Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p income tax band in his last budget as chancellor will cost me about £4.50 a week in the current tax year. Allowing for the fact that he also cut the 22p basic rate by 2p, I’ll be down by about 90p a week net. I’d rather have that money than not, but as 90p won’t even buy me a bendy bus ticket from one end of the Holloway Road to the other, it’s not going to burn too big a hole in my pocket. (Single people on the lowest incomes, who’ll lose the full £4.50 a week net, are entitled to feel considerably more aggrieved, of course.)
Brown saved a little under £9 billion a year by getting rid of the 10p tax band – which just happens to be roughly the cost of taking 2p off the basic rate of income tax. This also happens to be roughly half the amount by which the net worth of British (dollar) billionaires rose during 2007. According to Forbes magazine, the 29 British billionaires (up from 24 the year before) increased their wealth by 48 per cent during the year to £40.4 billion.
Never mind the arguments over a 10p tax band: isn't it time we had a 10 per cent wealth tax?
Friday 18 April 2008
Time for a wealth tax
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1 comment:
Ive always been ,in the past, geared towards the belief that talent should be rewarded as well as effort and hard work.I never thought I would agree with the idea of taxing the wealthy just because theyre rich.I have now come to realise that they are way ahead of the game, employing people whose jobs are solely for the purpose of avoiding paying their dues,and are laughing at the rest of us.
If Gordon Brown-pants had any bottle at all, he would make some attempt to get these cheats to cough up.I never thought I would say this, but the see-saw is heavily weighted in their favour, and no matter how many working people sit on the other end,it wont budge.
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