lex-man wrote:Moggy wrote:Lagamorph wrote:On the other hand the Tories have been massively anti-business lately. Pretty much biting every hand except the pro Hard Brexit ones. And even then having a nibble.
Business, the elderly, the rich, the Tories have been alienating all of them this last year or so.
That was cockiness before the election and panic over Corbyn after the election.
I do not expect the Tories to close many tax loopholes for the super rich if they continue to govern.
If Corbyn ever gets in, then he might close loopholes, but I don't think that'll be great for Britain either as Brexit coupled with a 98% tax rate will mean there are no businesses left here.
Corbyn's tax rises aren't actually that large in the grand scheme of things. Brexit will cause far more problems than his tax rises, should he get in of course.
Taxes will have to rise significantly sooner or later regardless of what government we have. Current tax levels are unsustainably low. In the US they have simply let their infrastructure go to gooseberry fool and it will eventually crumble away if they don't change course. In the UK they have maintained the illusion of sustainability by the Thatcherite practice of selling off public assets built up by previous generations of taxpayers to allow the current generation to pay less and pass the bill to the next. In either case you eventually face the choice of whether you want to live in a low tax country or a developed one, because you can't have both. Even the IMF is now recommending higher taxes than those proposed by Corbyn, which shows just how desperate things must be.
Brexit isn't helpful because it robs us of the opportunity to cooperate regionally to agree on minimum tax rates whilst sustaining regional competitiveness. The EU as a block is much more able to stand up to hyper mobile companies than any one nation and even now they are making progress on clamping down on tax avoidance (ironically, this will be helped by the UK leaving, as we are one of the biggest global offenders in facilitating fax avoidance in crown dependencies and laundering dirty money in London).
I remain hopefully that eventually we will see the logic of this and rejoin the single market, even if we never regain EU membership.