Taxes

Friday

Lloyd Evans

How has Tower Hamlets really spent my council tax?

How does Tower Hamlets spend my council tax? I’ve been shoveling cash at them for 19 years so I strolled along to the new town hall to find out where the money goes. The new town hall cost a packet, clearly. Carved out of the Royal London Hospital, the spacious lobby looks cool, stylish and reassuringly anonymous, like a private bank in Zurich. Glass doors swish apart and I enter the debating chamber where the councillors sit at a curved monodesk opposite the public gallery. Everything is slick and hypermodern. The pristine floor glows beneath the recessed lights. I had expected an ordinary meeting but I seem to have stumbled on an important debate.

tower hamlets

Wednesday

Iona Bain

The taxman is coming for the self-employed

From our UK edition

Spare a thought for Mrs McClafferty & Co. Like thousands of small business owners, she has spent years managing things the old-fashioned way: jotting down figures in a Silvine cash book, stuffing receipts into a shoebox and sorting it all out when the tax return comes around. But according to HMRC, taxpayers like her are partly responsible for a £24 billion black hole in UK tax receipts. Which means the taxman is coming for them. If you are self-employed and had an income of more than £50,000 last year, get ready for Making Tax Digital (MTD). From 6 April, you will have to file an income and expenses update four times a year, then an adjustment, then the annual return. You must use HMRC-approved software to do it all.

Wednesday

Lionel Shriver

The real reason I left Britain

From our UK edition

This is a two-parter, albeit linked. If you’re interested in the duplicitousness of British journalists, then keep reading. If you’re only interested in self-destructive British tax policy, skip to the middle. Burnt repeatedly by hacks who pretend to be enraptured by my latest novel while snooping through my cupboards, I long ago learned the hard way not to let British journalists into my home. Thus for years I only conducted interviews in the safely impersonal lobby of a West End hotel. But lessons learned are too often lessons lost. That may be an overly kind formulation of: I am an idiot. In my new hang in Portugal, I reverted to gormless naivety last month and let a British journalist into my house.

Wednesday

Peter Jones

Why not privatise tax collection?

From our UK edition

Twice a year the taxman comes to call, exhibiting all the bossy incompetence one expects from the government machine. Why not do as the Romans did, and privatise it? After all, one would surely rather give one’s money to a publican, even if a sinner. The publicanus, as the name suggests, was a public servant, i.e. a contractor for public works of any kind. Indeed, from early on, wars were fought, roads built and mines worked on the back of service contracts offered out to hopeful bidders, as was the right to gather dues from harbours and toll stations.

Tuesday

Spectator Editorial

Can anyone balance America’s books?

Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill was supposed to slash government waste and inefficiency. So why is it going to result in an even bigger, uglier deficit? The legislation was still being picked over in the Senate as this magazine went to press. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated that the bill will add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade – and that estimate is far more likely to go up than down. The President’s opponents have characterized the Big, Beautiful Bill as a swindle that steals from the poor to give to the rich. That may be true to some extent, in that it could become harder for some people to qualify for Medicaid, while wealthy Americans will enjoy the extension of lower tax rates.

elon musk bill debt books

Friday

John Steele Gordon

Trump is playing a high-stakes game of international poker

On what he called “Liberation Day,” President Trump announced a new tariff schedule. While the markets had been up in anticipation, they are down sharply, with the Dow dropping 2,200 points, perhaps surprised by the extent of them. Basically, Trump has laid tariffs equal to about half what other countries charge on US exports, inviting them to lower theirs in exchange for reciprocity. What the final result will be is anyone’s guess, for the Trump tariffs are chips in a high-stakes game of international poker. They have already had an effect. Canada has promised retaliatory tariffs while Israel has dropped all tariffs on US goods. A tariff is a tax laid on goods passing through a port.

trump
trump
John Steele Gordon

Trump is playing a high-stakes game of international poker

From our UK edition

On what he called “Liberation Day,” President Trump announced a new tariff schedule. While the markets had been up in anticipation, they are down sharply, with the Dow dropping 2,200 points, perhaps surprised by the extent of them. Basically, Trump has laid tariffs equal to about half what other countries charge on US exports, inviting them to lower theirs in exchange for reciprocity. What the final result will be is anyone’s guess, for the Trump tariffs are chips in a high-stakes game of international poker. They have already had an effect. Canada has promised retaliatory tariffs while Israel has dropped all tariffs on US goods. A tariff is a tax laid on goods passing through a port.

