Hard tax facts
From Mr David J. Kidd Sir: Bruce Anderson (Politics, 15 July) approves of the Tories abandoning the pledge to cut taxes. Had the opposition announced that the Bank's independence in setting interest rates was to be abolished, he almost certainly would not have approved. Why? Because governments can- not be trusted with the power to set interest rates. They come under pressure to adjust interest rates to suit lobbyists. The case is the same with tax. They cannot be trusted with the power to tax. They come under pressure to take money from the people to whom it belongs, the people who earn and save it, and to give it to those who lobby for it. Ideally, we should restore constitutional restrictions controlling the present unlimit- ed powers of executive government to tax, but in their absence an unqualified under- taking from the opposition to cut taxes is the next best thing since it creates a coun- tervailing political pressure.
It is not even clever from a partisan point of view to have abandoned the pledge to cut taxes. Political commentators' memories are very short if they cannot remember Labour's telling propaganda campaign on the theme of Tories as slippery customers who could not be trusted on tax. While the '22 Tory tax rises' were being hammered into the public consciousness, Tony Blair's face was appear- ing on billboards over a promise not to increase personal income-tax rates, and Gor- don Brown was giving an unqualified under- taking to cut VAT on domestic fuel and vehemently attacking accountants suggesting that he had wide taxing plans. Such was the language of those who won the last election; fiscal prudence and failure to commit to tax cuts was the language of the losers.
David J. Kidd
Citroen Wells Chartered Accountants, London W1
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