Fun Online Poll Results & Dumbass Reader's Letter Of The Week

Unsurprisingly, seventy five per cent of us can't see the slightest difference between Labour's and the Tories' tax and spend policies.

Seventeen per cent thought there was a difference but couldn't think of one off-hand. Eight per cent (seven people) thought there was a difference and gave examples in the comments, which were all either tongue-in-cheek or rather vague.
---------------------------------------------------
Anyway, here's a reader's letter from Wednesday's Metro by somebody who thinks that there is a difference, it's textbook Indian Bicycle Marketing*:

How astonishing that the Tories are determined to abolish inheritance tax for estates worth between £300,000 and £1 million. This is a tax paid by just six per cent of estates. Contrast this with Labour's help for struggling mortgage payers and the unemployed, and you can see how the parties' priorities differ. While the Tories' committment to protect the wealthiest was never in doubt, it's never been so clearly displayed.

Dave Bodimeade, Essex.
--------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: WOAR has pointed out in the comments that Dave B is a press officer for the Labour Party.
--------------------------------------------------
Just a few facts that I'd like to ram down Dave B's throat, were I ever to meet him:

1. Inheritance tax is a pure jealousy surcharge which raises £3 billion a year, about half a per cent of all tax receipts**. It's either there to trick people into thinking that the government somehow cares about vague concepts like 'equality' or because the government is genuinely spiteful.

2. Labour responded to the Tories' inheritance tax proposals by promising (by a roundabout way) to double the nil rate band to £650,000-odd, not quite as high as £1 million, but that's just details.

3. "Labour's help for struggling mortgage payers" consists of taking money off savers and giving it to borrowers, so it's unfair to mention the "help" without mentioning the people who are being robbed.

4. As to the unemployed, the policies of the two major parties aren't really that different and have only changed at the margins over the last forty years or so (getting progressively stupider) so that's a non-point. But it's interesting to compare the "help" for mortgage borrowers (about £30 billion a year) with the "help" for the unemployed - the total income support, employment support/jobseeker's allowance, incapacity benefit etc paid out is just shy of £20 billion a year with another £13 billion-odd in Housing Benefit and Council Tax benefit**, i.e. ten million households with a mortgage (the bulk of whom must have at least one wage-earner) are getting just as much "help" as five million households with no earned income whatsoever.

* i.e. if you would like to see inheritance tax cut, you'd be more likely to vote Tory on the strength of that letter. Whether the Tories would really do it depends on what their focus groups tell them that swing voters in marginal seats are thinking.

** IHT and Council Tax Benefit would both be scrapped by an MW government of course, and as a quid pro quo, there'd be Council Tax bands going from 'A' (paying £100 a year) all the way up to 'Z' (paying £10,000 a year) as part of the transition to proper Land Value Tax or a Progressive Property Tax, like in Northern Ireland, where Domestic Rates are set at a flat 0.6% of capital property values, but of course the poor buggers are still saddled with Stamp Duty Land Tax and Inheritance Tax.