What a difference a few days makes for our Ritchie. Jan 4th. businesses don’t pay taxes. People do. Rather curiously on NI I agree with Worstall. Come on guys. You need to agree a line. You can’t both be right. Employment taxes are bourne by employees. Jan 6th. First it gives lie to the argument that taxes on employment are paid by

Briefly put, higher corporate taxes reduce the after-tax rate of return on investment, and this in turn reduces investment, employment and income below what they might otherwise have been. Of course, we might be prepared to pay this price if increasing corporate taxes reduced inequality, and there are apparently people who believe that this is in

…..or tax cons? It has to be said, David Cameron’s Conservatives have been outflanked by both Calamity Clegg and debtmeister Brown in the battle over tax cuts. Today’s announcement over plans to reduce business taxes and improve the employment situation may well be sensible but it is not good politics, the public are looking for direct

I have perhaps been guilty of extolling the merits of replacing all existing property/wealth based taxes with Land Value Tax or replacing the entire Welfare State with a Citizen's Income scheme, so today, let's look at slimming down The State and simplifying/flattening The Big Taxes - Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT and Corporation Tax - i.e. taxes on enterprise, work and investment....

So, My Noble Lord Stern said that we can beat climate change at a cost of 1-2% of the economy per year. This should be done by imposing green taxes: Pigou taxes as they are technically called. Green taxes already make up 7 per cent of the Government’s tax take. The government’s tax take is somewhere around

You want the most blatant difference between parties? Tax. The Liberal Democrats would raise taxes on the richest to give a £700 tax cut to low and middle earners; Labour have just raised taxes again on low and middle earners; the Tories claim they want to reverse Labour’s tax rise, but won’t say how to pay for it – while their biggest commitment is a massive handout to dou...

It is very hard to argue that the nation's interests are best served by cutting taxes for the richest in society, , or that taxes on the rich are not low by historical standards

We are all familiar with the concept of stealth taxes in the UK. Almost everything you buy these days has an element of taxation either hidden in the price (like petrol) or added on as an extra (like Insurance Premium tax). However most people are still unaware (or refuse to admit) that one of our biggest taxes, Value Added Tax, is not a UK tax at all but is imposed from Brussels. Of coursed it&rs...

The Telegraph is reporting that families are facing their highest tax burden since 1991. Not at all surprising, I must say. Much of the increase comes from stealth taxes. The basic rate of income tax has not moved much in the past 17 years: recently, we've had 23%, then 22%, and now 20%. However, council tax has shot through the roof, as have indirect taxes such as the excise duties on fuel. Oh, a...

New Labour promised not to put up income tax to get elected. So instead of in-your-face direct taxes, Chancellor Gordon Brown gave us new, indirect, Stealth Taxes and he abolished tax concessions. His attempts to fund New Labour's Fat Government Policy have savaged the pensions and savings industries and had cost the nation the equivalent of 16.5 p in the pound on the basic rate of income tax by 2...