There ought to be a unique and strong centre-right case for celebrating wealth – specifically, acquiring it and ensuring more people from modest incomes can access and benefit from it.
Not only would passing a tax cut disproportionately helpful to London and the South-East be an admission of defeat in the Red Wall, but it would provide Labour with an easy attack line in the autumn.
Still, the argument that tax cuts themselves lead to growth is one that the Conservative Party hasn’t been used to making since the days of David Cameron Mark One.
There is also a strong case for believing that it is risky if you have almost half of adults not paying income tax – the position we were approaching by the end of the Coalition.
Combing an income tax cut with a reduction in stamp duty could form an obvious sequel to Hunt’s Autumn pairing of a reduction in national insurance with permanent full expensing.
Electoral desperation is never a good place from which to make major decisions on the future of our tax system. There are better, more cost effective, ways to show the Government is aligned to the public’s priorities.
We are a services superpower second only to the US. That doesn’t just mean banking, but also the creative industries, legal services, architecture and consultant engineering.
Hunt should raise his sights from South West Surrey, and focus on tax cuts that would bring the greatest relief to the greatest number.
We don’t want our children to grow up in a stultified, caste society where the only way to wealth and opportunity is to inherit it from parents.
If there is leeway for cuts, wouldn’t it be wiser to use it for a reduction that affects a greater number of voters or boosts the economy?
Abolishing IHT would look extraordinarily out of touch to those struggling to pay their bills or worried about the state of the public services – and would undermine any claim to fiscal responsibility.
Such as: reductions for business, such capital allowances to promote investment. And reductions on earnings, such as cuts to National Insurance.
We need to give more time and resource to those bringing up children. Such parents need a much better package from the state to look after a baby in the first year of its life.
As Bright Blue’s new report outlines, we can use tax as a tool to help reach a wide set of economic, social, and environmental goals.
Any sincere reading of the British economy since 2010 need acknowledge one basic thing: that the essential problem with the modern economy isn’t income inequality, but a lack of income.