ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 19 Does Labour respect sanctity of private property? Lessons to be discerned from the tragic Grenfell Towers fire transcend the immediate questions on cladding, stairwells, sprinklers, alarm systems, escape routes, incandescent materials and faulty appliances. Far more has been revealed than a recital of fire regulations in need of modernisation. The political exploitation […]

Dear Emile and Godfrey, I think the reason that Mises did not address taxes in either Liberalism or Human Action is that both are about production and not about spending. We Austrians know that government must exact a tax for what it spends. There is no avoiding this iron law. If government is limited to […]

Actions arising from short-term expediency can be tempting. They may hide, but can never negate, the underlying principle. Obedience to the law is a principle that applies even when that law itself appears unprincipled. Google, Amazon, Facebook and others have for many years exploited jurisdictional tax-rate differentials to minimise their liabilities. The style of compliance […]

The  cost  to  our  exchequer  of  tax  complexity  is  highlighted  by  the  government’s  recent   attack  on  “umbrella”  companies  set  up  by  employees  wishing  to  shelter  behind  a   corporate  veil  to  avoid  PAYE  and  national  insurance  levies.  The  Treasury  slapped  a  £1   million  fine  on  the  Ministry  of  Defence  for  its  failure  to […]

Hi Dad, Just heard this fascinating interview with John Caudwell. I’d be interested to hear what you make of it, especially his views on taxation: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02mvyh3 Matt Dear Matt I have just listened to it – very interesting indeed. He is instinctively a good man, with a homespun philosophy on wealth, politics, economics and business […]

My summer riverboat cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest along the Rhine, Main and Danube proved to be fully as instructive as it was relaxing. The majestic hilltop fortresses, castles and palatial edifices, erected to keep out tribal hordes, also testify to indulgences pursued by monarchs, princes and bishops over hundreds of years of relentless self-aggrandisement […]

Subject: Hoarding development land – tax free Sir, You report (7th April) that Shelter, the charity that aids the homeless, is backing calls for a tax on developers sitting on thousands of sites with planning permission for housing. The anti-social, but tax-favoured, hoarding of land could not happen in Australia, where the government of New South […]

Personally, I cannot see much future for your proposal that a tax of £5,000 per annum should be imposed on every citizen – for that is what your suggestion looks like. Quite apart from the question of how much that would raise for the Exchequer, for the person who earns £15,000 that would be a […]

Everyone knows that the world’s economic woes are soluble. Every leader acknowledges the blessings of free trade, low taxes, sound money and less regulation. Yet their actions, as ever, speak louder than words and somehow achieve the precise opposite. Take “free trade”. It allows cross-border commercial transactions to take place between willing traders unimpeded by […]

There is no truth so obvious that it doesn’t generate an opposing following. The most elementary economics primer tells us that flooding the system with money causes prices to rise and purchasing power to fall. Yet the Treasury’s pact with the Bank of England is designed to “stimulate” the economy by pumping hundreds of billions […]