Keep them low where possible; find the optimal point on the Laffer Curve; avoid taxes which are expensive to collect; and undo the harm of Stamp Duty and Inheritance Tax.
Also: don’t cut members out of the contest. And the right exam question for candidates is: who can best win a general election?
With average household energy bills around £1000 a year, it would be a cut of about £50 per year per family.
The Chancellor has been fortunate that the public finances have improved substantially at a particularly convenient time.
Targeted tax breaks on investment create jobs and pay dividends for the public purse. The long-term interests of our public services are not served by cutting them.
In the first article of a new mini-series, the economist urges the Chancellor to deploy the savings and revenues secured by leaving the EU.
Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer and Kelvin Hopkins voted with the Government.
We’re not only better than others at making choices about how to spend our own lives and money – it’s also extremely important for us to be able to do so.
They assume that no deal would be a disaster, but in fact the £40 billion we’re set to pay the EU could be a real boost to the British economy.
In the post-leave springtime, it will be worth considering what would happen if all three were abolished and replaced by a single Turnover Tax.
The Treasury should be saved from itself by bringing the Party Chairman in to scrutinise the Autumn Budget before it is finalised.
After our recent series asked ‘What should Tories tax?’, the Adam Smith Institute’s Head of Research kicks off a new mini-series seeking routes to lower taxes.
I suggest exploring the possibility of categorising self-employed work into two categories – self-employed work, and agency-supplied self-employed work.
Plus: We need a Housing Minister who will do for new homes what Michael Heseltine did with development corporations in the 1980s.
The rest of our economy is shifting to greater sustainability. The system to provide places to live should do the same.