Have I mentioned
vote-buying yet? This idea is absurd. The Conservatives’ position is ‘It’s your
money, you worked hard for it – and you should be able to pass it onto your
loved-ones’ (from manifesto). Let’s look at that closely. Whose money is it?
Who earned it? The Conservatives have answered that: it’s yours, and you earned
it. Did anyone else earn it? It doesn’t look like it. If someone else earned
it, why have you got it?
So if no-one else
earned it, why is it right and proper for them to get hold of it at all, let
alone without any tax? We tax money people get when they genuinely do earn it.
Why should money that is unearned be tax-free? We should abolish income tax
before we even touch inheritance.
I could go into more
detail, about how most people didn’t earn the value of their homes at all. Most
people with homes valued between £750,000 and £1m bought when prices were a lot
lower and have not earned any of the difference at all; they have merely sat
and watched as governments have inflated a price bubble. If the Conservatives
only care about money that someone has earned, they shouldn’t be changing
inheritance on homes at all.
It’s also worth noting
that people whose homes are between £750,000 (twice the current individual
threshold) and £1m are actually hugely wealthy. They might not feel it because
there’s always a wealthier person out there, and because the economy is so
precarious (after 5 years of Conservative coalition) that it feels like it
could all vanish fast, but they are much, much richer than most people.
In summary, then, this
policy is about ensuring that very rich people get unearned wealth without
paying any tax at all. If the Conservatives ever wonder why they’re regarded as
the party of the rich, here is one of the best reasons why. They claim that
this is about fairness and justice when it’s extraordinarily socially
regressive and unjust.
This policy is
repeated at 51.
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