Tag Archives: tax

Caron Lindsay

Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism #12

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 1st December 2009 - 5:53 pm

Yesterday was St Andrew’s Day, a special day of celebration in Scotland. If Iain Smith, Liberal Democrat MSP for NE Fife which includes the town of St Andrews had his way, it would have been a full public holiday, not just the half day that civil servants can take if they want that the SNP have delivered in Government.

There’s a lot going on in Scottish politics at the moment. Here are just a few snippets:

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Nick speaks about launch of Lib Dem tax plans

By Stephen Tall | Mon 30th November 2009 - 6:45 pm

Here for LDV readers’ delectation is Nick Clegg speaking to camera just after launching the Lib Dems’ tax proposals for the next election: tax cuts for millions of people paid for by closing tax loopholes, making polluters pay and introducing a mansion tax on homes worth over £2m.

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Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg announces new Lib Dem tax policies with emphasis on fairness

By Stephen Tall | Mon 30th November 2009 - 11:35 am

As I write, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are setting out the framework of ‘the party’s tax policies, the philosophical basis that underpins them and the contrast between the Liberal Democrats’ policies and those of the other two parties.’

This has been well trailed in the media this morning, with Nick conducting a series of media interviews. Much focus so far on the tweak to the ‘mansion tax’ proposals that Vince mooted at conference to public acclaim, but some disquiet among his own Parliamentary colleagues (many of whom knew nothing about it in advance).

The party has responded to criticisms made of the tax, especially in marginal seats in the south of England, by lifting the threshold at which the annual levy is paid to cover all houses worth more than £2m, and doubling the levy from 0.5% to 1% to ensure even more money is raised by the new tax.

The revenue raised from this and other measures (such as green taxes) will be ploughed back into the party’s spending priorities, including raising the tax threshold for the poorest in society.

Here’s some of the media coverage so far:

BBC Online:

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Mark Pack

Mansion Tax: FT praises, Government doesn’t reject

By Mark Pack | Thu 22nd October 2009 - 9:20 am

From Left Foot Forward:

Martin Wolf, writing in yesterday’s FT, has praised the Liberal Democrats “mansion tax” policy:

“Taxation of property should be heavier, not lighter. But it should also be less regressive. That is why the mansion tax is the germ of an excellent idea.

“Taxes on property have other benefits: they automatically rise with prosperity; they are hard to evade; and they are automatically imposed on otherwise untaxed foreign owners. The latter benefit from the amenities of the UK without paying for them. A higher property tax is a simple – and inescapable – way of making them contribute to

…

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Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: Vince’s speech

By Alex Foster | Mon 21st September 2009 - 6:00 pm

There are now many ways of getting your brain around Vince Cable’s keynote speech. Read it on the party website. Hear our podcast below. See what ePolitix thinks – or the Guardian, for that matter.

vince-speech

There was much that was really important that jumped out at me from the speech – here are my favourite bits:

We should not be taken in by the hysterical nonsense about the country being bankrupt. It isn’t.

The Tories are currently getting a free rein to slash budgets. Tories like …

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Opinion: Once again, the French show a little bit more imagination…

By Martin Land | Wed 2nd September 2009 - 6:45 pm

The reduction in VAT from 17.5% to 15% quickly condemned and rightly so, by Vince Cable, as expensive and ineffective is one of this government’s more costly errors. The one year only cut will cost us the incredible sum of £12.5 billion pounds and has done little to stimulate consumer spending, simply because despite the enormous cost it still seems so meaningless at the till.

Indeed, it may will come with a sting in the tail, as when it comes to an end and VAT goes back to 17.5% it will come with a sharp inflationary jolt which may well trim back some of those ‘green shoots’ that Labour will being telling us about this winter.

The French, as usual, have shown a little bit more imagination.

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Giles Wilkes

Opinion: Property and consumption taxes need to rise to fix the fiscal mess

By Giles Wilkes | Sat 11th July 2009 - 2:00 pm

Politicians everywhere are being urged to get real about the fiscal mess. For the last month, this has meant a bitter dispute about the government’s spending figures. Who will cut the most? For any numerate observer, the debate is trivial: a rising bill for interest payments and the social security budget make it inevitable, no matter what contortions Brown attempts in disguising the figures, and no matter who is in power.

