Posts Tagged green tax
The public’s tax priority: stability
Posted by Nick Cowen in Tax and Spend on 28/05/2008
After Brown’s £2.7 billion bailout over the 10p tax debacle, the multiple taxes on motorists are now coming under greater scrutiny. In the early years, the majority of attacks directed against the Labour Government were the introduction of stealth taxes. That criticism no longer applies. A doubling in vehicle excise duty on ordinary family cars fails to achieve what any ‘decent’ stealth tax would do: creep into the family budget, bite a little chunk out of it and sneak it back to the Treasury, preferably without the public noticing. The ruse will probably be discovered months later but by then is relegated to a mere bullet point in a Tax Payers Alliance briefing. They are not meant to generate newspaper campaigns against them. So the Government’s tax strategy appears to have de-cloaked and, although it has taken on a green mantle, it does not appear any less ugly for it.
