Rishi Sunak is set to slash the despised inheritance tax and secure the triple lock that guarantees state pension payments ahead of the next election, fuelling speculation he could go to the country as soon as May.
The Prime Minister could make an announcement on IHT before the Conservative Party Conference next week, pledging to lower the death tax when it’s possible and ultimately scrap it.
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said inheritance tax was deeply unfair but stressed the Government were currently in a fiscal straightjacket. And Labour branded the move ‘an unfunded tax cut of £7.2 billion per year’ for the most well-off.
At the same time, Rishi Sunak is set to rule out breaking the pension pledge despite the enormous cost to the Treasury of keeping it, after being told it would be political suicide to try to cut payments to the old. And he’s looking to overrule opposition from Labour to shire Tories to scrap environmental regulations on housebuilding to allow 114,000 more homes to be built in the countryside.
Treasury officials had been discussing taking a one-off break from the triple lock, which raises pensions each April by whatever is highest out of average earnings rises inflation or 2.5 per cent, due to inflation running at nearly 7 per cent.
There had been debate about ditching the guarantee in the next manifesto, but a newspaper outlet understands that voters’ response to the idea of axing the policy has been so negative that Tory strategists have ruled out any changes.
It comes as a newspaper outlet reported that local authorities are being told to be election-ready for the Spring, suggesting a general election could be held at the same time as local elections at the start of May, but No 10 declined to comment on the speculation.
The Prime Minister had refused to commit to the policy beyond next year’s 8.5 per cent rise in state pensions after experts said it could add up to £45 billion a year to the welfare bill by 2050.
A Government source said that fears over the growing burden of the measure, which was introduced by the Coalition Government in the 2010 Budget, have been overridden in No 10.
Some Tory MPs and campaigners in the upcoming by-elections in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth have voiced fears that abandoning the policy would cost the party dearly at the ballot box. The triple lock has been seen as crucial in securing the ‘silver vote’ for the Conservatives in the past four General Elections.
It’s called double taxation folks. You work extraordinarily hard, pay your taxes and then end up paying additional taxes over and over again. The Government are taxing you to death and either people do realise it but won’t say anything against the establishment because they’re too frightened or they just can’t be bothered.
They increase the pension age over and over because once you’re dead, you no longer exist and you’re not theirs to worry about.
The only thing that we can be sure of is death and taxes.
What the Government don’t seem to realise that that without the people the country would collapse. We are the hard-working taxpayers that built this country, and the people should be treated with respect, not everyone else that comes to this country.
It’s okay to pay your taxes, but it will have very little effect on you if you’re dead.
We are being taxed over and over again and then it’s being given to someone else, and people should never say that they’re used to it, but living is tough. If people say they’re used to it gives the Government a reason to tax you even more.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 