{"id":21048,"date":"2013-06-04T06:31:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T05:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=21048"},"modified":"2013-06-04T06:31:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T05:31:37","slug":"labour-needs-to-tackle-tax-reliefs-not-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/06\/04\/labour-needs-to-tackle-tax-reliefs-not-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour needs to tackle tax reliefs, not benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It's now commonplace to say\u00a0Francois\u00a0Hollande has got a great deal wrong in France, and to some extent that's true. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/4345cb98-cc44-11e2-9cf7-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2VDq6KHSd\" target=\"_blank\">not this one, from the FT<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 13px;\">France\u2019s socialist government, under strong pressure to reform its big and costly\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: small;\">social welfare system<\/span><span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 13px;\">, has unveiled plans to make annual net savings of \u00e2\u201a\u00ac1.7bn in its generous family benefits regime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The relatively modest savings, a first step in a series of welfare reforms promised this year by President Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Hollande, are to be achieved mainly by reducing tax breaks for the better-off to avoid a politically sensitive departure from the principle of universal child benefits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This would be the right direction of travel for Labour.<\/p>\n<p>Cutting higher rate pension\u00a0relief\u00a0still further would be welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Giving tax\u00a0relief\u00a0on venture capital trusts,\u00a0enterprise\u00a0management\u00a0incentives, enterprise investment schemes and even (candidly) ISAs makes little or no sense when universal benefits are under threat.<\/p>\n<p>That's where I'd like to see Labour making threats, not on winter fuel allowance, which opens the door to many more cuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s now commonplace to say\u00a0Francois\u00a0Hollande has got a great deal wrong in France, and to some extent that&#8217;s true. But not this one, from the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/06\/04\/labour-needs-to-tackle-tax-reliefs-not-benefits\/\"><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":[35,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21048","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=21048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}