A message to potential Tory voters and homeowners!
Well actually to opinion poll respondents, but it's much the same thing. It seems to me that the 'hardworking families' of Great Britain have given themselves to the Conservative Party too easily. When things were looking less good for the Tories, they made large cuts in inheritance tax. This is not likely to benefit many households, but it was popular (partly I think because of confusion over the incidence of the tax). Even more popular, and with far greater benefits to far more households, would be the reintroduction of mortgage interest tax relief. This has been abolished entirely since 2000-01, and was at steadily reduced rates from about 1990 (and only on £30,000 of mortgage loans, a rate that itself was hardly changed from the 1970s; before then it was unlimited althogh slightly different in application).
Scaling that £30,000 up by house prices, we get about £90,000, so call it £100,000. At the current mortgage rate that is an interest bill of about £500/month. Tax relief on this at the lower rate would be something like £100/m and at the higher rate £200/month. Outstanding mortage debt is over £1tr, so if all of these got basic rate tax relief it would cost something like £12-15bn. Not all mortgage payers would be eligible, and of course a £100,000 cap would mean much lower figures - i.e. easily affordable for a Conservative opposition looking to make a splash, even if extended to higher-rate taxpayers.
But it's too late now - perhaps Gordon will consider it?
Labels: conservatives
Jeffrey Archer
Hardly the most novel of blog posts coming up, but (I can't remember why) on Amazon I saw this review of Jeffrey Archer's "cat o' nine tails":
'Stylish, witty and constantly entertaining ...Jeffrey Archer has a natural aptitude for short stories.' - "The Times".
It's repeated
everywhere, so clearly came from the publishers. A Times website
search, however, doesn't bring it up. There are two main references to the Archer book, one mainly about the cartoonist who illustrated it, and contains a passing complimentary reference to Archer as a person and a few negative ones, and this review:
CAT O’NINE TALES
by Jeffrey Archer
Pan Macmillan, £16.99
Will nothing stop this man? According to Archer, some of these stories are based on yarns heard from fellow cons in prison. Whatever. They are all vastly boring and apparently written by a team of trained chimps. Who reads this stuff? His books are bestsellers, yet strangely invisible. I’m starting to suspect that Lord A buys them all himself. This has the redeeming feature of illustrations by the great Ronald Searle, but even these do not justify the price. Sadists take note — a special “gift edition” is available. Ooh, the pain.
The price suggests the hardback, i.e. orginal, edition, and doesn't contain the words 'stylish' or 'constantly entertaining'.
Labels: conservatives, Jeffrey Archer
Tories' big plan
Drum roll...yes it's to
scrap inheritance tax. The way they portray it is fabulous:
"In London and the south particularly, but also in areas of the north, because of rising house prices there are hundreds of thousands of couples who are going to suddenly be hit with this inheritance tax when their parents die," he said.
"It's not paid by the wealthy. It's paid by those of course who inherit."
Those poor couples - can you imagine waiting desperately for your parents to die, and then suddenly finding that you don't get £500,000, but instead you get £420,000. How does one cope? I suppose the point is those couples who just creep into the threshold, and so would have got £350,000, but instead get, £330,000. The inequity!
The second statement from the Tories is a complete non sequitur. But the main reason its a bad idea is this: the Tories claim the problem, so to speak, is because of rising house prices. That is, indeed, the reason why the numbers paying inheritance tax will rise from their current miniscule base. Yet if anything can be described as unearned wealth, it is that. Furthermore if any increase in wealth is government-caused, it is that. So the Tories are planning on cutting the already-low taxes on inheritances of couples of unearned government-caused wealth, rather than (all things have an opportunity cost) cutting taxes on productive behaviour. It makes no sense.
I wouldn't disagree that the system could be refomed, in fact I would make it explicitly a tax on the recipients, and thus make it essentially avoidable if it was spread around enough people.
Labels: conservatives, inheritance tax
