A global archive of independent reviews of everything happening from the beginning of the millennium
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There would have to be transitional arrangements to make sure that the Treasury would not lose revenues in the early years but it substantially extends the tax base and would yield more with the passage of years.
Successful entrepreneurs often remove their domicile from Britain as they age and there has to be a reason why. The byzantine tax code with its many loopholes still does not appeal to them.
The City has had diminished business in many areas due to poor transport links during the Covid-19 emergency and could do with the onshoring of British and other fortunes as offshore centres come under new challenges.
Innovation, not marginal trade deals, should be the response to temporarily reduced physical trade with Europe post-Brexit and that will include fiscal innovation.
It is not about undercutting - you can already see corporate tax rates rising - it is about being different.
*****
The reason the young voted for Margaret Thatcher in their droves in 1979 and 1983 was because they were not prepared to put up in their turn with Labour's high marginal rates of income tax and death duties that their parents and grandparents had had to put up with.
For older voters it was frustration with the chaos of the winter of discontent, union militancy, rampant inflation and then, later, the personality of Labour leaders.
As the 2010 election approached David Cameron was in trouble until the Conservatives promised to raise the inheritance tax limit to £1 million per person. There was an immediate 10 percentage point uplift in the Conservatives' vote share which never reversed and carried him across the line.
The promise was not kept in office, unlike Boris Johnson's of Brexit, and he secured a lower than necessary majority in 2015.
Subsequent Tory Chancellors failed consistently to raise the single person threshold and paid the price in 2024.
The original post-war death duties were meant to catch the landed aristocracy not the person who had paid off a mortgage.
In does not matter exactly what inheritance tax is replaced with, or that we must consent to the Treasury raising a bit more, any PM that delivers an abolition this side of the next election will get at least another 10 point uplift and will be set fair for the rest of the decade. [This now holds true for a Labour PM].
REPLACEMENT OF INHERITANCE TAX
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Laws on inheritance taxation are superior to those in the United Kingdom in America except that the latter give a means of exemption through donations to what the British would call charities or foundations.
As for charities, we have no quibble at all with those whose purpose is for the alleviation of poverty, the suffering of animals and so on but educational establishments like Harvard create endowments in the billions, which is to these charities' detriment as alternative destinations for donations.
In Europe, the political donor Robert Maxwell established a foundation to channel money to those involved in setting up media businesses.
In Britain we should replace the most unpopular tax on the statute book, inheritance tax, with a lifetime gifts receipts tax with wider reach.
Billionnaires can readily avoid inheritance taxes but they do want to leave money both to individuals and non-natural persons.
To a fair extent they will only domicile their fortunes in the United Kingdom if the costs of doing so are less than the lifetime cumulative costs of setting up avoidance measures like trusts or foundations.
We would propose that in the United Kingdom a gifts receipt tax should be payable by all natural persons at 12% once lifetime allowances of £1.25 million have been used up. For inheritors of art works of national importance, historic houses and active farms a reduced rate of 6% would be payable.
A 6% rate would be paid by all charities, and by foundations with similar primary purposes, on gifts received of a value over £5000.
Political parties would be exempt unless set up as companies.
Trusts and companies would pay at a rate of 12% on all gifts received, with no allowances.
Gifts to natural and non-natural persons outside the jurisdiction would be subject to an immediate deduction of tax at 12% with no allowances before they left the jurisdiction.
These proposals would result in an uplift of Treasury revenues, reduce the incentives to establish tax avoiding trusts and encourage many large fortunes to come onshore following the removal of unrealistic marginal rates.
The figurative reality of Inheritance Tax.
A socialist government used death duties to make the big displacement guys sell up.
Seventy years later Inheritance Tax figuratively taxes the four two sail vessels at 40% (or a little less with allowances), and the left seeks to tax them more, so that at least two of the four 'families' who own them have to sell up never to have their own boat again.
The single sail vessels are too small for now but beware the Reeves Exchequer cutter if they add a sail.
Anyone else has flagged it up right - it's not realistic like 12% is it? - and done a big displacement.
(Vessels in photograph unrelated to U.K.)
*****
President Hollande of France was not a bad president in the second half of his term but the French electorate, which traditionally builds personal capital later in a working life than the British electorate, did not forgive him.