Tuesday

Daniel Hannan

Reversing our economic decline is not easy, but it is simple

From our UK edition

Our immiseration came swiftly and stealthily. At the start of the 21st century, Britain was a prosperous country. Ambitious people fought to come here. We trusted that, over time, we would become wealthier – an expectation that had been accurate for most of the previous two centuries. Since the millennium, Britain and western Europe have pretty much stopped growing – especially if we ignore the impact of immigration and calculate GDP per head. Reversing this slowdown should be the top issue at every election, but it is surprisingly under-discussed. In theory, almost all our politicians want growth. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves keep describing it, nasally and tautologically, as their ‘number one priority’.

warren wealth tax
Lewis M. Andrews

The trouble with the progressives’ proposed wealth tax

As the level of US debt zooms past the $34 trillion mark, it has become increasingly clear that the American left has no intention of trying to help control government spending. To the extent that annual deficits must be trimmed to protect the integrity of the nation’s currency, Democrats and their allies are instead planning to go beyond the current progressive tax on income and institute a new levy on citizens’ assets. Some such as Senator Elizabeth Warren openly advocate taking the conventional idea of a property tax and applying it to everything a person owns — cash, savings accounts, stocks, jewelry and even art.

Thursday

Cockburn

Can Kamala Harris answer a single question?

It’s official. Donald Trump is “like Hitler” and Kamala Harris — even though she does “pray everyday, sometimes twice a day,” can’t seem to answer questions. Her "joyful" campaign took a confusing turn in her CNN town hall in Pennsylvania Wednesday night. She opened with an attack on Donald Trump, in answer to Anderson Cooper’s question about John Kelly’s claims. Kamala says Donald Trump is “increasingly unstable,” “unfit,” “fascist to the core” and that “he himself has said he would terminate the constitution of the United States.” It wasn’t until much later that “joy” and “optimism” were mentioned. The audience at the Delaware County town hall consisted of undecided voters.

kamala

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Kamala’s brand new, same old last-minute policy platform

After weeks of studious silence, Vice President Kamala Harris has been issuing a flurry of policy proposals that she’s touting as “A New Way Forward.” But is it really new? Or is it the old way forward? In the early hours of Monday morning, she unveiled a series of proposals for the first time on her website about the economy, immigration and foreign affairs. Harris is careful to contrast her proposals, again and again, with what she terms “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda.” Poor Trump. He has repeatedly disavowed the Heritage Foundation tome calling for everything from banning IVF to purging the civil service. But it hasn’t helped as the Harris campaign presents it as his campaign platform.

kamala

Tuesday

Lewis M. Andrews

The real reason people are flocking to red states

It’s no secret that Americans are moving from blue states to red ones. According to recently released Census Bureau data, the five with the largest population loss to other states between July 2022 and July 2023 were California (-338,371), then New York (-216,778), Illinois (-83,839), New Jersey (-44,666), Massachusetts (-39,149) and Maryland (-30,905). The five states with the largest overall increases during the same period were Texas (473,453), Florida (365,205), Georgia (116,077), South Carolina (90,600) and Tennessee (77,512). The most frequently cited reason for this ongoing blue-to-red migration is taxes — or, more correctly, the opportunity to pay less and fewer of them.

red states

Tuesday

Teresa Mull

Why public schools never have enough money

The new school year is just a few weeks away, and that can only mean one thing: right on cue, school districts are once again bemoaning a “lack of funding.” It’s the same story every year. Along with notices advertising the local high school drama department’s production of Grease come headlines announcing the school district is in dire straits and schools will literally fall to pieces if they aren’t pumped full of life-saving funding, stat. Year after year, it’s the same old song and dance: school funding increases, and the next year they need even more. Why is it never enough, though, and where does all the money go?

schools

Wednesday

Lewis M. Andrews

How teachers’ unions could unwittingly usher in school choice

In a surprise development, teachers' unions in eight states recently announced drives to pass legislation that would establish so-called “wealth taxes.” Working with progressive legislators in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, and Washington, the unions have devised what they believe are the best ways to tap, not just the incomes, but the assets of the most successful earners. Under the bill proposed in California, for example, residents with both financial and illiquid assets would be required to file yearly reports on their holdings, obligating those worth more than a certain amount to pay 1 to 1.5 percent of the total to Sacramento, even if they move out.

