Conservatives surveyed on which tax they'd cut first

ConservativeHome reports that the tax most preferred to be cut first by their respondents, was Inheritance Tax. While this clearly identifies those people as likely to be land owners, it does also hint at a tax that would be popular to reform.

Inheritance tax taxes wealth such as cash, shares, property and possessions. It partly acts as a tax on the untaxed gains of personal land ownership, but it also acts as double taxation on income that has already been taxed. It's a particularly distorting tax.

As an economy, we want taxes that encourage economic behaviour, and tax behaviour that deprives others of economic value.

If we are to do what is popular, it would be far more effective to raise the same revenue from a land or resource tax.

Perhaps the best approach would be to replace council tax above band H with a land value tax, which would raise additional revenue from those who's properties are in particularly popular areas, and scrap inheritance tax.

Ricardo's Law - The Great Tax Clawback Scam

A great explanation of how taxes on wages are subsidising the wealth of land owners.

The Tax Source Triangle

The proposal for Systemic Fiscal Reform argues that we should abolish taxes on productive behaviour such as Income Tax, Corporation Tax, National Insurance and VAT, and raise the same revenue from taxes on behaviour that we want to discourage.

This 5 minute presentation introduces the "Tax Source Triangle", which cleverly illustrates the different ways in which tax can be raised, and how a future tax system may look.

Apologies for the quality of the voiceover. There isn't a facility to edit on Jing yet, so my 'mis-speaking' (thanks Mrs Clinton) is in there too.

Introducing Systemic Fiscal Reform

The following Jing recordings are limited to 5 minutes each (totalling 19 minutes), and in total cover the full presentation that was given in Cambridge on 16th May.

Do beware that the voiceover will be a bit poor in quality due to the lack of the ability to edit a Jing recording.