By Mark Drakeford AM, in the Welsh Assembly, over at the BBC. He covers most of the bases, emphasising that it would be a replacement tax for Council Tax, Business Rates and Stamp Duty Land Tax.
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Grand theft Labour
1 hour ago
8 comments:
" . . . emphasising that it would be a replacement tax . . "
Please forgive my cynicism but this guy's a politician. Why should I believe him about one tax replacing another - or even a lot of others - when it's so much easier (and more profitable) just to add it on to the rest?
U, yes, I've heard that argument before.
You know for a fact that implementing LVT is easy on an administrative level but quite difficult politically (Poor Widows! The Family Home! Attack On Weealth! blah blah blah); LVT could only ever happen if other taxes were demonstrably reduced, and as we know, people love stealth taxes and taxes which they think that Other People pay; and they hate in-your-face taxes which they have to pay themselves.
"taxes which they think that Other People pay"
People who think their employer's NIC doesn't come off their pay would probably also think that the bank's proportion of LVT (if levied on the basis of "whoever has the title, pays the LVT") wouldn't be included in their interest payments.
B, people are entirely inconsistent with "who bears a tax", they appear to pick and choose to suit their own prejudices.
They believe that consumers pay VAT but not corporation tax; they believe that employers pay employer's NIC; they believe that final salary schemes don't depress the amount of wages that employers can pay; the government claims that an 0.0001% financial transaction tax would "eat into people's pensions" while merrily levying 0.5% Stamp Duty on share sales/purchases, they believe that tobacco and booze duty reduces smoking and boozing, and so on.
I agree but once LVT's in and working some parasite/bright spark will say "hey, we could have a tax on, say, transfer of securities or financial transactions; only a little one; you won't even notice!" . . . and the same thing starts again. So not only is there a mountain to climb actually bringing in LVT as the tax not a tax, there's the difficulty of preserving that position. Unfortunately our rulers, by definition, are politicians who, again by definition, are largely untrustworthy. My fear - not an unresonable one, I think - is that we might get LVT but (in practice) we'll keep most of the other taxes as well.
Maybe, although I suppose this would destroy your motivation for keeping this site up and running, you should consider claiming victory in the intellectual struggle re LVT but acknowledge stalemate in the practical one: not a glorious victory but not an ignominious defeat either. Or maybe that's just the advice you'd expect from an old man!
U, oh yes, that's the general course of history, from gradually shifting from taxes on land (which was the norm in England and its colonies for several centuries) to stealth taxes on income, output, transactions etc. There is no reason to assume that this trend will reverse any time soon, despite my best efforts.
But LVT is not my main motivation for blogging, never was. It may surprise you to learn that out of 6,500 posts, only 500 were about LVT. If there's other stuff going on, I'll write about that, LVT is just a general fall back topic for slow news days :-)
"But LVT is not my main motivation for blogging,"
Well, MV, you could've fooled me! Genuinely, I thought that's why you started this bog.
OTOH since yours is one of the half-dozen or so must-read blogs I visit most days (although I'm not fixated on LTV), you're certainly doing something right for the "general reader".
U, if truth be told, I wasn't that fussed about LVT when I started blogging, it's sort of snow-balled over the years, every time somebody came up with a supposed "Killer Argument Against" it made me realise that there aren't any.
And I do just as many posts pointing out how insane VAT is, how stupid the welfare/tax system is, point out idiotic bits of government spending, debunking statistics and so on, it's just that government spending has to be funded from something, and having ruled out VAT, NIC, income tax, what are we left with?
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