Tuesday 13 April 2010

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From yesterday's Metro:

As National Insurance is, er, a tax on income, why doesn't one of the political parties pledge to simplify things by ditching it and levying a slightly higher rate of income tax instead?

Simon Beasley, West Midlands.


Why? To maintain the pretence that National Insurance is not a tax. As it happens, one of the parties proposes being honest about it and merging the two, namely this lot, who also propose phasing out Employer's NIC.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suppose there is the point that NI applies to "earned" income and not to investment income.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, taxes on income and production are bad taxes but a necessary evil in the grander scheme of things.

The best way to mitigate the impact is to have the same flat rate on every type of income, personal or corporate, no tax breaks, no higher rate, nothing.

Which has the added advantage of being an in-your-face tax and not a stealth-tax, so there is more likely to be voter pressure to keep the rate as low as possible.