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Robert Colvile Profile picture
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20 Feb, 4 tweets, 3 min read
Fresh reports today that @RishiSunak wants to raise corporation tax, with the justification that even after it goes up we'll still have the lowest rate in the G7. But as @CPSThinkTank and our friends at @TaxFoundation have pointed out, this is deeply misleading.
Yes, the UK has the fourth-lowest corp tax rate in OECD - but we're 17th out of 36 in terms of overall corp tax, because we have massively stingy investment allowances (in fact, Osborne funded corp tax cuts by slashing them - robbing manufacturing Peter to pay services Paul).
.@TaxFoundation ran the numbers for us when they published their latest International Tax Competitiveness Index, and raising corporation tax from 19% to 24% drops our business tax regime down to 25th of 36 (@RishiSunak is reported to be targeting 23%) cps.org.uk/media/press-re…
For more on this (and further briefings re plans to raise dividends/CGT), see our aptly titled @CPSThinkTank briefing note, 'Wrong Taxes, Wrong Time' cps.org.uk/research/wrong…

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More from @rcolvile

Robert Colvile Profile picture
16 Feb
The vaccine passports debate is a perfect illustration of my new working theory: that the most important part of modern government, and its most important limitation, is database management. Please stick with me on this - it's much more interesting than it sounds. (1/?)
Throughout the pandemic, to a rough approximation, every single UK policy success has been built on a good database. And every single policy failure has resulted from a bad/nonexistent one.
The furlough scheme? PAYE. Expanding UC? The UC database (duh). The vaccine rollout? NHS patient records. All robust enough for use, and mostly already transferred to the cloud so could be accessed/expanded without too much stress.
Read 18 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
14 Feb
Because I love making myself popular, I’ve written my column today on why we need to stand up for the City thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ci…. A quick summary (1/?)
Even allowing for the impact of the financial crisis, and the Brexit vote, it’s pretty extraordinary how the City has moved from being central to our economic narrative to almost peripheral.
The Tories have barely mentioned financial services in recent years. Labour’s policy is essentially that brilliant Whitehouse/Enfield Question Time spoof: ‘If the bankers, the bonuses, the bankers, the bonuses, it’s disgusting.’
Read 9 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
19 Jan
However it ends, the row over Universal Credit tells us some incredibly depressing things about politics and policy in this country. A quick thread.
First, the constituency for fiscal discipline within the Tory party is at its smallest for decades. Anecdotally, MPs telling govt to stand firm vastly outnumbered by those saying 'make the emails stop'
Second, the ratchet effect is in full swing. The temporary always becomes permanent. It is always far harder to cut spending than to increase it. (Many of us saw this coming - I even predicted the Rashford endorsement - but you didn't exactly need to be Nostradamus...)
Read 12 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
24 Nov 20
Another day, another sloppy, bad-faith piece from the @Independent's 'chief business commentator' @JimMooreJourno on public sector pay independent.co.uk/independentpre…
When he first wrote about this, he failed to address the disparity between private sector and public sector pay at all, or the disparity in terms of the impact of the pandemic.
If you read what he says this time, the implication is that the public sector have suffered disproportionately. There's no other charitable interpretation of this section.
Read 9 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
22 Nov 20
My column today is on the dire state of the public finances, and why Rishi really does need to take Boris’s credit card away. Please do read the full thing, but a quick thread for context. (1/?) thetimes.co.uk/edition/commen…
As I say in the column, the cost of the pandemic is gargantuan. Borrowing this year will be £350bn-£400bn - that’s 3x NHS England budget. The contracts for the moonshot testing programme alone are £43bn - 1/4 of income tax collected via PAYE.
And lockdown two has come with full-fat furlough till end of March (original cost: £14bn a month, though it'll be less this time), plus another massive hit to GDP/tax revenue.
Read 15 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
4 Aug 20
Have been thinking about the US election, and I think there's a real parallel in terms of expectation with what happened over here in 2019. (1/?)
By all the laws of electoral history, the Tories in 2019 were on track to win - more popular leader, more trusted on economy, polls looking good. But so many of those involved had been so traumatised by 2017 that it was really hard to believe.
Sure things looked good. But this was a new age. All the old certainties had been upended. There was probably something weird happening on social media that no one was seeing. Or a turnout surge among the young. Your rules? We threw them in a bin. Our rules now.
Read 5 tweets

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