The Tories made no promises on tax increases yesterday, VAT excepted. This was not by choice. This was by necessity. The reality is that as Theresa May also recognised yesterday markets are not the answer to all questions. And nor is individualism. Add all this together and what she’s saying, whether through gritted teeth or
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Interviewed by Robert Peston this morning Theresa May said the Conservatives have no plans to increase taxes, and claimed Labour had. However, when asked to reiterate the tax triple lock brought in by David Cameron, covering national insurance, income tax and VAT May only ruled out increasing VAT. The ambiguities are obvious, not least because Labour
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Following discussion on tax and GDP over the last day or so (see here and here) Prof Charles Adams of Durham University has done some more research, linked aggregate tax rates and the UN inequality adjusted human development index. As he has noted: Using the inequality adjusted human development index (IHDI) as opposed to the
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Prof Charles Adams of Durham University played with the data I used yesterday to show the relationship between tax and GDP and recast the data as follows: As Charles noted to me: Tax data is Heritage Foundation (2015). “2015 Macro-economic Data”. GDP per capita is IMF 2016. Pop data from UN 2015 is used to
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A number of recent discussions, including the comments made by Alex Cobham to the Scottish parliament on the psychology of tax payment and discussion of potential tax increases after the election, made me think of something I wrote in chapter 2 of The Joy of Tax: The following graph shows the relationship between nominal GDP per
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I apologise to all those who think I have suddenly become obsessed with Scotland, but there is another story on the political economy of that country that demands comment this morning. According to Politics Home (and others) Gordon Brown is going to intervene in the independence debate today, suggesting that instead of leaving the Union
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I spoke at a meeting of the APPG for Inclusive Growth in the House of Parliament on Tuesday evening. I was interviewed beforehand, and just after I’d dashed in off the Jubilee Line, by Liam Byrne MP:
I just noticed this in a feature on Owen Smith in the Guardian: Now Smith says he is ready to return to the fray, in a modest way at least, cooperating with backbench colleagues to formulate some of the policies a future Labour government might need, particularly on tax reform. “One of the glaring examples
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From the FT this morning: That’s the Joy of Tax at work.
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