The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[bickster]

Raising Corporation Tax leads to lower wages, higher unemployment and less taxation revenue received by the state

Not only that but the businesses generally adversely affected are the SMEs not the larger corporations

 

The people may love these great ideas but its a bit like wanting Brexit, it'll sure come back and bite some people on the arse

Raising Corporation Tax may sound like a great left wing idea, it's effects are mostly what the right wing favour, lower wages and higher unemployment

 

Maybe Starmer should be explaining this

[chrisp65]

Corporation Tax is a tax on profits. It would have no impact on any company that was struggling.

It needs work to stop the big boys wriggling out and writing off and doing deals. But it would be easy to stop a rise in Corp Tax killing off the independent businesses that have had a torrid 12 months.

Maybe Starmer could explain why it would be a bad idea to tax companies that have done well out of covid.

 

 

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Corporation Tax is a tax on profits. It would have no impact on any company that was struggling.

It needs work to stop the big boys wriggling out and writing off and doing deals. But it would be easy to stop a rise in Corp Tax killing off the independent businesses that have had a torrid 12 months.

Maybe Starmer could explain why it would be a bad idea to tax companies that have done well out of covid.

 

 

Amazon et al don't pay much Corporation Tax in the UK. Changing the rate of CT will not affect them one bit

[Davkaus]

26 minutes ago, bickster said:

Raising Corporation Tax leads to lower wages, higher unemployment and less taxation revenue received by the state

Not only that but the businesses generally adversely affected are the SMEs not the larger corporations

 

The people may love these great ideas but its a bit like wanting Brexit, it'll sure come back and bite some people on the arse

Raising Corporation Tax may sound like a great left wing idea, it's effects are mostly what the right wing favour, lower wages and higher unemployment

 

Maybe Starmer should be explaining this

Perhaps someone should explain it to him first

https://keirstarmer.com/plans/10-pledges/

Quote

 

1. Economic justice

Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles.

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

19 minutes ago, bickster said:

Raising Corporation Tax leads to . . .  less taxation revenue received by the state

This seems like a counterintuitive claim, and I am wondering if I am I to infer that you think corporation tax should be scrapped altogether, or if are you claiming that the current rate is optimal for tax take?

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

This seems like a counterintuitive claim, and I am wondering if I am I to infer that you think corporation tax should be scrapped altogether, or if are you claiming that the current rate is optimal for tax take?

The current system is complete nonsense. What needs to happen is that Amazon et al, need to pay their share of tax in this country, on the profits they make in this country. When people are asked about increasing the taxes companies pay, they are imagining that this is the outcome. It won't be

 

 Raising the rates of Corporation Tax as it currently stands is detrimental to jobs and wages. It will have the opposite effect to what people imagine.

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

The current system is complete nonsense. What needs to happen is that Amazon et al, need to pay their share of tax in this country, on the profits they make in this country. When people are asked about increasing the taxes companies pay, they are imagining that this is the outcome. It won't be

 

 Raising the rates of Corporation Tax as it currently stands is detrimental to jobs and wages. It will have the opposite effect to what people imagine.

I'm trying to nail down a specific claim here. I'm not really interested in tax avoidance, as nobody is suggesting changing how the Revenue deal with avoiders. I am not imagining anything to do with specific companies when I discuss this topic. I am also, with caveats, granting the argument about jobs and wages; I have seen studies that support your claims on this (and others that don't, but there is a legitimate case to be made).*

The claim I'm interested in is the claim you made that increasing corporation tax decreases the total tax take. I am not aware of evidence suggesting that is true; I would be interested to see it. And following on from that, I am interested in whether the conclusion of this evidence is that the optimal corporation tax rate is 0% (because decreasing corporation tax leads to increasing tax revenues, through some mechanism) or whether the current rate of - I think it's 19% - is the optimal one.

*The big caveat is that it is a bad idea to talk about the 'progressiveness' or otherwise of a system by focusing on only two variables. Clearly Starmer's critics would not favour doing nothing at all to the balance between taxation and spending apart from raising corporation tax; they have plans and ideas for other measures for jobs and wages.

[blandy]

My personal take on it is not that changing corp tax rates is a bad thing, but that it would be a bad thing right now, given the circ's we're in.

Some businesses have done very well out of pandemical fungus disease - supermarkets, online retailers etc. I've no issue with taxing these on their extra profits. Corp tax does this, as long as they are UK based etc.

Most businesses have done badly out of fungus disease. Many are loss making and not impacted by corp tax, right now. Others have much weakened profits (a smaller cake) and any increase on corp tax on that already diminished cake hits them further and weakens their ability to invest/stay in business right now.

So my philosophy would be by all means go after the big avoiders - but that's not corp tax.

Leave corp tax alone until there's a recovery, until businesses are back on an even keel, and then when it's stable again, at that point lookc at increasing corp tax (although tbh it needs better than a blanket rate, it needs different rates for different levels of profits and so on).

