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Flatter to deceive: the Chancellor flattens taxes but fails to say why

Last week's pre-budget report introduced one of the most radical reforms to capital taxes for 20 years. It showed courage in dealing with what may have become excessively generous tax concessions to wealthy foreigners with UK businesses and employment. But what did the public see? A tail-end Charlie of a government, bereft of its own ideas and rushing out initiatives stolen just days earlier from the Conservative Party conference. Labourites, old or new, must be wondering whether substance without spin is really such a good thing.

In these extracts from our latest client newsletter, No Monkey Business reviews the tax initiatives from the same perspective we bring to personal finance: technical and moral integrity. Open and simpler taxation is a sign of honest government. It also reduces the public's need to take expensive financial advice in order to make sensible decisions and avoid errors. As a career money manager for institutions who found it necesary to qualify as a financial planner in order to manage private wealth efficiently, I see one test of sensible taxation as being that all that additional contextual knowledge would not have been necessary.
Stuart Fowler on 10.14.07 @ 11:44 AM GMT [">more..]