Lib Dems' tax policies (2)

Here's some brilliant maths.

The Lib Dems' proposals include "Cut the basic rate of income tax by 4%, financed by green taxes on pollution and by taxes on the wealthy" and "Abolish Council Tax, replacing it with a fairer Local Income Tax", which they reckon would be about 3.5% on top of normal income tax.

Of course, they know perfectly well that Local Income Tax would not be local. They admitted in the tax consultation paper of August 2005 (at 4.1.4) that funding all local authority spending with Local Income Tax "would lead either to large discrepancies in service provision, or large disparities in the tax levels required" and so proposed some woolly "equalisation" system, whereby Local Income Tax from higher income areas gets skimmed off and paid to lower income areas.

In other words, they are going to cut the basic rate of income tax by 0.5% and replace Council Tax with 'green' taxes (whatever they are) and 'taxes on the wealthy' (which are not explained in the paper).

The whole thing is a mixture of the downright sensible and the completely fuckwitted.