Labour (IMO) is right not to want raised corp tax at the moment. Polls are misleading - asked if Labour should be calling for higher tax rates a majority say yes. But asked if the chancellor should increase taxes or cut spending people massively say no. You get what you want depending on the question.

The UK also needs (because of Brexit) to be able to attract investment from abroadia, to replace the stuff that's got hit and lost. Setting Corp tax too much higher will discourage investment - businessed will go elsewhere.

[ml1dch]

Some Labour bod: "So, there is definitely nothing that can go wrong by having Jo Anderson on the ballot paper for mayor of Liverpool?"

Another Labour bod: "no, I can't imagine anyone will get confused by that"

[Jareth]

 

[bickster]

2 hours ago, ml1dch said:

Some Labour bod: "So, there is definitely nothing that can go wrong by having Jo Anderson on the ballot paper for mayor of Liverpool?"

Another Labour bod: "no, I can't imagine anyone will get confused by that"

Both completely under the radar local councillors. Also noticeable that neither appears to be calling for the aboilition of the position. Joanne Anderson is a black woman and represents the same ward as Anna Rothery. She was only elected at the last council elections in 2019. Anthony Lavelle is a councillor for Croxteth Ward and has been since 2016. No idea on their politics as both are fairly unknown outside their wards

EDIT: - It appears that Anthony Lavelle supported the "2016 Anti-Corbyn Coup" according to some Left wing twitter accounts. He's already been dubbed a scab within minutes of being announced. I'm not getting the impression that Joanne Anderson is that left wing either if I'm honest but that appears to be harder to track down

[HanoiVillan]

Turns out they do, in fact, favour tax rises . . .

. . . I guess just as long as they're on low-paid workers, not profit-making companies

[HanoiVillan]

I should probably add, that they have given a lot of faux-Keynesian justifications for opposing the corporation tax rise ('no tax rises in a crisis, we'll choke the recovery' etc), which I call 'faux' because they clearly don't believe them. Not only is the freeze on income tax thresholds a de facto tax rise on low-paid workers earning around £12k/year, but it's a particularly bad tax increase from a Keynesian perspective, as low-paid people have a marginal propensity to consume at around 100% (ie, a worker on £12k who benefitted from lower taxes would spend roughly all the extra money they had). By contrast, big companies would have mostly either parked their profits in higher cash buffers, or dispersed them to rich people (their executives and shareholders) who have a much lower propensity to consume and would have used much more of it to pad their savings.

[Demitri_C]

On 02/03/2021 at 19:24, Jareth said:

 

That cant be right surely? The tories have been a right mess under Johnson how the hell are labour not closing the gap?

[Seat68]

2 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

That cant be right surely? The tories have been a right mess under Johnson how the hell are labour not closing the gap?

Voters not happy with LTN’s in London apparently. 

[Demitri_C]

1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

Voters not happy with LTN’s in London apparently. 

Whaat about the rest of the uk ?

[Seat68]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

Whaat about the rest of the uk ?

Carrot dangled for June the 21st and vaccine rollout going well. More to it than that but thats my take. 

[Mister_a]

39 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

That cant be right surely? The tories have been a right mess under Johnson how the hell are labour not closing the gap?

I think Labour have completely lost direction, and the public sees this, they just aren't a valid political force right now. 

Hardly anyone can name a single policy of theirs, lots of Labour voters are disgruntled at the treatment of Corbyn (by the Labour party itself), and I'm guessing would rather vote green, lib dem or just not vote than vote Tory, which leaves the Tories polling so high.

We have Brexit and Covid, and the tendency of people to go with what they know during emergencies (don't change horsemen mid-apocalypse etc).

It's also an absolute shambles that the media is allowed to portray anything even remotely left of centre as communism, so the ground under which the battles are fought is squeezed into the centre, where the Tories will win, unless labour get another Blair, which Starmer clearly isn't.

I can't see change happening until the the media stranglehold is reduced, and with social media taking over the reigns, there's little hope of that.

It's pretty depressing all told.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Mister_a said:

lots of Labour voters are disgruntled at the treatment of Corbyn (by the Labour party itself)

This quite frankly is utter nonsense. A small cabal of noisy left wIng Labour members would be more accurate. The general public and ergo "Labour Voters" opinions will largely sway between, couldn't give a shit and didn't like him anyway.

[Mister_a]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

This quite frankly is utter nonsense. A small cabal of noisy left wIng Labour members would be more accurate. The general public and ergo "Labour Voters" opinions will largely sway between, couldn't give a shit and didn't like him anyway.

Ok, how about "A large enough percentage to make a difference overall"? Because, that's all it takes to screw up the party as a whole in terms of squabbling rather than pulling in the same direction.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Mister_a