k as immediate priority

By Stephen Tall | Published 10th February 2012 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 570 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Overwhelming support for ‘further and faster’ tax-cuts for low-paid

LDV asked: The Coalition is committed to increasing the level at which income tax becomes payable, from its current £7,475 to £10,000 by 2015. The tax-free threshold was expected to rise by about £630 annually. However, in a recent speech Nick Clegg said, “I want the Coalition to go further and faster in delivering the …

Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged featured, nick clegg, tax cuts (Lib Dem) | Leave a comment

E-petition backing up Nick Clegg’s wish to raise tax threshold

By Caron Lindsay | Published 1st February 2012 - 8:55 am

Readers may be interested in an e-petition on the HM Government website which calls on the Government to implement the tax cuts for the people on low and middle incomes which Nick Clegg called for last week. It says:

Please sign this to persuade George Osborne to fast track the Lib Dem policy to increase the income tax threshold to £10,000 in the next budget, and hence take thousands more people out of tax and put £700 back in people’s pockets. There are measures that can be taken to pay for this including the clamp down on tax avoidance and

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Posted in News | Also tagged e-petitions, nick clegg | Leave a comment

LDVideo: Clegg – “the Coalition is calling time on our unfair and out-of-whack tax system”

By Stephen Tall | Published 27th January 2012 - 7:45 am

Nick Clegg’s tax cut speech dominated the political headlines yesterday — you can watch a 4-minute snippet below:

(Available on the BBC website here.)

Here’s what my LibDemVoice colleagues had to say about Nick’s call for lower taxes:

Clegg’s call for income tax cuts for the low paid is welcome, but will the Tories back him? by Nick Thornsby

Nick Clegg returns to income tax by Mark Pack

And here’s how the rest of the Lib Dem blogosphere reacted:

How will

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged nick clegg | Leave a comment

LibLink: Mark Pack – Nick Clegg turns media weakness into media strength

By Nick Thornsby | Published 26th January 2012 - 4:23 pm

Over on his work blog, The Voice’s Mark Pack has a post looking at the extremely successful media coverage of Nick Clegg’s speech on tax policy, with the party using the fact that much of the media is still surprised by the idiosyncracies of coalition to our advantage.

Here’s a sample:

In a country used to coalitions, having the leader of one of the parties in government talk about their tax priorities a few months ahead of a budget would not be remarkable. With the British media habits, it had made today’s speech from Nick Clegg to banner news – lead story

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged mark pack, media, neil stockley, nick clegg, tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 2 Comments

Nick Clegg returns to income tax

By Mark Pack | Published 26th January 2012 - 7:34 am

Later this morning, Nick Clegg will be giving a speech to the Resolution Foundation (word cloud here) in which, after recent talk about wealth taxes, he is returning to the topic of income tax cuts. More specifically, speeding up the progress towards a basic income tax allowance of £10,000 whilst keeping the 50p rate.

This is of course closely linked to wealth taxes as they are a way to raise the funds to pay for the income tax cuts.

Posted in News | Also tagged nick clegg, resolution foundation, tax cuts (Lib Dem), vince cable | 2 Comments

Vince pushes the ‘mansion tax’ – could the Tories yet be persuaded to take tax reform seriously?

By Stephen Tall | Published 22nd January 2012 - 2:15 pm

Shock! Horror! Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable advocates Lib Dem manifesto policy!

The Telegraph today reports that Vince’s policy — which would levy a 1% annual charge on all properties valued above £2 million — is still on the table as the Coalition writes its second budget:

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, is pushing for a mansion tax to be introduced on properties worth more than £2million in this year’s Budget. While the policy is likely to be opposed by George Osborne, the Chancellor, Mr Cable said that he had spoken to Conservative MPs who backed the plan.

“A mansion tax is still very much on the agenda – it is a very good idea,” Mr Cable told The Sunday Telegraph. “It is good for two reasons,’’ he said. ”It would constitute a tax on wealth rather than income, which we believe to be right, and also in economic terms it creates the right sort of incentives for the property market.”

Mr Cable added that it was “perverse” that rich “foreigners” could buy expensive properties in Britain and contribute just £1,000 a year in council tax towards the public finances.

3 ways of reading Vince’s comments

There are a couple of ways of interpreting this fresh pitch.

Posted in News | Also tagged mansion tax, mark reckless, tim montgomerie, vince cable | 18 Comments

The Liberal Democrat challenges for 2012: Wealth taxation

By Mark Pack | Published 6th January 2012 - 8:50 am

To mark the start of 2012, we’re running a series of posts over consecutive days on the main challenges for the Liberal Democrats in 2012. I’ve already written about the four priorities for the party’s new Chief Executive, Tim Gordon, but as the Liberal Democrats are more than just the one man whilst he has four, this series sets out six for the party.

To re-cap:

As with many other liberals, Nick Clegg is strongly motivated by the issue of fair taxation of wealth. In addition, pursuing the issue provides three neat political benefits. First, it offers a clear distinction

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged lib dem challenges 2012 | 9 Comments

Some surprising economic data

By Mark Pack | Published 28th December 2011 - 9:25 am

From the Mirrlees review into designing tax systems:

Despite some predictions to the contrary, countries are not being forced inexorably to tax less in an increasingly globalized and competitive world economy. Between 1975 and 2008, taxes rose as a proportion of national income in virtually every OECD country. On average, the tax take rose from 29.4% to 34.8% of national income. In no OECD country was there a significant fall in the tax take over this period…

Within the total tax take, we might expect that governments would find it more difficult to raise taxes from internationally mobile companies and people.