CentreForum has just published a new report about Britain’s fiscal mess, called A balancing act: fair solutions to a modern debt crisis. …

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 8 July 2009

By Stephen Tall | Wed 8th July 2009 - 10:30 am

2 Big Stories


Labour backbench revolt over abolition of 10p tax rate is defeated

Big shock this one, I know… Labour MPs realise too late that their party’s tax changes are hitting the poorest hard in the pocket, threaten to mount a rebellion, and then – as per bloody usual – are bought off by the whips with a mixture of coercion and cheap promises. We’ve seen this story played out so many times before. Here’s The Times account:

Gordon Brown saw his Government’s majority cut to 43 in its defeat of an amendment to the Finance Bill that many thought would

…

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 7 July 2009

By Stephen Tall | Tue 7th July 2009 - 12:00 pm

2 3 Big Stories

US and Russia agree nuclear cuts

The BBC reports:

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have reached an outline agreement to cut back their nations’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The “joint understanding” signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty. The accord would replace the 1991 Start I treaty, which expires in December.

Nick Clegg welcomed the announcement:

This decision is a great moment and a promising step ahead of next year’s NPT talks. Britain must now play our own part

…

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Stephen Tall

“Liberal Democrats – a party ahead of the pack” (And Other Media Stories)

By Stephen Tall | Tue 21st April 2009 - 9:50 am

Time was the announcement of Lib Dem taxation policies would have been almost entirely ignored. And, if they were covered, the focus would have been exclusively on the ‘U-turn’ element of yesterday’s announcement that the party has dropped its less-than-a-year-old pledge to cut income tax by 4p in favour of raising the personal tax allowance threshold to £10,000.

But that time was Before Vince. Today, there is much positive coverage (in the former broadsheets anyway) of the Lib Dems’ tax-cutting pledge. Let’s start with The Independent’s glowing editorial:

… the Liberal Democrats have been ahead of the pack in

…

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Alix Mortimer

Lib Dems to raise the personal tax allowance

By Alix Mortimer | Mon 20th April 2009 - 2:14 pm

At last! I’ll write up a fuller analysis later, but for now, here’s the announcement that I, and many others in the party, have been waiting for. Let’s skip over the £700-and-a-pony-for-all headline. This, friends, is a liberal tax measure.

The party will promise to raise the income tax personal allowance to £10,000 by closing tax loopholes exploited by big businesses and the wealthy.

Measures which will be used to pay for this proposed increase in the personal allowance include:

  • Restricting tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate
  • Taxing Capital Gains at marginal income tax

…

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Stephen Tall

Jeremy Browne: VAT cut has helped the richest the most

By Stephen Tall | Wed 8th April 2009 - 11:09 pm

The Lib Dem press release headline is stark: Wasteful VAT cut only benefiting the rich. (It’s also, whisper it gently, not 100% accurate: for ‘only’ read ‘mostly (ish)’).

Here’s what Lib Dem shadow chief financial secretary Jeremy Browne has to say about the party’s research showing that the VAT ‘savings work out at an average of over £9 a week for the richest households, while poorer households are saving less than £3, despite recent claims from Gordon Brown that families would save at least £5 a week’:

The Government’s defence of its wasteful VAT cut continues to unravel. Its benefits

…

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Stephen Tall

LDV members’ survey (1): 80% support for Nick’s tax stance

By Stephen Tall | Fri 3rd April 2009 - 5:44 pm

Over the last week, Lib Dem Voice has invited the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the almost 200 of you who completed it; we’ll be publishing the results on LDV over the next few days.

First up, we asked about the Lib Dems’ policy on tax: Nick Clegg this week announced that the Lib Dems would no longer find it possible to cut the overall burden of taxation because of the current economic crisis, as had been announced in last year’s Make It Happen policy document. The party will continue to pledge to cut the taxes of low- and middle-income earners, though, funded by raising taxes for the wealthiest. Which of these statements best represents your view?

Here’s what you told us:

80.3% – This is the right approach: tax cuts for the poorest are needed, but the overall burden cannot be reduced in the current circumstances


8.3% – Nick Clegg was wrong to drop the party’s pledge to cut the overall burden of taxation
8.3% – Pledging to cut taxes at all, even for the lowest paid, in the current economic circumstances is unrealistic
3.1% – Don’t know

Here’s a selection of your comments:

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Mark Pack

Minister tackling offshore tax havens … uses an offshore tax haven himself

By Mark Pack | Sun 29th March 2009 - 9:37 am

As the Sunday Times reports:

LORD MYNERS, the minister in charge of the government’s assault on tax havens, has used a blind trust to conceal £250,000 of his own money in an offshore shelter.

Details of the secret holding have been obtained by The Sunday Times as G20 leaders gather in London pledging to stamp out tax abuses.

Myners transferred 500,000 of his own shares in the Ermitage hedge fund, based in Jersey, into a blind trust when he became a minister in October …

He owned the shares while overseeing price-sensitive policy decisions. During this time he met Jersey officials who now

…

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Stephen Tall

Clegg: no overall cut in taxes now, except for low- and middle-income earners

By Stephen Tall | Fri 27th March 2009 - 1:18 pm

Last summer, when Nick Clegg launched the party’s Make It Happen policy statement, he made a bold declaration for a Lib Dem leader: that we would “get wasteful government spending under control, and look for ways to cut the overall tax burden.”

