{"id":23132,"date":"2013-11-18T07:50:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T07:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=23132"},"modified":"2013-11-18T07:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T07:50:31","slug":"clegg-is-not-helping-the-poorest-with-their-tax-bills-so-he-should-stop-pretending-he-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/11\/18\/clegg-is-not-helping-the-poorest-with-their-tax-bills-so-he-should-stop-pretending-he-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Clegg is not helping the poorest with their tax bills so he should stop pretending he is"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Clegg has proposed increasing the income tax personal allowance, again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The argument is always the same: it's said that this 'takes the poorest out of tax'.<\/p>\n

There's a flaw with this argument: as this graph shows <\/a>the bottom 30% of taxpayers hardly pay any income tax already:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

In fact, the bottom 25% of earners pay just 2.3% of all income tax between them right now, and the bottom 10% just 0.4%. However it's looked at, you can't cut that by much and the result is that this policy blindingly obviously does not do what Clegg claims: it does not take the poorest out of tax as they are already not paying income tax. That is, therefore, just a ruse for a tax cut for others higher up the income order.<\/p>\n

Now that may be what Clegg wants to deliver, but if so say it.<\/p>\n

Otherwise cut the taxes that impact the poorest more, like national insurance and VAT; the latter especially.<\/p>\n

And in the meantime drop the anti-tax rhetoric which suggests that government is a a bad thing when very obviously it is not.<\/p>\n

This is lousy politics, poor tax management and real misrepresentation. I resent all three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Clegg has proposed increasing the income tax personal allowance, again. The argument is always the same: it’s said that this ‘takes the poorest out
 Read the full article…<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23132","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=23132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}