New data suggests that one third of the farm estates affected by the Budget changes aren’t owned by farmers – they’re held by investors for tax planning purposes. This suggests the Budget proposal doesn’t go far enough to stop avoidance, but goes too far in how it applies to actual farms. There’s a better approach […]

Between 2018 and 2022, almost 660,000 people on low incomes received a penalty for not filing a tax return on time. Very few of them earned enough to pay any tax. But, by failing to submit a tax return, they were fined at least £100, and often thousands of pounds. For most of those affected, the penalty represents more than half their weekly income. This report illustrates the scale of the problem. 45% of all HMRC late filing penalties were charged to people on low incomes, most of whom actually owed no tax. We believe the law and HMRC practice should change, and we make three key recommendations.

Gabriel Milland of Portland Communications has published polling conducted by the Portland research team in early October. Gabriel takes some interesting political conclusions from the polling (and I’d recommend his article). However, my focus is what the polling says about tax policy, and about polling on tax policy. Amended to include the answers – apologies […]

Rachel Reeves has said there is a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances, and that she’ll have to raise tax to fill it. Labour are heavily constrained by their pre-election promises, and that makes raising £22bn a challenging endeavour. But certainly not impossible. This is an updated version of my August article. I’ve previously […]

Property taxes are probably more in need of reform than any other area of UK tax. We have three taxes on property: stamp duty (SDLT), council tax and business rates. They’re bad taxes: they’re unpopular, inequitable, and they hold back growth. There is a way to change this, and tax land in a way that […]

It is a national scandal that teachers, doctors and others earning fairly ordinary salaries can face marginal tax rates of more than 60%, and sometimes approaching 80%. It’s inequitable and holds back growth. Rachel Reeves should commit to ending these anomalies. This Government was elected on a platform of kickstarting economic growth. It has a […]

Capital gains tax (CGT) is currently both too high and too low. It taxes investors at too high a rate when they’ve put capital at risk, only to see it eroded by inflation. But it enables a very low rate of tax for people who haven’t put capital at risk, but are able to pay […]