Tag Archives: taxation

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Are inheritance taxes unfair? Many people think they are. "Why should I be taxed twice on money I've earned during my lifetime?" they say.  This is, of course, a fallacy. Dead people don't pay taxes. Living ones do. So inheritance tax is not double taxation of money the dead person earned while they were still alive. It is taxation of an unearned windfall for the people to whom they leave their assets, usually their children. Other forms of unearned income, such as interest on...

There is a great deal of confusion over National Insurance - what it is, how it works and what it funds. I have attempted to clear up some of the muddle elsewhere. But partly, it stems from the existence of something called the NI Fund. If there is a Fund, surely this implies that National Insurance contributions are invested? If so, those (like me) who insist that state pensions are unfunded are talking gibberish.There is indeed a NI Fund. But it is badly named. It would be more accurate to...

One of the things that has emerged from the PQE debate is a suggestion that it is time to consider ending the Bank of England's inflation-targeting mandate. Unfortunately this got mixed up with calls for ending the operational independence of the Bank of England (Richard Murphy), or abolishing central banks (Bill Mitchell, stated in response to a question at Reframing the Progressive Agenda).What we might call the "twin peaks" approach to macroeconomic policy-setting has been adopted the...