Wednesday

John Pietro

A closer look at Biden’s State of the Union proposals

Joe Biden’s lengthy State of the Union address on Tuesday saw him call on Congress to pass a bevy of policies, most of which were regurgitations of his previous proposals. Here's a look at some of the policies that were mentioned by the president. Capping insulin prices at $35 Everyone knew this would be on the agenda after the Inflation Reduction Act passed Congress last August. The IRA's Medicare copay cap was just a foot in the door, with a push for further drug price controls an inevitability. The problem is that price controls do not work. Ed Haislmaier of the Heritage Foundation succinctly outlines how the problem can be mitigated responsibly. The most obvious option is to eliminate the prescription requirement for insulin.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The audacity of Kwarteng’s tax cut for the rich

From our UK edition

George Osborne dreamed about it and Rishi Sunak told friends that he’d like to do it if everything went well and he was feeling brave. But this morning Kwasi Kwarteng has gone ahead and done it.  The ‘additional rate of tax’ – set up by Gordon Brown as a trap for the Tories in 2009 – has just been abolished. Right now, those earning more than £150,000 per year will pay 48.25 per cent on every pound they earn (45 per cent income tax plus 3.25 per cent National Insurance). From April next year, it will fall to 42 per cent (40 per cent income tax plus 2 per cent NI). A double tax cut: the additional rate goes and NI is also cut. So the biggest tax cut of Kwarteng’s ‘mini-Budget’ has gone to the very richest.

Friday

Michael Hendrix

The numbers are in: red states are winning

Americans are voting with their feet and the results are in: red states are winning. An incredible 46 million people moved to a new ZIP code over the year to February 2022, the highest annual total since Equifax, a credit agency, began tracking moves in 2010. Republican-leaning red states gained the most residents — led by Florida, Texas, and North Carolina — while the blue states of California, New York, and Illinois were the biggest migratory losers. The most popular pandemic-era moves were from New York to Florida and California to Texas — so much so that U-Haul ran out of moving trucks leaving California last year. Given the chance to flee high-cost cities, Millennials did so in droves.

desantis

Wednesday

Paul du Quenoy

Gavin Newsom does not want to pick a fight with Florida

“Freedom is under attack in your state,” exclaimed California Governor Gavin Newsom in a bizarre 30-second television ad that aired on Fox News in Florida markets over Fourth of July weekend. Unnamed “Republican leaders,” gasped a man who held his constituents under near-house arrest for two years, are “banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors. I urge all of you to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.” Newsom’s anti-Florida canards cost his 2022 reelection campaign a reported $105,000. They addressed an audience that will vote neither for nor against him.

Wednesday

Peter Van Buren

The nothingburger investigation into Trump’s finances

If you had "Trump goes to jail" in the office pool, you just lost. The end of any possible criminal prosecution out of New York over Donald Trump's finances has come as the grand jury seated to find them has sunsetted. The possibility of a civil penalty, likely a fine, looks poor, but anything is possible. This is all a long way from predictions that the walls were closing in back when these cases were initiated in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Dems, dragging all their Biden baggage along, are going to have to beat Trump at the ballot box, assuming anyone can afford the gas to drive out to vote.

Friday

Taylor Millard

Higher taxes won’t fix inflation

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer knows how to fix inflation: higher taxes. “If you want to get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to undo a lot of the Trump tax cuts and raise rates,” surmised the New York Democrat to reporters on Tuesday, after meeting with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin about the budget. “No Republican is ever going to do that. So the only way to get rid of inflation is through reconciliation.” Manchin saw it slightly differently, portraying tax increases as budget reduction tools. He believes debt reduction is “the only way” to fight an inflation problem that threatens to wash away Democratic majorities in Congress.

democrats