Monday 11 November 2019

Classic Telegraph lies and propaganda

The Telegraph runs with the wildly misleading headline "New council income tax is best way to plug multi-billion pound gap in social care, says IFS". The Telegraph's motto is, of course, anything but Land Value Tax or reforming Council Tax. The linked IFS page says nothing of the sort, it just mentions it as a possibility.

Digging a bit further, IFS' own press release on the topic, from March this year, pokes gentle fun at their own report:

But implementation would mean overcoming some important challenges

A local income tax would raise significantly more in some areas than others. We estimate that revenues per person from a flat-rate tax across all tax bands would be more than six times higher in many richer parts of west London than in areas like Hull and Leicester.

A system to redistribute revenues between councils would be required in order to avoid this translating into huge disparities in funding for local services.


To sum up, it would end up as a 1% increase in the national rate of income tax. So not a 'local income tax'.

Income tax rates that varied across areas would be more complex for employers, taxpayers, and HMRC to deal with. Up-to-date records on where taxpayers live – which, at present, employers and HMRC don’t always have – would be needed.

Anything but a national tax hike would be administratively unworkable, in other words. Whatever the merits of a tax (and this has none), it has to be at least administratively workable. If it isn't, then that's usually a clue that it's a fundamentally terrible idea in the first place.

Other options for tax devolution come with more significant drawbacks though

Local corporation and value added or sales taxes would be much more difficult to administer and comply with. Moreover, differences in tax rates across councils would be more likely to distort taxpayers’ behaviour than they would for income tax.

Stamp duty land tax is much more unequally distributed – varying by a factor of more than twenty between richer parts of West London and places like Hartlepool and Blackpool. It is also a bad tax that should be abolished rather than entrenched via devolution.


Agreed to all that.

Substantial new powers over council tax, such as the ability to carry out local revaluations, could pose problems for the system of redistributing funding between councils...

Agreed. Drum-roll please...

It would be better to revalue and reform council tax at a national level – something which is overdue.

Agreed.
-------------------------------
In other words, The Telegraph is claiming the IFS said pretty much the diametric opposite of what the IFS actually said.

1 comments:

Bayard said...

I think we said good-bye to The Truth last Wednesday. She won't be making an appearance in the MSM until after the election. I hope she enjoys her holiday.