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Does
George Osborne have any comprehension about, what the word SIMPLIFICATION, really means!
it's a bad joke
Before Osborne who was the last Chancellor who came to office with a massive fanfare about tax simplification?
Step forward Gordy Brown - who went on to treble or quadruple the UK tax code depending on which measure you use.
Osborne is on track to match this even if the rest of his budget was a total mess!
50% rate HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY KNOW
.....how much income was accelerated into 09-10 ? Agree the argument was rubbish.
Worse still they are also
depending on those 'honest' 1% of the highest paid to stop avoiding tax as a result of the lower tax rate.
Even my lowly basic rate taxpaying clients don't want to pay more tax if they can help it....so what hope those who spend £1,000s on tax specialists to reduce their tax....
Lower tax rates don't end tax avoidance
I've seen enough clients willing to undertake schemes to avoid 10% CGT to know that there is no positive rate of tax that people won't seek to avoid.
It amuses me that a 50% rate is spoken of by some as though it were apocalyptically high when 60% was the top rate for many years only a generation ago. And that was a welcome reduction from the still higher rates that prevailed not long before that!
Mendacious is a precisely chosen word by Simon to describe some of these arguments.
Taxation rates and evasion
I've seen enough clients willing to undertake schemes to avoid 10% CGT to know that there is no positive rate of tax that people won't seek to avoid.
Firsly, let us all remember that avoidance is perfectly legal and legitimate, so we are really talking about evasion here.
While this is of course true, one only has to look carefully at those eastern european states who introduced flat rate taxation of around 18% (from marginal rates not too dissimilar to that of the UK) and notice that they are reporting a much improved total tax take as a result. What one can't know is just how widespread wholesale evasion was, prior to the flat rate introduction. What is also clear is that telling people accurately and honestly where their tax money is being spent, also seems to reduce evasion.
No, I'm talking about avoidance
I certainly wasn't suggesting there was any evasion - I was helping those clients with their tax avoidance! My point was that, human nature sadly being what it is (greedy), I don't believe a reduction in tax rates necessarily makes people less inclined to avoid tax if they can. The new, lower rate becomes settled and, before long (or when the tax bill is looming), many will still seek to avoid it. That will be so for a 45% rate and would be at lower rates still.
Arguments for flat rate tax are not entirely dissimilar to flat earth arguments for me - backwards. I believe progressive taxation is just and equitable in a civilised society. I'm sure a low, flat rate does raise the tax take in jurisdictions where tax evasion is widespread and the enforcement of tax collection is lax. That doesn't make it a model for advanced western economies to follow.
I agree wholeheartedly that we in the west are crying out for a mature debate about tax and public spending, neither of which is inherently bad as the frothier commentators on the right would have us believe.