This time next year Rodney… as Del Trotter said.
Am I along in finding todays headlines from the Tory party conference a little bit gimicky?
A promise to increase the IHT threshold to £1m, so “only millionaires pay IHT” – great, except a million these days actually isn’t very much – a decent house, a profitable small business and a few investments and bingo there you are – probably a quarter of our clients are millionaires. Sure, any increase is welcome, but to suggest that IHT becomes magically fair at this moderate level of wealth is just sound bite politics.
Even better, the plan to pay for it is by “taxing businessmen from overseas living in the UK and not paying tax on their overseas income” – ah, yes, the old non dom issue. 10 years ago Messrs Brown and Blair were all set to tackle that but they didn’t – its the third rail of taxation politics, touch it at your cost. Oh, and yes, one small issue here chaps, in the Telegraph this Sunday they were talking about the Tory party really having a joint leadership between David Cameron and Lord Ashcoft – thats Lord Ashcroft of Belize, well known for his contribution to the UK tax system.