Monday, October 01, 2007

Tory "Tax Cutting": What a Load of Transparent Twaddle


Much as I welcome the closing of tax loopholes the Tory figures are bananas. Non doms (non domiciled for tax) will weigh up whether the tariff of £25,000 is good business and most of them will be driven to incorporate, pay themselves massaged dividends and pay say £5,000 but certainly not £25,000 tax as UK resi's.

The inheritance tax proposal is hugely regressive. Currently 6% of estates pay the duty. It could be as low as 0.5% if the Tory milk snatchers proposal were enacted. Their 9 million households figure is bunkum and as IFS stated requires every home owner with more than £300,000 equity (NB not living in a house worth £300,000) to die at once.

Obviously the Stamp Duty thing is just tinkering and Gordon can match or exceed that. If he did something serious about the non doms too that would be welcome. He should put up Inheritance Tax on the richest 6%.

When Stephanie Flanders put the discrepancies to Alan Duncan he fibbed fluently and denied everything. Hilariously he claimed the IFS - who had just been pissing themselves laughing at the proposals - were on board.

Duncan's body language was 100% wrong. He was leaning back, lolling even; he appeared unbelievably arrogant as a result; and flip, that man is unbearably flip. If he were your mate having a pint you'd take the piss, now wouldn't you?

UPDATE: Osbourne has it seems included seasonal agricultural workers in his non doms. What an idiot.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You crack on. Here in Middle England where who governs is decided the Con offer is a vote-winner.
We fear being turned over and it's that fear that will turf Labour candidates out of the marginals.
Bring back Tony?

Anonymous said...

Shock and awe, mate. Alistair is bolloxed in the headlights.

Anonymous said...

How the heck is that defensible: taxing punters for what they've already paid tax on.
Even Gordy's going to have a hard time explaining that.

Chris Paul said...

Cracking on are us.

The "Con Offer" is a Con. If you're not in the 94th to 99 and a half percentile of mega wealth you will not be affected. Except that you'll have to take up the slack and make up for the rich people who get off lightly under the Tory Class War.

Gordon has been incredibly generous to the rich. Osbourne is proposing only being so generous to the ultra rich. How on earth can that win middle england if you open your eyes and have a little think. This proposal is regressive. Gordon may match the Stamp Duty thing.

The Non Dom thing ... well, this won't work. We are talking about very determined evaders here.

Tory sums do not add up.

Not even close. IFS and all serious media say that this is the case.

Chris Paul said...

Inheritance Tax is a totem natch. People have Not already paid tax on the major parts of their growth in wealth. One buys a house thirty years ago for £20,000. One dies and it is worth £400,000. In which way has one paid tax on the £380,000?

In this case one would pay tax on £100,000 surplus equity at £40,000 having made £380,000 by being in a vibrant growing economy. That is just over 10% tax on welath on which one has not been taxed.

You crack on. And do keep it anonymous.

Barnacle Bill said...

The reason that house prices have risen so much is because the supply(building) of houses has not kept up with the demand for them.
Planning laws are somewhat to blame here, something that the government could have done something about in the past ten years.
Also the investment in social housing has all but dried up. When was the last council house built?
If the governement had been really serious about affordable housing we would have seen more social housing built in the past ten years.
Yes this would probably not have kept up with demand, but we would not have seen the huge increases in house prices that we have.
So in reality we are being taxed, or should I say, the level of taxation we will pay is because of inefficent government!