{"id":19171,"date":"2013-02-07T08:34:24","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T08:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19171"},"modified":"2013-02-07T08:34:24","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T08:34:24","slug":"if-nick-clegg-wants-to-talk-tax-fairness-then-hes-started-in-the-wrong-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/02\/07\/if-nick-clegg-wants-to-talk-tax-fairness-then-hes-started-in-the-wrong-place\/","title":{"rendered":"If Nick Clegg wants to talk tax fairness then he&#8217;s started in the wrong place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2013\/feb\/07\/clegg-lib-dem-eastleigh-byelection\" target=\"_blank\">Nick Clegg wants to talk tax fairness I<\/a>'m delighted, and welcome it. I'm wholly non-partisan in my\u00a0approach\u00a0to those who want to do so, but that does not mean I do not note from whence they come to the debate. Nick Clegg comes from an unfortunate place.<\/p>\n<p>He is Deputy Prime Minister. He is responsible for the actions of this government. He is\u00a0responsible\u00a0for:<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Increasing VAT to 20%, it's highest ever level. This is a deeply regressive tax.<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Cut the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% - a deeply regressive tax measure as it saved the highest earners over \u00a36 billion a year in my estimate if the impact of income shifting is ignored;<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Cut the top rate of\u00a0corporation\u00a0tax for big business by 7% whilst doing nothing for small business;<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Increased the\u00a0personal\u00a0allowance to\u00a0supposedly\u00a0take people out of tax and yet cut their beenfits to pay for it; a deeply regressive move. The allowance increase did not help the poorest; it helped those on middle incomes most (I'm not saying they didn't need help, but Clegg's claim is wrong);<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Introduced territorial\u00a0corporation\u00a0tax to\u00a0encourage\u00a0UK companies to shift their profits into tax havens;<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Introduced a new company treasury tax at just over 5% - so long as the treasury function was moved to a tax haven;<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Did not align capital gains tax and income tax rates;<\/p>\n<p>- \u00a0Has introduced a general anti-abuse rule that will not tackle most tax avoidance;, by design;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">- \u00a0Cut the staff of HMRC by about 20,000 to ensure that tax cannot be collected.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I could go on. But my point is this: talk tax fairness by all means, but acknowledge what you have got wrong and tackle it as well. Otherwise talk is cheap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Nick Clegg wants to talk tax fairness I&#8217;m delighted, and welcome it. I&#8217;m wholly non-partisan in my\u00a0approach\u00a0to those who want to do so, but<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/02\/07\/if-nick-clegg-wants-to-talk-tax-fairness-then-hes-started-in-the-wrong-place\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}