New Direction on taxation
Frankie Ann Ashton
Richard Williams, LI’s Political Education Officer delivered two presentations early in his officership; one on Taxation, the second, a UK Budget Digest.
A glutton for punishment his second presentation on New Directions in Taxation focused upon equality. It was so successful we are already anticipating a third on ‘Taxation and Benefits’, a fourth on ‘Taxation and Expenditure’ and hopefully a fifth that revisits the work of Mariana Mazzucato the Italian ‘Mission Economist.’
This time his presentation looked at Tax and Equality in greater detail than did his first talk, looking at different approaches to the improvement of equality via the Taxation instrument, taken by Labour, the Conservatives; The Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
Starmer’s approach hones emphasise the closure of loopholes that currently enable tax evasion and avoidance and upon the possibilities for levvying Tech businesses!
Conservatives stress the need they perceive, to cut National Insurance, a proposal hoped to persuade employers to take on more employees.
Ed Davey from the Liberal Democrats looks to increasing the Tax Free personal allowance, raising the Digital Services Tax from 4 to 6%.and equalising Income Tax.
Lastly in the Green Party Zac Polanski sees equalising possibilities in Capital Gains taxation, Windfall Taxes on Energy and Raising tax to 8% on incomes above £50 000 and on wealth.
Richard looked at nation states that posses Wealth Taxes. Norway has a 1.1% tax on the highest earners that produced 29 billion in 2024 and 34 billion in 2025. plus an exodus tax of 0.2%; France, Impots de Solidarite. Switzerland’s 26 cantons are obliged to levy a wealth tax, albeit a fairly moderate one.
Wealth taxes are, as Richard’s talk revealed, difficult to design and harder to implement in a world full of multinational interests and mobile capital assets. Richard Murphy’s socialist monetarism risks counter productive consequences, such as a lock in effect with those subject to taxes on asset sales, refusing to sell them and avoiding high tax rates whilst living off loans. The OECD introduced international co operation with a 15% Minimum Corporation Tax Rates.
Taxation is about more than raising finance its about the extent to which our systems of taxation promote equality or fall most heavily upon those who ‘have less’. It is as Richard concluded also about choices concerned with the society we want to build, imalances between capital and labour and the fact that genuine economic sovereignty requires pragmatic international co-operation.