You honestly think a centre right government freezes higher rate tax thresholds, increases CGT, changes IHT regime targeting wealthy, increases tax rate on dividends, makes non dom rules even more aggressive and increases emp’er NIC as a combination of policies/decisions in their first 18 months of government…all whilst leaving welfare (excluding pensions), which is forecast to increase significantly over the remainder of the parliament, pretty much untouched ?
Since the election lowest earners have predominantly been protected by tax rises (which I agree with), middle earners have been hit, highest earners probably hit hardest due to wider (non income) tax changes. Is that your usual centre right government ? Also you can argue that the PLP stopped additional changes to welfare but ultimately they’re part of the government
Ps I’ve avoided judging policy decisions because that isn’t the point of my original post, which was this is not a centre right goverment whatever you read on socials
Steve, you’re being deliberately selective with your evidence. They froze all tax thresholds not just the top one. It dragged and extra 1.7 million low earners into paying income tax for the first time. Freezing ALL, I’ll say that again as you keep dismissing it, ALL tax thresholds is not a leftist policy. If they raised all except the top I’d give it to you, no argument but taxing those with the least ability to pay it is a right wing policy.
CGT, we have far from the highest CGT in Europe and look at the countries who have low or none, there’s a reason they’re so low , they’re either poor, corrupt and/or tax exiles. We’re one of the richest countries in the world with high percentage of millionaires, we should have high levels of CGT for the purpose of checks and balances and you could quite easily argue that they would be much much higher if we had a leftist government when you look to countries who actually do.
IHT, see above. Also our IHT is exactly the same as the USA. Are you seriously going to suggest that the USA are a leftist government.
Tax on dividends. See above again. We’re hardly high again compared to comparable countries and yet again we’re almost identical to that well known communist country the USA.
Something like 10% of GDP equates to the welfare state. It’s pitiful when compared to other countries and nowhere near actual leftist countries and the USA’s as a percentage of GDP is almost 3 times higher than ours
NI. Same again, compare us to comparable countries, we ain’t no leftist country with a leftist government.
Proportionally to wealth no one has been hit harder than the poorest, they’ve proportionally had the biggest increases to taxes, the biggest cuts in welfare state and hit hardest by the cost of living. This government is about as leftist as I’m a China man. You need to start comparing us to actual socialist countries and actual right wing countries. We have far more in common in terms of governance with the right wing countries than we do the socialist and Labour are not shifting the dial back by any stretch of the imagination.