Electorates love an alternative but they have no love for the ideology of the left. The French socialist party's post-Hollande fate was 6% of the vote in a proportional representation system and that will be the fate of the Labour Party if it wins an election and then adopts proportional representation.
Any party will do better - the Greens, a hard left splinter, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats. Labour will be out on its ear.
His error was the same as the drift of Labour Party proposals over the past half dozen years. He increased personal capital taxes and corporate taxes upon taking office. Unpopularity grew so he reversed the corporate tax increases but not the personal ones. People have votes not corporations. Starkly they could see that any capital they built would be taken away from them or their descendents in substantial measure not long after they had built it.
We have a new Conservative prime minister, Liz Truss, who we want to give a fair wind. [Liz Truss' first Chancellor of the Exchequer cut corporation tax to 19% without an acceptable rationale and her second Chancellor was obliged to return it to 25% to get out of a sterling crisis but the Labour opposition, blindly not understanding markets, wanted to leave it at 19%].
As a Treasury minister has said, the tax of choice to abolish is inheritance tax. If abolished it would give an immediate boost to growth and enterprise. People would be energised to work on, to provide for their families in the future and not to spend down their savings so that the inheritance tax threshold is not exceeded.
There is a deafening silence as to influential institutions, or even corporations, calling for a reversal of the corporation tax rise. A corporation tax level of 25% until 2025 would trouble no one. The saving to the Treasury from not cutting it would be about £19 billion.
Abolishing inheritance tax would cost at most £7 billion and if superseded by a gifts receipts tax the books would one day be in the Treasury's favour. [So it would have been an alternative tax cut that could have kept Truss in power].
Abolition of inheritance tax is just about the only fiscal measure, short of reducing the standard rate of income tax to 15%, that could guarantee a Conservative victory at the next election. It would be electoral suicide for Labour to oppose its abolition but favour a 19% corporation tax rate.
Corporations do not like to be taxed more than their peers. Whether it is 19% or 25% will be a 7-day wonder to them but, in contrast, people want family incentives to work on beyond when then personally need to.
A week is a long time in politics. The media can then move on but for families building wealth is an inter-generational thing lasting decades which they must be offered a shot at.
*****
24 January 2025
So we have a new government and they got their fingers burnt with the farmers' inheritance tax escapade not to mention the winter fuel allowance, both Treasury theorists' ideas.
Suddenly, though, we have the Davos effect, from which location the Chancellor started to enunciate enterprise friendly intentions, away from the civil servants. Good.
These appeal most to the multinationals. The big investors in control of their supply chains are certainly needed.
Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover have both done their own deals for local manufacture of automotive batteries but government financing a new local manufacturer of batteries with no guaranteed outlet would be a disaster. Elon Musk pushed Tesla into pole position by being vertically integrated, manufacturing both batteries and cars. For some kinds of things you need to control the supply chain - or do a deal with an entity that does.
Treasury policy has given away so many jewels of British commerce to be bit part players in some one else's supply chain, and now it is almost too late for us, as mid-sized players are not emerging to be the new jewels. The venture funds are intent on finding early stage successes that can be sold on to the overseas giants.
So how do you get growth from below that can secure mid-sized players? All the Treasury ideas from George Osborne's time - or is it Jim Callaghan's time? - onwards have failed.
Almost the only way left to do so is to abolish inheritance tax and replace it with a gifts receipt tax as outlined here. It would, incidentally, yield more for the Exchequer.
This would free individuals to take enterprise risks by giving them a human motive to do so. You cannot entirely retreat from human nature into a virtue signalling narrative.
The British public is incredibly entrepreneurial but it is frustrated by oligarchic practice and keeps to the place it is told to stay in rather than risk irrecoverable losses.
People may say why subject charities to the gifts receipt tax? Because otherwise you will have the Warren Buffett scenario - pay next to no lifetime tax and pay next to none thereafter by bequeathing to a foundation (which will be controlled by Bill Gates). Both have been inspirations to either investors or entrepreneurs but that is not the point.
The main reason is that big British charities spend the greater part of their income on personnel and premises and so are not so different from businesses. Businesses pay VAT at 20% but charities do not, so a 6% receipts levy is mild by comparison and only a once off.
If you do not include all entities in the gift receipts envelope you will leave massive loopholes.
If you remove inheritance tax you will attract rich individuals who will domicile their money in Britain and invest in its prosperity.