Today, Nick conceded in an interview with today’s Financial Times what has become increasingly obvious since the collapse of Lehman’s in the autumn, and the plunge of Britain’s economy into full-blown recession – that it’s simply not possible now to cut the overall burden of taxation:

Nick Clegg yesterday abandoned the Liberal Democrats’ short-lived pledge to go

…

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Stephen Tall

Tories’ double whammy tax bombshell

By Stephen Tall | Mon 23rd March 2009 - 8:42 pm

I leave the country for just three days, and come back to find that, in my absence, the Tories have fallen to bits over tax. I must try this going away lark again, some time. (What do you mean, post hoc ergo propter hoc?)

Of course, it’s possible to claim it’s all a storm in a teacup: that (i) George Osborne’s announcement that the Tories will go into the next election promising to raise the top rate of tax, and (ii) Ken Clarke’s declaration that their inheritance tax cut for the rich was an “aspiration”, are merely a …

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Stephen Tall

Clegg & Cable spell out Lib Dem public spending cuts to fund education priorities

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th February 2009 - 8:44 pm

In his 2008 conference speech, Nick Clegg promised the Liberal Democrats would soon spell out exactly how the party would fund its policy priorities – new spending on Lib Dem policies, including tax cuts for the vast majority of citizens:

I want this to be the most progressive – most redistributive – tax plan ever put forward by a British political party. Using just a little of the money the government wastes every day. To help people in their everyday lives. That doesn’t mean cutting help for the poorest, of course. It doesn’t mean stopping vital investment in hospitals and

…

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Stephen Tall

Comment IsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable – This crisis must spur us to take on the tax avoiders

By Stephen Tall | Tue 3rd February 2009 - 2:19 pm

Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable argues that the shocking scale of systematic corporate tax avoidance strikes a particularly ugly note in these straitened times. You can read it in full here, but here’s an excerpt:

How should the government tackle corporate tax-dodging? Tax simplification would help. There could be lower headline rates of corporation tax in return for eliminating the complex network of tax allowances which companies currently enjoy. It has been estimated that simplification alone could cut the headline rate by 5%. There is then less incentive for tax avoidance.

Beyond

…

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Alex Foster

Unforseen circumstances

By Alex Foster | Sun 1st February 2009 - 11:56 am

Wall Street bankers in New York are getting much smaller bonuses this year than last year.

That’s a good thing, right?  In view of the financial apocalypse, they deserve less.

Only thing is, New York City and New York State made a lot of money out of taxing those bonuses, and between them they are looking at over $1bn less money to spend on everything that city and state government needed to pay for. 

It’s a tough time for local government cuts.

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Stephen Tall

See if you can spot the flaw in The Scotsman’s reasoning

By Stephen Tall | Sat 31st January 2009 - 10:45 am

LDV reported this week on the Scottish Lib Dems’ decision to open talks with the SNP, following the casting vote rejection by the Holyrood parliament of the nationalists’ £33bn budget. In its budget analysis, The Scotsman poses the question, Why did the Lib Dems change their tune?

The article begins by mounting a fierce attack on the Scottish Lib Dems for ditching their principles:

Why had the party, which had adhered to its principle of a 2p cut in income tax throughout the process, suddenly thrown it all away to offer the SNP its support in getting the Budget through?

…

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David Allen

Opinion: A Tax-Cut-And-Spend Policy?

By David Allen | Sat 10th January 2009 - 12:20 pm

Stephen Tall recently asked us here on Lib Dem Voice to consider whether Nick Clegg’s call for “big, permanent and fair” tax cuts, combined with £12.5 billion of green public investment would “strike a chord, appear flawed, or be ignored”.

Well, people might just find a flaw in our argument that tax cutting should be top priority, but so should increased public spending. It looks two-faced. It suggests we can’t agree amongst ourselves. Facing enormous government debts, our policy seems to be to increase them in all directions – by taxing less, and by …

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The Voice

Clegg: time for “big, permanent and fair tax cuts”, not Tories’ “fake giveaway”

By The Voice | Mon 5th January 2009 - 6:41 pm

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has again pushed the party’s proposals of tax cuts for the poorest to stimulate the economy, while attacking the Tories’ promises of tax cuts for savers. Speaking on BBC News, Nick commented:

This is a fake giveaway. It only amounts at today interest rates to an extra 40p a year for someone saving £100. What people need is much more money back in their pockets now. That’s why we have a plan to deliver big, permanent, fair tax cuts.” (Source: PoliticsHome.com)

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