Today, the Tax Foundation releases the 2024 edition of the International Tax Competitiveness Index, an annual ranking of how pro-growth the tax systems of 38 OECD economies are. It’s not great reading for the UK, which comes 30th. This is behind other G7 economies such as the US (18th) and Japan (25th), but still ahead […]
A fortnight from today, Rachel Reeves will stand up at the Despatch Box and deliver her first Budget. It will not be the one she wishes she could give. Ever since moving into Number 11, the Chancellor has insisted that, far from there being no money left, there’s a whopping black hole of £22 billion […]
Rachel Reeves is fast discovering the limits of how much money she can extract from the economy without raising ‘taxes on working people’. Let’s review the numbers. The Labour manifesto had £7.35 billion in revenue raising initiatives (in fiscal year 2028-29), with most coming from non-doms changes (£5.23bn), VAT on schools (£1.51bn), and carried interest […]
In times of economic adversity, wealth taxes on the richest are often proffered as a solution. Last week, Labour’s largest union backer, Unite, demanded a wealth tax on the top 1% in order to give public sector workers a pay increase, claiming it was time for a raid on ‘the super-rich’. After the Government offerred […]
It’s been revealed that people suffering from skin cancer are waiting up to a year to start treatment. The fact that so many people with serious illnesses are waiting for so long is a scandal that should anger us all. The Liberal Democrats are rightly outraged by this and have called for action from the […]
During the election campaign, the Labour Party had a strong focus on the importance of economic growth. Part of their explanation for our low rate of growth was that the tax burden was too high. Writing in the Daily Mail, on May 24 Rachel Reeves, then the Shadow Chancellor declared: ‘[Rishi Sunak] will tell you […]
The new Chancellor wants us to know she is taking the ‘difficult decisions’. She used those words no less than five times in yesterday’s half-hour speech. The problem is, there’s one very big area where that’s just not true: public sector pay. Of the £22 billion ‘black hole’ in public finances which she blamed her […]
One of the great ‘what ifs’ of Rishi Sunak’s premiership is what he might have done, given his apparently irremediable polling situation, with an overall majority and two years in charge of the country. Freedom is, as the song has it, just another word for nothing left to lose. If you know you’re going to […]
There are over four million self-employed workers in the United Kingdom. They are natural Conservatives. Class war rhetoric passes them by – they constitute labour and capital combined in one body. Their values of independence, risk-taking, enterprise and hard work are the embodiment of what the Conservative Party should be seeking to reward. Yet many […]
As the election campaign passes its halfway point, the last few days marked a critical juncture in the race with the release of a number of manifestos. The first of the main contenders to set out his stall was Rishi Sunak, who on Tuesday took to the Silverstone race track to sell his party’s vision. […]
The Conservative Party’s new pledge to address the unfairness of the high-income child benefit tax charge is very welcome. As outlined in the Centre for Policy Studies report ‘Family Friendly Taxation’, the current regime is badly designed, distorting incentives for work and punishing one-earner families. How will it work? At present, families are able to […]
Happy Tax Freedom Day to all who celebrate! Today marks the date on which the average British worker stops paying tax to the state and starts earning for themselves. To be fair, while we at the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) celebrate the occasion, we should recognise that not everybody in Britain shares the centre-right view […]
There are a few things that are certain in life; trips to the loo, kicking the bucket and paying taxes. And in Britain, the last of those is particularly painful. By now we’ve all heard on a number of occasions that the tax burden is at its highest level since Clement Attlee was Prime Minister. […]
The Chancellor is under pressure from Conservative MPs to cut taxes at the upcoming Budget. With the cost of living hitting families and growth stagnant, reductions in personal and business taxes can address our most significant economic challenges. But Jeremy Hunt would be wise to include tax cuts that also boost clean technologies and tackle […]
‘Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come’. Clearly, Victor Hugo never envisioned the power of Treasury brain. Despite the manifold reasons as to why inheritance tax should have died long ago, HMT’s apparent allergy to dynamic modelling means that the taxman still inserts […]
If I received a call from my bank telling me that I was £10,000 overdrawn, then the next day they called me again to say that they had recalculated and in fact I was only £9000 overdrawn would I leap in the air, tell myself I have just received a £1000 windfall and start dreaming […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
