According to the FT:
Mr Cameron will use his Downing Street press conference to claim that Labour would put up taxes by £3,028 for every working household — a calculation based on a 50:50 split between higher taxes and spending cuts to eliminate a £30bn structural deficit in the next parliament.
I admit I cannot see any logic to this claim.
There are about 65 million people in the UK and about 31 million income tax payers. The average household has, according to the ONS, 2.3 members. So there are about 28.3 million households.
Between them these households have to pay in tax £15 billion extra according to the Conservatives. That is, if that need is correctly stated (which I dispute), £530 a household.
Even over five years it does not come to £3,028 a household.
This claim looks to be very straightforwardly wrong.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Richard,
Not £530 – that is also straightforwardly wrong because Cameron specified every working household. Your 28.3 million is all households, which includes all pensioners and any household with no-one in employment.
But it’s blatantly obvious that Cameron is trying to maintain the strivers’n’skivers narrative, which statistics show to be a 24-carat lie. I suspect the figure is nearer yours than his.
yes – 11.4m “working” households and 5.9m “mixed” – see http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_382704.pdf
Which suggests additional tax of £1,300 or £867. Neither of which are £3k, and neither of which multiply by 5 to make £3k.
So a complete mystery where the Tories’ figure comes from. Looks like they can’t even be competently dishonest…
They probably mean cumulatively. Times 5 years and it looks about right.
That is absurd
That is making up numbers
I have an eye watering tax bill over the rest of my life
Or not
Depending on how long I live
Such a number is just ridiculous
Richard, I’ve just read that Lynton Crosby, the Tories arch (!) election strategist, predicted/promised that by now they’d have achieved “crossover” and would be pulling well clear of Labour. We all know that Crosby was schooled in the dubious art of US electioneering, where it’s quite acceptable to smear your opponent with so called “attack ads” containing all sorts of dubious claims. So my assumption would be that as the Tories haven’t achieved crossover and don’t now look likely to pull clear of Labour, desperation will increasingly take hold, leading to ever more blatant smears, falsehoods, and so on. In short, an increasing dirty campaign that the Tory supporting press will undoubtedly fall over backwards to promote. This tax claim is just the first of many completely made up “facts”, designed solely to provide sound bites for Tory politicians who find lying and distortion so very, very easy – as the past five year have shown.
I fear you are right
Looks like Mr Blobby (the ex-PM) has taken £30bn and divided it by the number of working households to get to the £3k (i.e. very roughly 10m HH). 3k/5 = 600/yr.
But this rather misses the point that as Richard & others have noted anything in the range £30bn upwards is dodged in taxes each year – going after big tax dodgers could eliminate the structural deficit just by doing that. (apologies Richard if I have the figure wrong on tax dodging – I know it is well north of £20bn/yr).
Compare this to the Con-Dem record on balancing the budget with extra net liabilities of £27,500 per household. (Estimated over 5 years from current accumulated Net Liabilities and averaged over households only [1].)
“The Con-Dem Govt cost each household an extra £27,500 in Debt” — what a headline.
[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/417453/PU1786_WGA_2013-14_Accounts_-VERSION_PDF.pdf
You are a walking talking parody of yourself. Hopefully you’ll be out of work after the election.
I’d be surprised if this was not based on the 5 year parliament. It has become annoyingly common to make such statements without mentioning the timescale – clearly a ploy to make things appear worse.
Well, many of the Tory press loving British public will no doubt lap this nonsense up, you can bet on that. There are more mugs out there in voter-land than in all the kitchenware outlets in the whole damn country.
When will people realise that the bogus austerity measures we have been enduring are just just a means of shaking the economy down in order to shift wealth from the bottom and even the middle to the top once again?
This is an economy for investors – not average working people.
