PB’s 20/20 Vision(s)
Tuesday 21st October 2025
The Treasury are currently flying more kites than the M40 corridor.
That’s a joke for the Cotswold Crowd who are particularly terrified by the tax threats.
Add the world and his donkey braying their ideas and we are all scared sh*tless in the run up to the Budget.
The ex-chancellors Gordon Brown and George Osborne (Gordon Osborne) - fiddlers both - are in large part responsible for the extra-ordinarily complex tax system we now have.
Treasury civil servants continue to feed increasingly complex, and frankly stupid, ideas to every Chancellor and few seem capable of resisting.
I have zero faith that ‘our Rach’ has any clue what she is doing and will produce yet further layers of tax complexity on November 26th.
At the risk of making an ass of myself, I’ll throw in a few thoughts of my own.
For some time now, I have been a flat earth, sorry, flat tax, believer.
It is all about making the tax system simple, transparent and easily enforceable.
Setting the level of tax so that avoiding it becomes pointless, and as socially acceptable as drink driving or smoking on an airplane, is essential.
I fall on 20% as that figure.
Who could be bothered to avoid -
1. 20 % Income Tax
2. 20% CGT
3. 20% IHT
4. 20% Dividends
5. 20% VAT
6. 20% Corporation Tax
Few, and jail for those that do.
Where the taxes fall is also a question.
In my 20/20 land, everyone should be able to earn up to £20,000 per annum completely tax free.
Under this model, humiliating and nonsensical ‘in work benefits’ would become obsolete and self-reliance the norm.
Transaction taxes around property bung up the market and in turn, the economy.
To ease this, I would create Stamp Duty 2.0: a 2% tax on all property purchases with a 20% CGT on all sales. CGT - the clue is in the name. Be happy with your gain and share the love.
There are a multitude of different tax adjustments needed around property which I have written about in other Patrick’s Property Politics blogs.
The key is tax simplicity.
If you think I am just another braying ass, do say so.
But only if you have your own ideas to contribute.
Until next time……
PB
Share this article
k L E D