We are not going to have a mansion tax, or a new tax that is a percentage value of people’s properties.
Before you rush to spot the loophole in that – what about adding extra higher bands to Council Tax? – he opposed that too. Given Osborne made much of his reputation as was by opposing changes to inheritance tax, perhaps it is on capital gains tax that there will be room fro an agreement with the …
Last week at conference I attended our consultation on tax policy. As the chair progressed through the paper, it was quite interesting to hear all the opinions put forward on it. I was planning to suggest some ideas for the committee to consider but unfortunately the chapters on corporation tax and financial taxes were left out, and I put my hand up too late to be called in the NIC and Income tax section. So instead, I’ve decided to put the ideas up here for debate instead.
Corporation Tax cuts for paying a Living Wage
Using corporation tax cuts to incentivise desirable business …
Fairer taxes, crack down on tax avoidance, an emphasis on the mansion tax and a low-key, getting on with the work in hand delivery: that’s Danny Alexander’s conference speech in a nutshell.
"You can move your money offshore. You can't move your mansion" – @DannyAlexander calls for mansion tax #ldconf
Having often heard Danny Alexander talk in the past about action needing to be taken on tax avoidance and tax evasion, I noticed a change in emphasis this time, with more talk about what has been done. That’s a good sign of progress, …
Earlier in the day, Clegg was repeating his calls for a mansion tax in some form:
Our focus does remain on very high value property for the simple reason that I think most people in this country just don’t understand why people who have very high value properties just don’t pay their fair share, in the way that everybody does.
Danny Alexander has been calling for speedier action to implement social care reforms:
Danny Alexander will warn his Conservative colleagues on Monday not to delay plans to reform social care for the elderly and state pensions, amid Treasury fears that the changes would cost too much.
The Treasury chief secretary plans to use a question-and-answer session at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton to insist that the government goes ahead with both the Dilnot reforms and a single-tier state pension, according to officials.
Meanwhile, Vince Cable is winning out in the arguments with the Treasury over creating a new business bank:
Vince Cable reveals £1bn backing for business bank to help small firms…
In what Liberal Democrats are hailing as one of the major announcements of their conference, the business secretary will say that the new bank could leverage up to £10bn to help businesses struggling to find funds from high-street banks…
The Lib Dems say they have had to fight hard to persuade the chancellor to sign up to the bank, which will be funded from “underspends” by Whitehall departments. These are the funds that remain unspent by departments, which are then clawed back by the Treasury.
And here is Ed Davey and colleagues explaining the Green Deal:
Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, the Liberal Democrat leader ruled out the possibility of the Government filling the gap in public finances through cuts to the welfare budget – something reportedly being mooted on the Conservative benches.
He said the Government would “start at the top and work down”, and was optimistic about his chances of persuading his Conservative colleagues to agree to a so-called ‘wealth tax’.
Cable said that introducing regional pay was “completely unacceptable” and “terrible economics”. He said that although the Lib Dems were prepared to contemplate a measure of public sector pay
As Benjamin Franklin wrote back in the eighteenth century, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. So while tax policy may not set hearts racing, anything that takes money from people’s pockets will provoke a strong response.
Already, in government, we’ve had major successes. Our flagship tax policy of a £10,000 tax-free allowance is being implemented, which will provide millions of taxpayers with an tax cut of £705 per annum by the end of this Parliament; we’ve raised capital gains tax for higher rate taxpayers; and we are clawing back £7bn worth …
We believe that everyone should pay their fair share of tax. That means the people who have the most paying more than those who have less. To help make that happen, we want to give a tax cut to every working family in the country by raising the amount you can earn before paying income tax, initially to £10,000 a year.
This would give every working person in the country a tax cut of over £500.
You can sign up to back the campaign or to find out more …
Public Negotiation: Phase 1 kicked off on Thursday 26 January 2012. It ended on 21 March 2012. The deputy prime minister’s first demand was to allow the lowest paid to keep more of the money they earn next year by implementing more quickly the Lib Dem policy of raising the income tax personal allowance to £10,000. However badly the budget was presented, Clegg’s stance can only be judged a success: the policy was implemented significantly more quickly, with the threshold being raised by £1100 next April.
