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The war on cash

The Farage banking affair has revealed a wider issue: that for some time the banks have been getting rid of customers who get paid in cash. A war on cash is being waged, of which the proposals for a digital currency are another move in the same direction. The tax authorities are no doubt in support of the war on cash, because it is difficult for them to get their hands on money paid in cash transactions....

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“Switch to working from home could cost the Treasury £32 BILLION a year”

From The Daily Mail: The Treasury could lose £32billion a year due to high-earners moving abroad as people begin to shift from working at the office to working from home, a study claims. Highly-paid workers who live abroad will pay their income tax in their country of residence rather than to HMRC. It may reduce the public purse by a sixth, adding to the economic crisis facing the UK, legal experts...

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“Britain aims to plant 143 million new trees a YEAR by 2035”

From The Daily Mail: The number of new trees planted across the UK per year is set to rise to 143 million by 2035 in a massive bid to meet climate targets. The ambitious programme, easily the biggest in 50 years, will see a doubling of the planting of woodland to almost 80 million in the next four years. Due to be published in the next two weeks, the plan will controversially turn swathes of...

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Georgism and Universal Basic Income

Not all people who support land value tax (LVT) also support the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI); and most people who support UBI don’t also support LVT (if they’ve even considered it). Nonetheless, it seems to me (Mark Wadsworth) personally that LVT and UBI share the same basic principles.   1. The philosophical level Putting practicalities to one side, the basic assumptions...

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Institute for Economic Affairs on top form

From the IEA: * The UK could have a tax system that has a low negative effect on welfare and efficiency, with small compliance and administration costs; a system that is nondiscriminatory, avoids double taxation, and that is transparent and easy to understand. * As such, we suggest that the TV Licence, Inheritance Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax, the stamp duties on buying shares, the Apprenticeship Levy,...

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“Silver bullet housing policy could make homeowners millions”

Lola emailed me a link to this regurgitation of the press release: New modelling shows that the average homeowner who did take up the scheme could make hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pounds, depending on where they live – after building costs and costs of finance. One worked example in the paper shows how a post war cul de sac in Barnet could voluntarily decide to uplift. This would...

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The damn-nearest run thing

“The damn-nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”, wrote Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo. The same must be said of the 2019 election. However, it just buys another five years, and if the boom-bust cycle runs to schedule, the crash will then be only a year or two away.

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Taxes Compared

The distinction between ‘local’ and ‘national’ services is highly artificial, to all intents and purposes, the UK has one single national tax-raising system; even supposed ‘local’ taxes like Council Tax or Business Rates are dictated by UK-wide rules (these are diverging slightly for Wales and Scotland, Northern Ireland retained Domestic Rates and does not use...

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