Tories play tax cut card: But can Britain afford Sunak and Hunt's giveaways? asks ALEX BRUMMER By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail Updated: 22:01 BST, 11 June 2024 e-mail View comments These days, party manifestos come with costings. After Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts in the autumn of 2022, no one wants to upset the bond markets. The Tory desire is to reduce the tax burden.
The paradox is that the baked-in-the-cake freeze on tax allowances, and the jump in the headline rate of corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent, mean that taxes as a percentage of output are still rising. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are persisting in an effort to eliminate employee national insurance contributions (NICs) with a further two percentage point cut. Cutting payroll taxes is regarded as a good thing by economists because it helps make work worthwhile.
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are persisting in an effort to eliminate employee national insurance contributions with a further two percentage point cut. But in British political terms, it so far hasn’t had the cut-through that the much tried penny or tuppence off income taxes has. The end of NICs for the self-employed, costing £2.
6billion by 2029-30, encourages entrepreneurship. The triple lock plus and break on stamp duty for first-time buyers speak to both ends of the generational spectrum. Lowering national insurance ought to provide a supply side impetus by lifting growth.
Harder to assess is how the Tories will pay for giveaways. .