Labour’s tax minister has refused to say if or when the government would respond to a consultation on making the business environment easier for entrepreneurs. After almost a year…
James Murray, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General, was present a fringe event hosted by the Chartered Institute of Taxation and CenTax (authors of the Farm Tax among other things). He was asked when the government would be responding to a consultation it launched at the last Budget…
The consultation, titled “Tax Support for Entrepreneurs,” opened on 26 November 2025 and closed on 28 February 2026. Since then – crickets…
He said:
“It will be published in due course, please know I have been talking to the team about all the responses to that so that can definitely be fed into the work we’re doing, the thoughts we’re having.”
Murray also remarked that the government would be more aggressively pursuing those who it claims are not satisfactorily self-employed and should therefore move inside IR35 rules to pay more tax: “it’s definitely something that is on my radar.” It never stops…
Wes Streeting has called for a massive hike in Capital Gains Tax as part of his pitch for the leadership. Or the highest office possible under Burnham…
Streeting complained to the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast about the tax system and proposed a “wealth tax that works“:
“A member of my family is a cleaner in Lancashire. She pays a higher tax rate on her salary than her landlord pays for the growing value of the home she lives in. She slogs her guts out, he puts in far less effort, yet the state rewards him more than her. And we wonder why people are angry.
The system is penalising work. It’s not fair and it’s bad for our economy. We need a wealth tax that works. A pound made from simply owning assets should not be taxed less than a pound made from a hard day’s work. We can do it in a way that is pro-growth, pro-entrepreneur and pro-work.”
The former Health Secretary, who gave his resignation speech in the Commons yesterday, has misunderstood capital gains, which are not income. International evidence (and UK evidence) shows that when CGT rates go up revenues go down…
Streeting’s proposal is for capital gains tax rates to match the three bands of income tax – 20%, 40%, 45%. “Under the proposal, a person’s capital gains tax band would be calculated by adding up their income and profits from assets.” If the tax rate was 40%, then an increase from 24% to 40% would be a 66.7% increase and an increase from 24% to 45% would be an 87.5% increase. Streeting relies on a paper by the architect of the now-discredited Farm Tax which claims £14 billion could be raised…
HMRC’s own calculations show that increasing higher Capital Gains Tax rate by 10 percentage points (a 21% increase in the rate) would actually reduce revenue by £3.5 billion. A 5% increase would reduce it by £870 million. Increasing the lower rate also reduces revenues – the relatively modest CGT rises that have already taken place have resulted in significant lost revenue…
The latest HMRC stats from 2023-4 shows that the average gain per CGT taxpayer was about £174,000 in a year. That means the 45% tax rate in the majority of cases, which according to HMRC forecasts predicts a £7 billion loss in tax revenue…
With three exceptions European countries tax capital gains at substantially lower levels than income. Those three all tax them at between 20% and 10%…
Streeting has proposed this idea before in a pamphlet which seems to represent the last time he thought about policy. The ‘Labour Growth Group’ has mostly copied Farm Tax creator Arun Advani’s proposals in their own paper. Pop that in the bin…
Guido also called this at the beginning of the month. Tomorrow’s news, today…
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in leftist circles at the decision by asset manager Aberdeen Group plc to kick out the group of tax hike enthusiasts running its charitable arm, “the abrdn financial fairness trust,” who since 2019 had turned it into a cashpoint for myriad organisations promoting tax increases and campaigning against spending cuts. Oh no!
Since 2018 the Trust has been led by leftist activist Mubin Haq, who has been campaigning against the Labour Government’s now stymied welfare cuts and for assorted tax hikes. The trust’s highest paid employee was raking in between £110,000 and £120,000 according to public documents…
Organisations who have over the years been in receipt of the trust’s circa £2 million per annum largesse are a roll call of the tax-raising blob, including:
Critically the abrdn trust provided £660,000 of seed funding to establish CenTax, the ‘tax the rich’ research group that was successful in persuading Labour to introduce its disastrous policies of attacking non-doms and imposing a death tax on family firms and farms. The Resolution Foundation has also cashed in to the amount of £367,000. The loss of this annual infusion of millions is a severe blow to leftist lobby groups but the real surprise is how long it took Aberdeen plc to stop its own charitable arm from promoting anti-capitalist policies that hurt savers…
Guido pointed out last week that the plethora of reports calling for Agricultural Property Relief annd other “loopholes” on farms to be scrapped were actually written by one man. Arun Advani, director of CenTax, is aided by co-director Andy Summers in pushing for higher taxes across the board. The Treasury admitted to Guido last week that Advani’s research was the intellectual basis of the farm tax…
Last month, in a definitive report on Inheritance Tax for his think tank, Advani states that the cap for Agricultural and Business relief for farms should be set at a miniscule combined £500,000. Half of the measly sum the government has set it at…
In order to prevent excessive fragmentation of farms as a result of that cap, which would reduce productivity, Advani advocates for “the state taking part-ownership of land and becoming the landlord to tenant farmers.” That farmland which went above the cap would presumably be expropriated and rented back to the previous farm owner. Perhaps they could be formed into some kind of large ‘collective’ farms?
To counter-act risks to food security from these extreme measures the farm tax’s architect says state subsidies should be directed towards “specific activities desired e.g. farming particular produce” as a “more appropriate way to ensure that the desired goals were being delivered.” Meanwhile, other gobsmacking proposals include removing IHT relief for funeral expenses and relief on bequests to charities, because that “effectively redirects tax revenues towards the charitable preferences of a very small number of people.” Pure planned-economy thinking…
The Treasury has already admitted Advani’s research has guided it on the farm tax as it currently exists. These proposals could give a taste of things to come, especially if farmers put up too much of a fuss. Things can always get worse…
Ministers James Murray and Daniel Zeichner penned a piece in the Times last week defending Labour’s new farm tax. Incensed farmers are due to descend on Westminster next week in a protest attended by Jeremy Clarkson…
They brandish an intellectual foundation for their new tax:
“As tax and economics experts from the IFS and the Tax Policy Centre have suggested, these changes are reasonable and fair. These changes strike a balanced approach that will ensure we can continue to protect family farms while also allowing us to ensure stability in the public finances and fix the public services that those same farming families rely on.”
Guido didn’t recognise the Tax Policy Centre and asked the Treasury to clarify, which it did, that the ministers are referring to the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax). That “think tank” is run by Arun Advani and Andy Summers, two of the three “wealth tax commissioners” who consistently push for huge tax hikes…
A 2023 IFS report called for the scrappage of Agricultural Property Relief and other “loopholes” on farms. It was written by Arun Advani.
Analysis calling for APR to be capped was produced by the IFS before the election this year. It was written by Arun Advani.
CenTax’s recent report calling for APR to be capped was written by Arun Advani. The think tank has, in fact, led the charge in calling for taxes on carried interest, the removal of the non-dom regime, and hikes in Capital Gains Tax. Reeves has contracted out her tax policymaking to far-left academics Advani and Summers…
Advani, who also sits on the advisory board of the OBR, himself said at Labour Conference that he was “optimistic” because the Labour government is “genuinely listening” to his ideas. The groundswell of support for Labour’s tax hikes is being entirely manufactured…
Burnham said in his main conference speech: “For the historic victory he achieved for us, I am here to say: thank you, Keir.”