The Tories have backed business protests at government plans to include complex cuts to pension tax relief for high earners in the pre-election finance bill that will implement this week's Budget

Increasing value added tax would hit growth and employment, according to a centre-right think-tank, in a challenge to the widely held view that VAT rises would be the least damaging way of raising taxes.

Public spending will flatten out to bring down the deficit but some cuts are needed, as are tax rises – an especially tricky task for this week's pre-election Budget

In the News of the World today, I propose a new tax on the rich: specifically, on ex-ministers who go on to earn a crust advising companies how to avoid the regulations with which they have saddled the British economy. I proposed this before the news broke about Byers and Hewitt etc, but their appalling story makes it all the more pertinent. The Nelson tax should be above the top rate, and imposed...

If the UK wants to benefit from being a hedge fund domicile of choice, it must simplify its tax regime or risk losing out forever to Ireland and Luxembourg

Policy Exchange has just published a "research note" purporting to show that the tax on cigarettes in the UK should be increased, and that "that every single cigarette smoked costs the country money - 6.5 pence each time someone lights up." If you read the paper [pdf], you will find it is an astonishingly dodgy dossier. Here is how the figure is made up: Taxation of tobacco contributes Â&pou...

Well, yes and no. LABOUR’S new 50% tax on high earners will leave Britain with the highest income-tax rates in the G8, just a year after the UK had the second lowest in the influential grouping. It will have the joint highest personal tax alongside Japan among the world’s leading economies. Marginal tax rates are

Well, yes, but….. The new tax will not be an “insurance fund” for the banking industry, as ministers are concerned that such a measure would simply encourage more risky behaviour of the sort that led to the financial crisis of 2008. I’ve said before that I’m not

DAVID Cameron committed the Tories to imposing a new tax on banks yesterday as both main parties battled to convince voters they would claw back billions of pounds from the fi

We have just witnessed a fascinating glimpse of the use of the internet in elections. This morning, Cameron proposed a unilateral bank tax - moving, I suspect, ahead of what he believes Darling will announce in next week's budget. Next, at 1.19pm, Will Straw digs up a selectively-edited version of Chris Grayling speaking in his local constituency (put online by the Labour candidate, Craig Mon...