Our tax process demands a daring overhaul, not a slash in inheritance tax | Autumn statement 2023

Slashing inheritance tax is absolutely the incorrect priority for the government (Hunt warned in opposition to chopping tax for wealthy while earning stealth raid on 36m employees, 17 November). At a time when standard functioning persons are dealing with the brunt of taxation, cutting a tax that only the most affluent of estates pay out is politically, morally and economically wrong.

Minimizing the tax will more reward the luck of start instead than encouraging difficult operate and innovation. If the governing administration has the fiscal headroom, then minimizing taxes on attained income, rather of on prosperity, really should be its precedence.

There desires to be a bold rebalancing of the tax technique, and we urgently need to have to slender the hole amongst taxation on gained and unearned money.
Thomas Nurcombe
Researcher, Bright Blue

Aside from the unfairness of making inheritance tax cuts “for a small range of rich estates” funded “by increased taxes on the incomes of 36 million people” as you report, there is one more powerful explanation why tax cuts for the wealthy are a negative idea. They do not function. A modelling training on inequality, growth and unemployment across 18 OECD nations around the world in excess of 50 yrs found that minimizing taxes for the prosperous creates better rates of inequality in the extended operate, but has no discernible outcome on economic progress. Tax cuts also have a tendency to increase unemployment in the to start with four many years just after implementation.

By contrast, the eminent economic historian Brad DeLong, in his e-book Slouching Towards Utopia, suggests that progressive taxation was a important factor in the US’s restoration from the Good Despair in the 1930s.
David Murray
London

Just as austerity was a political decision by David Cameron and George Osborne, so also are the possibilities for deploying the sudden headroom seemingly offered to the chancellor (What can Jeremy Hunt do with his £13bn headroom in the autumn statement?, 17 November). He should resist phone calls to use community dollars to obtain partisan edge – so that’s no cut to inheritance tax and no disproportionate focusing on of individuals who rely on the social stability method for guidance.

Using funds to fortify the frail and faltering public realm would benefit us all. The situation for fixing social care – prolonged promised but even now as much off as it has ever been – should to be at the top of any wishlist.
Les Shiny
Exeter

What option actuality do Jeremy Hunt and the Conservative social gathering inhabit? Has Hunt viewed the state of our area authorities, the solutions they present and the fresh new cuts to those solutions that are approaching? If situation enable him a few billion additional than envisioned, could he not at the very least think about the plan of employing the additional cash for points that are desperately needed by everyday people, rather than the previously rich?
Richard Baynes
Blanefield, Stirlingshire

Neither the Institute for Fiscal Reports report nor journalists appear to be to recognise the inheritance tax anomaly of the single, childless testator. We way too would like to gain loved ones associates and liked types, but for us (or instead, our beneficiaries), inheritance tax starts at £325,000 instead than the a lot-quoted £1m. Time to level the actively playing area, chancellor.
Val Seddon
York