Retreat from plans to increase income tax means Labour is unlikely to make system fairer and more coherent
F
or decades now, whenever the British public has faced the prospect of tax rises, large sections of the electorate – so large they sway most politicians – have made it quite clear, let those increases be by stealth.
It is a message every chancellor since Nigel Lawson has heeded, with just a few honourable exceptions in the intervening decades.
Stamp duty is a way to siphon off some of the gains when a property transaction goes through. Capital gains tax allows the state to take a slice of wealth after a sale. Never mind that both taxes deter people from buying and selling. It allows everyone to avoid the clearer, fairer annual tax on wealth that many economists support.
