Gasp, shock, horror. The rains of blood and cats with dogs cannot be far behind. Polly:
…why not lift personal allowances to take the low paid out of tax altogether?
Fortunately my fellow bleeding- heart classical liberals over at the Adam Smith Institute have a solution: simply take the poor out of the income tax net altogether by raising the personal allowance from its present rate of £5,435 to £12,000, perhaps even £14,000.
UKIP:
…and urges the Government to adopt the UKIP offical policy of a simple flat tax (with national insurance) starting at £10,000 which will greatly assist many carers.
Yes, there are differences about what happens after that raise in the personal allowance (and Polly via email has pointed out that obviously she doesn’t support flat taxes) but it is the clear and logical solution to start with, do that first then deal with the other matters.
…to tax the poor so that bureaucrats can give money to the poor is simply ludicrous. We should stop doing it.
Quite.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Kit // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:15 am
“…to tax the poor so that bureaucrats can give money to the poor is simply ludicrous.”
Not if you want a large group of benefit dependent voters.
2 JuliaM // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:18 am
Or a large group of voters potentially dependant on you for their direct employment!
3 Mark Wadsworth // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:41 am
This idea went down a storm over at LabourHome.
4 sanbikinoraion // Apr 25, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Why not abolish income tax altogether?
5 Jeff Wood // Apr 25, 2008 at 12:10 pm
This was the deal until about the end of the 1960s. The personal allowance was high enough that one didn’t pay tax until one had earned a dignified wage.
Then income tax kicked in at rates starting around 30%. Not much fun for those whose marginal rates were around 80%.
National Insurance began at a much lower point, but I seem to remember that benefits were clearly defined. If your stamps were paid and you got into work trouble, entitlement was clear.
Difficult to identify like to compare with like, but I should estimate that the 1970 personal allowance would be equivalent to £16,000 now.
6 Roger Thornhill // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Jeff,
How many ounces of gold would it have bought? I think that would be a fair estimation.
Tim adds: Ah, no….fixed at $35 the ounce in 1970, remember?
7 Mark Wadsworth // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Sanbik, ‘why not abolish income tax?’
Because there are far worse taxes like VAT and National Insurance to get rid of first.
Anyway, here’s the handy indexation calculator (which I pinched off this ‘blog in the first place).
8 Jeff Wood // Apr 25, 2008 at 6:04 pm
My Dear Roger
Tim has rescued me from your question about gold, which was quite outside my ken.
I remembered later that in those days a husband and wife’s incomes were normally taxed jointly, which muddies the waters a bit. Also back then, when I was just starting out, a man could expect to raise a family and keep a wife on a modest wage, and put a roof over their heads. No credits then.
This ceased to be true by the end of the 1970s: my former dear lady wife had to go out to work, thanks to the Wilson and Callaghan governments, but I was paying serious taxes!
Leave a Comment