Nick Clegg has told the Guardian that he wants to see a time limited extra tax for the wealthiest so that it can be seen that they are shouldering their share of the burden of the country’s economic challenges. He warned that, with the “economic war” we’re facing likely to be longer term than we thought, it wouldn’t be either “socially or politically sustainable or acceptable” if the richest weren’t asked to pay more.
He said:
If we are going to ask people for more sacrifices over a longer period of time, a longer period of belt tightening as a country,
Back in December last year I blogged about how tax hasn’t changed over time, quoting the Mirrlees review:
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…
Looking through some of YouGov’s recent poll results (as you do on a summer’s evening during the Olympics), a trio of responses struck me as, well, slightly bizarre. See what you think…
Lib Dem voters LEAST LIKELY to think Britain is best at cricket, MOST LIKELY to think we’re best at cycling
This may simply be a reflection that ‘Britain’ does not play cricket. Or perhaps just a subjective viewpoint: after all, England is currently ranked the best test cricket team in the world (though fourth in one-day internationals); while …
David Gauke, the exchequer secretary to the treasury, is a Conservative minister I’m quite happy to stick up for. He’s in the headlines this morning for an interview he gave to the Telegraph in which he states it is “morally wrong” to pay cash-in-hand to get a nod-and-a-wink no-tax discount:
“Getting a discount with your plumber by paying cash in hand is something that is a big cost to the Revenue and means others have to pay more in tax. I think it is morally wrong. It is illegal for the plumber but it is pretty implicit in those circumstances that there is a reason why there is a discount for cash. That is a large part of the hidden economy.”
One of the Tory party’s biggest donors has been ordered to pay back millions of pounds in tax after a judge ruled against an offshore scheme he had used to slash his bills.
The judge said a Guernsey-based trust set up by hedge fund boss George Robinson, one of the City’s highest-paid financiers, was ‘cosmetic’ and told him and three colleagues to pay the taxman £13 million.
Mr Robinson, who is facing a personal bill of more than £2 million, used an arrangement favoured by top footballers and City banks such as Goldman Sachs after being advised it could
Charles Beaumont has recently written on this site about the potential for the Lib Dems to go further in taxing the financial sector. In doing so, he raises two options: the Financial Activities Tax (FAT), which he favours, and the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). For clarity at the outset, the FAT is generally understood to be an additional corporation/income tax on the excessive profits/remunerations in the financial sector. An FTT, on the other hand, taxes all the transactions of financial organisations, such as banks and hedge funds, at the point at which their deals are settled.
A liberal success over many decades has been to protect the tax-free status of books and newspapers. A tax on books would be abhorrent as it would be a tax on free speech.
A democratic, civilised society requires the free exchange of ideas, information and art in books. Books are vital for people, young and old, who wish to educate themselves and improve their prospects.
David Laws has earned himself a generous write-up in today’s Telegraph, with the paper which triggered his resignation from the cabinet two years ago hailing his ‘radical vision of a liberal state’, and lamenting with crocodile tears that his downfall was ‘a great loss to the Cabinet’.
Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander wrote a powerful article — Rich tax dodgers are as bad as dole cheats — for this week’s Sun newspaper. His condemnation of those, such as Jimmy Carr, who legally avoid paying their taxes couldn’t have been stronger:
… to most people it’s outrageous that a few of the very richest and their expensive financial advisers are devising ever more obscure and underhand ways of not paying their tax. When it comes to paying their fair share, some of the people
Here at Liberal Democrat Voice, we are always thinking of new things to bring to our readers. Opinion, news, ideas, our editorial team and volunteer authors bring all this to you and more. However, there is plenty of information out there that campaigners, and anyone who takes an interest, might find useful. So, here’s a miscellany of announcements you might have missed;
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have recently announced a new telephone helpline for the recently bereaved, 0845 300 0627, open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday, and 8 …
Labour’s PFI and PPP schemes turned out badly in so many ways, it is easy to forget quite why they were so popular to begin with, both with politicians very much of the central government public spending school (e.g. John Prescott) and also with senior public sector managers wanting to get funding for their areas (e.g. at Transport for London).
The Taxpayers Alliance and Institute of Directors have just produced a 417 page report on the British Tax System. Some parts are good, some are plain silly.
