In the Independent on Sunday, Simon Hughes writes:
Our economy will never recover if we continue to allow a privileged few to squirrel away increasing amounts of money into tax havens. But allowing people to take home more of what they earn both alleviates the squeeze on households and can boost spending where it is needed – on the high street, and in the community – creating demand and jobs.
We have already made great progress on making the tax system fairer. We have raised the rate of capital gains tax to 28 per cent, ending the scandal whereby people paid a lower rate of tax on money earned from their shares and property portfolio than their cleaners paid on their wages. And yesterday, Nick Clegg suggested a “tycoon tax” could be looked into, to ensure millionaires cannot get out of paying their fair share of tax, even with an army of accountants.
At the same time, we have so far taken nearly one million of those with the lowest incomes out of paying any tax. And, following Wednesday’s Budget, there will be more than a million in this bracket.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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4 Comments
That’s better, it did not insult my intelligence, (well the ‘could be looked into’ bit was not, how shall we say, convincing) .
Government s have been ‘looking into’ tax avoidance since I first understood what that concept meant (45 years ago roughly). Is it not time that defeat was admitted on this issue?
We are not taking the lowest incomes out of paying any tax because they still pay VAT and plus duty on fags, booze and fuel. The T in VAT stands for Tax. We have to be accurate or championing this is worthless.
Alastair – “fags, booze” – these are discretionary taxes. Nobody is forcing anyone to spend their money on cigarettes and alcohol. Transportation fuel is arguably not discretionary; heating fuel is taxed at a much lower rate than 20%.
Raising the tax threshold to benefit the low and average earners is clearly linked with raising more tax from the wealthy. For a long time the Lib Dems shied away from publicly recognising this fact. Nick Clegg at the Spring Conference and other ministers are now raising the issue more directly, which is good.
I would say that a fundamental difference between a rich Conservative and a rich Liberal Democrat these days is that Conservatives believe that they should keep their wealth, and Lib Dems believe in their duty to put a fair amount back into society. I might hazard a guess that there are a lot more wealthy people who will embrace the greater good and a new morality than we might be led to believe.