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Posted in News | 19 Comments

Get your skates on and submit a motion to Liberal Democrat conference about wealth taxes

By Mark Pack | Published 27th December 2011 - 9:25 am

Nick Clegg’s recent ‘open society’ speech confirmed that increases taxes on wealth in some form is very much on the political agenda. However, the default party policy option – a mansion tax – was highly controversial in the party when it was introduced (which is rather a polite term for the rolling lesson in how to bungle a policy launch, annoy MPs, irritate party members and feed negative stories to the media all in one fell swoop).

In other words – now is a very good time for the party to be debating what form of wealth taxes it favours, especially after the opportunity was missed at the party’s autumn conference. As I wrote at the time in Tax: The missing ingredient from the Liberal Democrat conference agenda,

Posted in Op-eds, Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged david laws, featured, land value tax, nick clegg, tim montgomerie, vince cable | 35 Comments

Tim Farron’s Christmas message

By Tim Farron MP | Published 23rd December 2011 - 12:57 pm

Well that was quite a year, wasn’t it? It was a good one too!

I know, I know, after the referendum and the horrible results in May you’d be forgiven for believing we were sinking faster than Blackburn Rovers (how it pains me to write that), but you know what, it’s not true.

This year we did some amazing things, things you and I have wanted to do for years but never had the power to actually get done.

For one, we put an end to the horrific practice of locking up innocent kids behind bars for months on end in immigration …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Alex Cole-Hamilton, blackburn rovers, NHS, pensions, pupil premium | 10 Comments

Is there a Liberal Democrat stance on HM Revenue & Customs?

By Mark Valladares | Published 20th December 2011 - 6:22 pm

The news that the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons has condemned the way in which HM Revenue & Customs staff have handled their dealings with the United Kingdom’s largest corporate taxpayers is merely the latest of a series of PR disasters for a Government department that now raises nearly £500 billion for the public purse annually.

Accusations that Vodafone was allowed to avoid more than £1 billion in tax, and that Goldman Sachs was erroneously allowed to pay an enquiry settlement without interest amounting to £10 million, are alleged to be just the tip of the iceberg, with …

Posted in News | Also tagged hmrc | 9 Comments

Clegg repeats Lib Dem opposition about tax breaks for marriage, with added 1950s jibe

By Mark Pack | Published 18th December 2011 - 6:41 pm

Via the BBC:

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has said the idea of tax breaks for married couples is wrong, and would not work.

The deputy prime minister told Sky News there were “philosophical differences” with the Lib Dems’ coalition partners, the Conservatives, over the issue.

He said there was a limit on what the state “should seek to do in organising people’s private relationships”…

Posted in News | Also tagged marriage, nick clegg | 17 Comments

LDVideo: David Laws interviewed by Mark Littlewood

By Nick Thornsby | Published 1st December 2011 - 5:57 pm

Last week, the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mark Littlewood, spent an hour talking to David Laws at the IEA’s Westminster headquarters. Before a packed room, Mark and David touched on a whole range of issues – taxation, Europe, the formation of the coalition, just exactly how liberal the Liberal Democrats are, and many more.

The hour-long exchange, which you can see below, is well worth a watch:

(Video also available on vimeo here.)

Posted in News, YouTube | Also tagged coalition, david laws, european union, institute of economic affairs, mark littlewood | 2 Comments

How big business got the 50p tax rate wrong

By Mark Pack | Published 26th November 2011 - 7:45 am

From the Financial Times:

Fears that the 50p rate of tax would hinder recruitment of top executives have been allayed, according to a survey of 50 large companies that will relieve pressure on George Osborne to accelerate plans to abolish the controversial levy in next week’s autumn statement.

Only 13 per cent reported that the 50p rate for those earning more than £150,000 a year was proving a barrier to attracting senior managers to Britain, according to KPMG, the professional services group, in what it said was a “dramatic change of sentiment” since 2009 when over 80 per cent of companies

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Posted in News | Also tagged income tax, kpmg | 34 Comments

Opinion: “The first £10,000 you earn tax-free”? Not unless we act on National Insurance

By Adam Corlett | Published 1st November 2011 - 10:55 am

At Conference, Danny Alexander repeated his view that the personal allowance for income tax should be raised beyond £10,000, saying:

In the next Parliament, I want us to go further; our aspiration should be that someone working full time on the minimum wage should pay no income tax at all. An income tax threshold of £12,500 – think what that would do to work incentives, think what it would mean for basic fairness. Let’s put that on the front page of our next manifesto.

The idea certainly seems popular within the party. But remarkably absent from these discussions is any mention of National Insurance. The very first point in our 2010 manifesto was “the first £10,000 you earn tax-free” but, while it later clarified it meant income tax (IT), it’s hard to see why the parallel income tax that is National Insurance (NI) should be treated any differently.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged national insurance, tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 24 Comments

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Overwhelming support for ‘further and faster’ tax-cuts for low-paid

3 ways of reading Vince’s comments

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