Sunday 6 December 2009

Tories plan to back Labour bank bonus tax

So reports the BBC's Robert Peston:


What the Chancellor has in mind - and what may be announced in Wednesday's pre-budget report - is not a classic windfall tax, which would be levied on banks' profits.

Instead it would be a super-tax on bonuses over a certain level paid to British based investment bankers.


I am not sure how brilliantly clever it is for senior Conservatives to brief that they will be supporting it only for political reasons, while believing that the policy they are backing "might be bad for the UK".


George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, did not pre-empt the government by announcing that a Tory administration would impose such a super tax - although he did consider announcing an intention to impose a one-off special tax on both big bonuses and dividends.

That said if the government announces such a super tax, the Tories won't oppose it.

As one senior Conservative told me, such a super tax might be bad for the UK, but it would not be great for the Tories to oppose a tax that may give a nice warm feeling even to many of their core supporters.


Well, if Her Majesty's Opposition are going to be backing Brown and Darling, can there be any doubt at all about whether the Tory grassroots and blogosphere would be full square behind them?!

1 comment:

13eastie said...

Darling Signals Willingness to Slaughter Aesop's Goose:

Regardless of whether the Chancellor came up with this idea in Loretto's all-weather cricket nets, the Tories should be tonking Brown's Class War Bodyliners, rather than ducking and encouraging them.

The electorate is not as stupid as Labour wishes it were.

It smells a rat when Brown seeks shamelessly to amplify and exploit the very social divides he says he is trying to eradicate.

Osbourne missed a trick: he should be asking why Labour is not doing more to help the banks to generate big, taxable profits for its new shareholders.

Spite-based policies might be popular, but their effectiveness is less clear.

Banks pay ¼ of tax revenue.

To assert that attacking their staff "won't damage the banks" is crazy.

Banks will make their own minds up about this. Many are not British and have received no UK help. They are unlikely to feel any loyalty to Darling or London.

Banks and staff alike will pay no UK tax if the relocate to Geneve.

Furthermore, we're all now shareholders in the UK banks, and I bloody well want to see some ROI!

The UK might be over-reliant on the City: the solution is economic growth elsewhere; not the demolition of the banks.

Brown's eye-watering £800bn millstone needs to be paid off through others' graft - merely outlawing the debt doesn't work, Gordon!

A super-tax won't raise even £1bn, but may seriously harm yours and my stake in the banks, and lessen their on-going tax contribution.

The is at a time when our ability to protect the City from EU interference is weaker than ever before.

(Moderate) taxation should be used as an enabler for implementation of popular policy. Punitive taxation should never be an end in itself.

Submission to blood-lust might be a vote-winner, but it is not really a very sound economic argument for taxing people differently based on the names of their employers.

We are to understand the PM is a Jedward fan.

Jedward are pretty popular.

But everyone knows they're shit.

(Elgar had a brother called Jo, but decided to go it alone).