Stamps and sausage rolls fail the boiling frog test
A 40 per cent jump in the price of stamps is enough to make us stop posting letters. It’s almost as bad as a 20 per cent hike in the price of a warm sausage roll.
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BLOGS
The Edge
Richard Northedge takes on corporate finance
Archive for the ‘VAT’ category
Osborne is too clever to fall for Balls’ silly tax cuts
Ed Balls is not silly, but his proposed tax cuts are – unless Labour’s shadow chancellor is planning a political trap rather than a financial stimulus.
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Balls can fiddle with VAT, but what about spending?
The prospect of five VAT rates in three years may seem both farcical and impractical but chancellor George Osborne can be excused for thinking his Labour shadow, Ed Balls, has a point. The UK economy needs a stimulus.
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Apply VAT more widely – at a lower rate
Raising Britain’s VAT threatens not only inflation and economic recovery; it highlights the anomalies of what is taxed and what escapes. The disparity between a Jaffa cake and a chocolate chip cookie matters when the tax difference is 20 per cent rather than 8 per cent.
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We all avoid tax. Who wouldn’t?
Do the protestors trying to stop shoppers using Top Shop and Vodafone outlets really understand what tax avoidance is? It is what those shoppers are doing when they buy goods before the VAT rate rises.
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VAT’s rise will be an excuse for poor performance
The increase in UK Vat rates will be used by every business with disappointing trading in 2011, but if a 2.5 per cent cut in 2008 did little to boost sales, why should a similar increase have any significant affect?
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Will taxes be cut when the budget is balanced?
We were told George Osborne’s first budget would be one of the most radical in recent history, but it was not. If it warrants a footnote to history it will be for the size of the numbers, not any change of direction.
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Why it will be more Vat on the same goods
The UK government seems set to increase VAT, so should it go for a steep rise in the sales tax or extend it to a wider range of purchases?
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Raising Vat would squeeze savers at both ends
A Vat increase is criticised as taxing the poor, but it is also a tax on the old – whether they are rich or poor. And you don’t have to be elderly to get caught by this shift to spending taxes.
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How the Treasury will benefit from tax avoidance
The Treasury should not grieve too greatly at companies such as J Sainsbury (LON:SBRY) paying early bonuses to avoid the new top income tax rate. By paying during the 2009/10 tax-year the exchequer will receive 40 per cent tax now rather than 50 per cent later, and time can be more valuable than money.
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