Let’s get the silliness out of the way first. The report says the tax to GDP ratio should be 33%, and marginal tax rates (including employers’ national insurance) should be no higher than 30%. They believe this will spur growth. The reality – sadly for right-wingers – is that there is little evidence that even French tax rates preclude high levels …
Britain’s only listed accountancy firm is to close its specialist tax division in a move that will be regarded as another victory for Revenue & Customs against tax avoidance by the rich.
You may not have considered this question before, so I’ll give you a little time to ponder it.
So, got your answer?
Here’s the official one from HMRC: standard-rate VAT applies to “Gingerbread men decorated with chocolate unless this amounts to no more than a couple of dots for eyes”.
But, but, but… what if the eyes are not chocolate and instead the gingerbread man has a couple of chocolate buttons instead? And what if, hurtling dangerously out of the 19th century, the gingerbread man is actually a gingerbread …
The combination of being in government and of facing a large deficit means the list of tax increases and spending cuts Liberal Democrats have been calling for over many years has been mostly exhausted. Capital gains tax is up, pension tax breaks for the richest has been curbed, the ID cards database is gone and so on.
It is good that so many policies are now in place and there are plenty of political battles still to come in the second half of this Parliament, especially over mansion tax. However, …
I realise that Parliamentary shenanigans and point scoring isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s worth pointing out that Labour today squandered a relatively good position going into the first PMQs of the new Parliamentary term. Ed Miliband had an open goal ahead of him given controversy over the pensioners’ tax allowance, “pasty tax” and charity tax relief yet he and his strategists still managed to misunderstand parliamentary procedure to a ludicrous extent. He’s just lucky that more excitable members of the Tory benches didn’t take their chance to have some fun.
Miliband looked not to Labour big hitters of the …
One of the aspects of the furore over the Coalition’s Charity Tax that has struck me is that charity is a more divisive issue than I’d realised.
Those of us who work in the charity sector probably take for granted that our organisations provide a public good, that the aggregated generosity of donors and the endeavours of staff make for a better society. That’s probably a majority view among the wider public, but it clearly isn’t a universal attitude.
The Centre Forum paper Taxing Decisions discusses the pros and cons of tax credits and tax allowances. The report reviews tax options for tackling the income and wealth disparities which have become a feature of British society in recent decades.
Reducing the level of inequality benefits everyone in society, rich and poor alike. I would argue that in an inclusive and more equal society, all citizens should pay tax on their income. Means tested benefits have not delivered for us. Child poverty, and unemployment are entrenched with the resulting societal breakdown. The way out of poverty is work. The best …
Remember all the stuff Liberal Democrats such as Vince Cable have been saying for years about how our tax system catches too much income and not enough wealth? You know what – I believe that, and I haven’t suddenly forgotten it in the last few days.
So the idea that somehow getting people to publish their tax returns really gives you a sense of how well-off they are is as flawed as the idea that the tax system those returns illustrate manages to catch how well-off you are. For the same reason that the tax system is out of kilter, so …
Nick Clegg has “no objection in principle” to publishing his tax return, aides said yesterday, after senior politicians scrambled to respond to calls for greater US-style openness from public figures.
After the four main candidates for London’s mayoral elections revealed their personal tax affairs, the Chancellor, George Osborne, yesterday said he was “very happy” for his own details to be published. The disclosures from Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick and Jenny Jones were seen as a turning point, with some warning that they were succumbing to the “Americanisation” of British politics.
Simon Costain I'm guessing around a thousand high net worth individuals are resident on the Isle of Man for tax purposes, though others suggest up to 3,000
Low earners on ...
David Wright While Trump's "gift of the license to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles" is welcome, it won't stop a single Russian missile aimed at Ukraine this year or...
Matt Wardman Thanks for the piece, Tom.
I tend to disagree on the NATO summit. Listening to serious reports (my goto since February 2022 has been the Telegraph's Ukraine ...
theakes Considerable concern in Democratic circles that Trump will call the coming election rigged, cancel the States results won by the opposition and then impose mart...
Peter Martin @ Roland,
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Every company which is registered for VAT can reclaim VAT on purchased items. The question is whether VAT s...
The combination of being in government and of facing a large deficit means the list of tax increases and spending cuts Liberal Democrats have been calling for over many years has been mostly exhausted. Capital gains tax is up, pension tax breaks for the richest has been curbed, the ID cards database is gone and so on.
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