Bad ideas have a tendency to crop up repeatedly. This is for a one-off wealth tax, put together by the “Wealth Tax Commission”, established in 2020. The proposal is being trailed at a meeting in in a House of Commons Committee Room next week, where they will hear from Professor Arun Advani and Professor Andy Summers, chief authors of the idea. According to the invitation, “They are key members of...

Apart from a rise in the rate of VAT, it would be difficult to think of a worse way of raising additional revenue than by increasing the rate of National Insurance. ALL of the increase will end up being paid by employers. The increase in the “employees’ contribution” will spark of a round of pay claims, which, given the present tight supply of labour, employers will mostly be forced to give into,...