Experts slam Corbyn tax plan
LABOUR’S plan to increase corporation tax will hit jobs, wages and growth, a leading think-tank warned yesterday.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said a pledge to raise it from 19 per cent to 26 per cent by 2021 represented one of the biggest tax increases in the last 30 years’.
The IFS warned it could cause ‘substantial’ damage to the economy and hit revenues in the longterm as companies slashed investment in Britain.
It also dismissed Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestion that the increase would only hit fat- cat firms, saying: ‘All taxes are paid by people. Higher rates can reduce returns to shareholders, but there is evidence that a significant share of the burden is passed to workers in the form of lower wages.’
Labour also came under fire from small businesses after breaking a pledge to exempt them from tax increases.
The party yesterday confirmed that tax on small firms would rise to 21 per cent by 2021. Last night the Federation of Small Businesses said it would press Mr Corbyn to ‘honour the commitment he made’.
In a separate report, the IFS said Labour’s plans to increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour could cost jobs. It said that beyond a certain level, ‘minimum wages reduce hours and employment, penalising the groups they are supposed to help’.
A Labour spokesman said the wage pledge is ‘in line with reputable forecasts of the wage needed to maintain a decent standard of living by 2020’.
THE more Jeremy Corbyn reveals about his policies, the more he betrays his utter ignorance of how businesses and the modern economy work.
Take his plan to raise corporation tax from 19 to 26 per cent – one of the sharpest tax rises for 30 years.
Yes, this could bring the State a shortterm bonanza. But within months, jobs would go, dividends and the pension funds that rely on them would run dry – and tax receipts would plummet, along with wages and growth, as firms fled elsewhere.
Similarly, Mr Corbyn’s plan to increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour by 2020 would cost countless jobs, penalising the very people he wants to help.
Don’t take the Mail’s word for it. This is the verdict of leading economic think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which warns of ‘substantial’ damage if Mr Corbyn – who also wants to renationalise the railways and Royal Mail, and repeal union laws – has a chance to put his ideas into practice.
God spare us from a half-baked Marxist who has learned nothing since the 1970s.
HOW can it be right that advisers and high-fliers connected to Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management are helping themselves to fees and bonuses of £132million, after a merger that will throw 800 out of work? This is not merely an abuse of hard-working savers’ trust. Just as surely as Mr Corbyn discredits the Left, this porcine greed drags capitalism into deep disrepute.
HIGH Court judge Sir James Munby speaks for everyone with a heart when he says it is ‘simply inhumanity’ to separate elderly couples when one or both need residential care. Can the UK really claim it is too poor to apply his ‘common decency test’ while splurging £12billion a year on aid?