Ukip to fight the 2015 election on pledge to raise 40p tax threshold to £45,000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...-to-45000.html
Ukip to fight 2015 election on pledge to raise 40p tax threshold to £45,000
Nigel Farage will fight next year’s general election on a policy of raising the 40 per cent income tax threshold to £45,000, The Telegraph can disclose
Quote:
Originally Posted by Telegraph
The UK Independence Party will raise the threshold from people on incomes of £41,450 to those on at least £45,000 a year, according to senior party sources.
The news is likely to put further pressure on George Osborne to raise the threshold in next week’s Budget, or to signal plans to move the threshold upwards next year.
Mr Farage, the Ukip leader, said the increase was necessary because too many people were being pulled into the higher rate because it was not rising fast enough.
Estimates have suggested that an additional 400,000 middle-class professionals under the Coalition are likely to pay more income tax because of this “fiscal drag”.
Mr Farage said: “The top rate of tax was supposed to be for big, high earners and now in London and the south east, the top rate of tax has clawed in a lot of people who are far from what would be described as high earning.
“The numbers paying the top rate of tax has grown hugely under both of the past two administrations and we don’t think that is reasonable.”
Ukip’s strong showing in the polls has prompted speculation that the party could be left with a handful of MPs after next year’s election and so a possibility to exercise influence over Government policy if there is a hung Parliament.
The plan to raise the 40p threshold were suggested by Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s new finance spokesman in his first interview since taking over the role.
Mr Woolfe said: “One of the key areas that we have notice is those who are the striving and aspirational class in this country, those who have been tipped into the 40 per cent tax threshold because of the fiscal drag.
“It started with the Labour party and continued with this Government, those who are earning more than £41,000 a year are suddenly finding that they are paying a marginal rate of tax if they have got a couple of children of near 70 per cent.
“But the range of those people is from just over £41,000 to just shy of £150,000, and that range is too big.
“They are paying more on their train fares, more on their gas and energy bills and they have also been impacted by child benefit.
“And the question they ask themselves – is when I am going to work, how much more money is going to the government?”
Mr Woolfe is spending the next few months drawing up details of the party’s economics manifesto, which he said would be “peer-reviewed”.
He said: “When we have a policy idea we need to have it robustly tested by people within the party to see whether it works properly for growth in this country and then more importantly is it peer tested by those outside our party.”
Nice to see the media giving space to other policy areas.
It's also nice to see that there's a party standing up for and making the argument for a low tax state, something that you used to hear from the Conservative Party under Maragret Thatcher when they actually stood for something different to Labour.
Let's hope the idea catches on.
Thoughts? Should the tax rate be raised?
