Jeremy Hunt has dangled the prospect of big tax cuts in his March budget, in what is seen as one of the last opportunities for the Conservatives to claw back Labour’s huge opinion poll lead.'Elect us again, and we'll steal less from you!' Well, it's a slogan for the times, I guess...
In his first public comments on his budget strategy, the chancellor made clear that only unexpected bad news would prevent him from answering the call from Tory MPs for a substantial giveaway before an expected autumn general election.
And where did he make this pronouncement? From No 11? Or from the real seat of power in the UK?
Speaking in Davos, where he was attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum...
Thought so.
One senior Tory MP suggested that Hunt could focus on cutting national insurance.
I'd be satisfied with him just renaming it. Since it's not insurance at all.
The Tories deserve to get wiped out for the appalling behaviour post Boris . But consider the alternative .
ReplyDeleteJaded
The plan is that the Tories get wiped out, Labour get a massive majority and implement the rest of the agendas. One way or another we are stuck up a gum tree without a paddle.
ReplyDeleteOn National Insurance, I read an article recently that said that the State Pension wasn't a pension, but a Benefit. It struck a chord with me, because if it were a Benefit, then it wouldn't be taxed (hopefully). OK, it is paid gross (and 4-weekly, so 13 times a year), but it is added to income from other sources (which might be pensions) and is taxed along with them. The nett result is that those of us who paid the maximum NI contributions for a long time actually get considerably less than people who paid a lot less - good in some people's eyes, bad in others.
ReplyDeleteWe all know that NI contributions alone don't pay for the whole of social services and the NHS, but the bill for those is topped up out of other taxes. Surely a review of taxation as a whole ought to give folk an idea of what they are paying for, so a rebalancing of income tax with NI contributions seems like a good idea to me. (i.e. NI tax for one set of things, other tax for other things).
The whole tax business looks to me like it has been intentionally constructed to confuse ordinary folk about what they are really paying for, and the NI ceiling being just short of the point at which the 40% tax band starts seems to me to be bizarre. Perhaps folk don't realise that they don't pay 20% tax except for in that gap, as they pay NI as well as tax.
Not much in there about how the tax cuts might be funded, just a bit of hand-waving about a growing economy. The slightest slowdown in spending, or even slowing the rate of increase of spending, would have the usual suspects screaming about "austerity" on Xwitter so they won't do that. So we'll be back to borrowing, "quantitative easing" (i.e. printing money), yet more massive national debt, and inflation. Much the same goes for anything that might actually improve the economy such as ditching net zero.
ReplyDeleteDitching Net Zero and abolishing the Climate Change Committee has to be a major priority. The reason being that the idea that CO2 emmisions are harmful has been thoroughly disproven over the past forty years. The original premise was that it would cause runaway warming leaving vast areas of the earth uninhabitable due to rising sea levels and arable land being turned into deserts. That these predictions were wrong is now beyond dispute. The Climate Alarmists have now moved on to claiming that destructive weather events are increasing but this too is false. Warmer weather is more benign and excessively bad weather is declining not increasing.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the difference between a bribe and
ReplyDeletea short term shifting of government funds to benefit taxpayers?
If it's just before a general election, no difference at all.
Penseivat
"Labour’s huge opinion poll lead".
ReplyDeleteAnyone else remember 'the seventies'? Why do I suspect we will all (be made to, by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Starmer and his cronies) 'enjoy' a period where even that mad decade (courtesy of the self-same idiots poised to gain control now) will be looked at as "a golden age" in comparison?
We beat Napoleon 209 years ago, so why do we still have Income Tax that which ever one of the Pitts enforced?
ReplyDelete"But consider the alternative ."
ReplyDeleteIs it still actually much of an alternative?
"One way or another we are stuck up a gum tree without a paddle."
Sadly true!
"The whole tax business looks to me like it has been intentionally constructed to confuse ordinary folk about what they are really paying for..."
Oh, indeed! If you'd planned it that way from the start, would it look any different?
"So we'll be back to borrowing, "quantitative easing" (i.e. printing money), yet more massive national debt, and inflation."
Well, at least the outgoing chancellor can leave the incoming one a cheeky note, I suppose.
"Ditching Net Zero and abolishing the Climate Change Committee has to be a major priority."
Yes, but since you'll never find any of the three main parties backing it...
"If it's just before a general election, no difference at all."
ReplyDelete👏
"Anyone else remember 'the seventies'?"
Barely! And this time around the music and TV won't be as good.
"We beat Napoleon 209 years ago, so why do we still have Income Tax that which ever one of the Pitts enforced?"
Once you give an addict a drug, they never voluntarily give it up...