I have often found myself asking this question, and today is no exception: just what is Evan Harris going on about?
“While these proposals do raise significant amounts of revenue from high levels of wealth, this is less true of high incomes,” he said, adding he would ask for the change at the party’s conference in September.
“It is only fair and balanced to do even more to help those on low incomes by asking very high earners to pay a little more in income tax.”
Given that I don’t remember Evan Harris screaming about helping people on low incomes at any point in the past (in contrast to, say, Vince Cable), back when all the party wanted to do was pile on ever increasing levels of income tax to people at all levels, I have to wonder if it didn’t matter what the Tax Commission came up with, he would simply insist on yet higher taxes.
I have my own criticisms of this paper – some of which I’ve been banging on about for weeks – but this isn’t one of them. The fact that the party at the top has at last realised that taxing wealth and not incomes is both more equitable and economically sensible is welcome. The worry that Evan Harris and his sub-socialist mates may get their way fills me with dread.
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I guess what Evan needs to understand is that it is only the Tories that can’t promise or even talk about tax cuts. They need to establish a reputation (huh?) for caring about public services. And if they start talking about tax cuts, all the wingnuts would be out of the bag.
None of this applies to us, or Labour. Particularly when the package is not a cut, but tax neutral.
Another problem with the Lib Dem policy in this area is that they arbitrarily promises to raise £8,100 million through increased ‘environmental taxes’ without convincingly explaining how their sums add up. Raising the £8,100 is vital to their promises elsewhere which would fall apart without them. More detail at http://www.omarsalem.com