Tag: Resolution Foundation

A senior Conservative is to urge Theresa May to target the wealth of baby boomers to prevent their children’s generation being forced to stomach a 15p rise in income tax to cover the spiralling cost of healthcare, education and welfare. “But neither party can avoid this issue,” he will say, claiming the Tory party’s stark 2017 manifesto was a “taste of things to come” with little room for tax cuts in the future. The Labour party, he will add, cannot raise all the money from the very rich as “taxing bankers cannot pay for everything”. Willetts will call for an overhaul of council tax, which he will describe as the “most regressive property tax you could have”. According to the Resolution Foundation, which has been gathering evidence through its Intergenerational Commission, a family living in a £100,000 house faces a tax rate five times higher than the occupant of a £1m house. We will shortly be publishing a paper looking at the options for making it fairer and raising more money from it,” Willetts will say. The idea of controversial new bands for council tax has never been attempted, however, because of the numbers of people living in homes that have risen dramatically in value while their incomes have not. However, Willetts points out there could be ways to help “asset-rich, low income older families”, for example through deferred payments. The Resolution Foundation is also examining inheritance tax, which it says is “poorly designed, widely abused and under-utilised”. He will argue that he has come round to the idea of such tax measures reluctantly: “Today’s young people are earning less than people of the same age 10 or 15 years ago.