It is funny how dishonesty can come back and bite you on the bum, but that may be about to happen to the Labour Party.
Back in the years when they were in power the socialists decided that it wold be a neat idea to raise the top rate of income tax from 40% to 50%, but as they didn't really have the courage to implement it during the lifetime of that parliament they legislated that the rise would be effective after the nxt general election. Accordingly, not a penny of tax was ever collected under the Blair and Brown governments at a rate higher than 40%.
Quite predictably, the Conservative government thought about reversing the measure but wimped out and left the rate at 45%. Now in a rational world this would have been accepted as 5% higher than the previous rate, but quite cynically Labour made a great song and dance and called it a tax cut for millionaires.
This meme was then picked up by the Scot Nats and sold to Scots as an example of the sort of inequality that pervades England and would not occur in an independent Scotland. The net result is that thousands of previously solid Labour supporters have switched to the Yes camp and may bring about independence, in which case the biggest losers will be .... the 40 Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster.
1 comment:
I wonder these days just how many people at those levels of income are actually paying it. Many will have made legitimate tax avoiding moves and there are other ways. Some will have to pay at that level, but I suspect few in the big income brackets. As for the political elite I suspect very few have left themselves open to the full whack of taxes.
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