the fourth place

The UK Independance Party are offering a sensible if not exactly radical policy on Tax, just as the "conservative" party in this country promises no such inhuman behaviour.

Of course we know that taxation is theft, (no, it really is) but I think we do need some tax to pay for a strong anti-trust body, an army, police, toll-free roads, clear waterways, a CCTV licencing body, etc etc. The important thing is that the amount of tax remains low, chairties are able to function and that there is competition to garauntee the quality of essential services such as bin emptying and education. Also, tax should preserve market incentives to do well so that everybody becomes as rich as possible, rather than staying on welfare or in a low-paid job rather than breaking out into enterprise.

This is what I have come to know as standard capitalist thinking, odd then that UKIP - often derided as a fringe loony racist right-wing bunch of nutters - are the only people talking about these things!

UKIP are proposing a couple of things that strike me as dead sensible. Rolling NI into income tax should save us all a great deal of effort. If you believe the graph on page 5 then NI creates extra taxation to kick in for those on incomes around £5000 - less than the minimum wage. Scrapping NI would mean less tax for the poorest people. They also suggest a higher tax threshhold - set at £9000 - which would be an extra bonus for the poor as well as lowering the burden on HMCE for the benefit of us all. A high tax threshhold makes the final proposal of a flat 33% tax (25% for pensioners) an acceptably progressive measure.

That is all great for the poor, including members of my immediate family, but what about me?

I'm just below the upper tax threshhold which means if I earn anymore, its taxed at 40%. Under UKIPs proposals I can go on earning at much more money as I like and its taxed at 33%, sweet, but here's the sweetest:

Income from self-employment would be taxed at the same rates as income from
employment (no more class 2 and class 4 NI contributions and no more arguments
about who is self-employed and who is an employee).

Does this mean no more IR35? Yee haa! It will be nice to be able to invest more than 5% of my revenue in my business without risking being forced to invest it in my own salary!

Well, that was my own excited and somewhat one-sided analysis. I haven't read every word, but so far I unashamedly like this policy announcement. There are not any posts out there criticising it yet, as far as I can tell, but a good more detailed analysis is offered by Devil's Kitchen who also has his own more radical ideas. If you spot any more critiques, then post a comment, and post a comment if you disagree with anything I've said or linked to here.