Cui bono?
Excellent and timely research from the IFS shows that inheritance tax raises £7 billion a year now and is expected to raise £15 billion by 2033.
That is one hell of a tax give away if the Chancellor decides to try to bribe the electorate with their own money, again. But who would really benefit
The current cost of abolishing inheritance tax would be £7 billion, around half of the benefit would go to those with estates of £2.1 million or more at death, who make up the top 1% of estates and would benefit from an average tax cut of around £1.1 million.
The 90% or so of estates not paying inheritance tax would, of course, get nothing.
So there you go, another million pounds plus for the people who are already millionaires.
It is becoming increasingly obvious therefore that the current government is just a more subtle one than the Truss administration, but with exactly the same aims. We already have the huge tax give away to help the wealthy stuff their pension funds, which was sold as helping the NHS keep consultants in work.
Now we have proposed tax cuts which will benefit only the very wealthy again and do nothing for 90% of the population. This one will be sold as removing the dead hand of double taxation, and an unfair tax from hard working families.
Both are lies but the right wing has no problem lying, or hiding tax cuts for millionaires in plain sight or using our tax money for purely party political advantage.
£7 billion a year rising to £15 billion a year would easily pay for HS2’s increased costs very quickly, or fund 1p off the basic tax rate of income tax now and another 1p later.
But then this government doesn’t want to give ordinary hard working families tax cuts, it wants the tax cuts to trickle down to them from on high.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media