Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Louise Haigh has insisted that mayors won’t be able to offer tax rebates after receiving control over a part of income tax receipts collected in local areas. Devolution only goes one way…
Haigh told Times Radio:
“To my knowledge, Ben hasn’t developed a rebate scheme and it’s not in their gift to set income tax or business rates. So we would anticipate that the money would be invested into public services and into growth schemes that benefit the community as a whole…
Mayors don’t have the ability and won’t have the ability under these plans to set income tax rates at a regional level … Those kind of schemes necessitate HMRC to set up full schemes. That’s just not possible at the moment. The way that the mayors are set up and to work is to reinvest the money into their public services, into their local economies. It’s not possible at the moment.”
So mayors are only allowed to spend money. How long can that line last?
Tax rebates will allow local areas to engage in tax competition which will increase productivity and produce an incentive to keep taxes low among local authorities. It works in the US…
Burnham confirms he spoke to Trump last night about drilling in the North Sea:
“I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here. There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president…”