The Irish Taoiseach says he wants to reduce the rate of Capital Gains Tax in Ireland. Paging Rachel Reeves…
Michael Martin – in post since January last year – told the Business Post:
“Capital gains is too high in Ireland, if I’m honest… I think 33% is high, and I think there is evidence we’re losing some investments or some capital when people sell their businesses.
Many of them are moving off to Portugal and other places. What I’m interested in is recycling. If people sell, that money gets reinvested into smaller companies and new products and new technologies.”
Reeves has spent her time in office hiking Capital Gains Tax, speculation about which caused a large mass asset sell-off. Martin, meanwhile, is trying to coax savers into making growth-boosting investments…
“I think it’s more amending our tax system and tax code to give a greater reward to people who are investing, and then to create a culture where that gets reinvested. I would accept that our reliance on corporate taxation is too high, and that is danger, and it’s a risk.”
Corporation tax is so low that it generates huge surpluses for Ireland. Martin says other taxes will have to come down to compensate – fancy that…
Research from the Adam Smith Institute finds that abolition of CGT could increase national income by 0.9% every year – £1000 for every family in Britain. Chance would be a fine thing…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”