LABOUR TAX PLEDGES HIDE THE TRUTH.

In their efforts to convince the populace to vote for them in June, the Labour party is 'pledging' not to raise income tax for those earning less than £80,000 per annum. In addition, they're saying that they won't increase employees national insurance or the rates of VAT currently in place. However, they are saying that the 'top 5%' of earners will pay more, though how much more isn't stated.

Allowing that they have also promised to spend several hundreds of billions of pounds more on public services, this implies enormous increases in the taxes which they don't promise to freeze, and also a huge increase in government borrowing. Back in the 1960s, some 'top earners' found themselves paying an eye-watering rate of income tax of 98% on part of their income - is this where Corbyn and McDonnell are heading ? What about a straightforward 'wealth tax' to rob those who have anything, or a vast increase in inheritance tax ?

They've been careful to say nothing about employers' national insurance - watch out all those providing jobs ! Keeping the rates of VAT the same doesn't preclude extending the scope of this iniquitous tax - might we find that currently exempt items, such as lottery tickets, museum entrance charges, burial and cremation costs, hospital and care home charges, school fees and much more - are suddenly made subject to it ? There are also a myriad of other taxes and duties which can be dreamt up or increased and no doubt this would also happen.

Together with massive increases in taxation, the vast increase in public sector borrowing would lead to a collapse in investment, higher prices, a dramatic surge in both inflation and interest rates and a collapse in the value of the pound. Within 12 months the UK would be back where it was in the 1970s when Chancellor of the Exchequer Dennis Healey was obliged to go, cap in hand, to the IMF for vital financial support.

Don't be conned. Labour's pledges aren't worth the paper they're written on if, indeed, they're written down at all. After Ed Miliband's 'Edstone' fiasco, they may well decide to avoid putting pen to paper on this economic nonsense.