Unfortunately the lies are working and latest polling does show tories ahead tonight. Labour have a soft approach to the media ( oh for the days of Alastair Campbell). Labour need to take the media head on – name the Tory press and how the BBC use the Tory led agenda for example on the EU ( they ignored a pro-Labour / pro-EU letter from business leaders today in the Indie). The BBC continues its TV tabloid approach of looking for trip-ups, bits, and shouting matches rather than discussion with experts about the policies. Labour have let the BBC take a Tory led agenda from its London centre without so much of a murmur. Example when did you ever hear the BBC ask a leading Tory why his party is no longer a One-Nation Tory party appealing across Britain instead of one confined to a few wealthier English counties ?
Richard,
In recent days I’ve been reading Animal Farm to my kids, a book I’ve not read for thirty years. I explained to them that it was written during the war as a thinly-disguised critique of the corruption at the heart of the soviet communist regime. However, as we progressed through the book, I saw parallels to neoliberalism and the right-wing politics of today. The pigs are today’s fat cats and Cameron fits the role of Napoleon exactly. Osborne could easily be cast as the pig Squealer.
In the story previous pronouncements are conveniently forgotten and history is rewritten to suit the current situation. Whilst the pigs gorge themselves, the rest of the animals see no tangible improvements in their lot and are constantly told, by Squealer the master of dodgy statistics and misinformation, that the’ve never had it so good. The animals are promised they will be able to retire someday but older animals die before they get there. In the meantime they are forced to work harder for less food and are expected to pledge faithful allegiance. Any questioning of the system is fiercely crushed and previous heroes are denounced as villains. The farm, with has a low pay and compliant workforce, is held up a model for all other farms in the county. It really is still a book for our times.
I can only hope the electorate could be as engaged as the Scottish referendum voters
and see through the Tories when they are spouting their utter lies, faithfully amplified, unchallenged, by the oligarch press. But I fear, like the animals in the story, most will remain ignorant and that nothing will change.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you
“That is absurd
That is making up numbers”
The problem with such made up numbers is that if they are repeated often enough they start to be accepted as true.
But you already know that.
Cameron is wrong on the precise issue he raised, but right more generally. Labour, much to the delight of most who post on this forum, are a tax and (arbitrarily) spend party, and are relishing the prospect of getting into power to get cracking on their tax and spend agenda. When they get in, we’ll be lucky if they don’t raise taxes by double what Cameron says. And get over yourselves…it’s not only Cameron that is constantly making things up as he pleases. Most of what Balls and Miliband say would fuse a lie detector. And Miliband can’t even eat a BLT sarnie for Pete’s sake.
Why do I bother to let drivel like this through?
I must be a very fair person
Because you are dealing with world as it is Richard, that is why.
I thought you support overall rises in taxation anyway, so why are you unhappy with this claim. If anything I would have thought you would want the number to be greater? And anyway, it’s a historical fact that tax always goes up under Labour (whether that’s desirable or not is another question).
Whoever said I argued for higher tax rates?
I argue that tax should be paid
And that public services must be supplied
And you’re also wrong on Labour
But should I expect anything else?
But you have argued for the top rate of tax to be put back to 50% and Corporation tax to not be cut, and so on, have you not?
Yes
So
That does not mean I iverall demand more tax
It does mean I want a progressive tax system, which we have not got
I thought on another blog you were quite clear that you wanted cgt and income tax equalised at income tax rates? Apologies if I misremember
You do recall correctly
But you ignore that I want progressive taxation
So, force ample, I would like lower VAT
Some light relief:-
http://rt.com/uk/245269-casette-boy-russell-brand/
this should be played to the Time warp Tories
whenever they spout their same old stories
Austerity and “TINA” is all they find pleasing
no chance of the Bradbury Pound and Green Quantitative easing
Please feel free to add to the above;-)
I don’t mean to be pedantic but you specifically mention higher rates not the overall tax burden
I know you blog a lot RM but this type of obvious inconsistency even to a casual reader of this blog does you no favours and gives your critics easy ammunition
Yes I do argue for higher tax rates
And I also argue for a more progressive tax system
That means some will pay less
I also argue for the merits and need for public services
I do not ever argue for more taxes per se
That’s just your wishful thinking