Financial Times:
Free lunch: read my lips
22 April 2015
In a recent briefing from the London School of Economics, Alan Manning writes that raising tax from 45 to 50 per cent has highly uncertain, but small, effects on the public finances. But what is clear is that if the higher rate leads to a fall in the tax base (the Laffer curve effect), it is certainly not because the highly paid work less but because they put more effort into tax avoidance. Now all the parties promise to reduce the revenue loss from tax avoidance. But even if they fail, the implication is that a higher top rate of income tax does not have noxious effects on the economy.
This article was published by the Financial Times on April 22, 2015
Link to article here
Related publications
'Top rate of income tax', Alan Manning, CEP 2015 Election Analyses Series, April 2015
Details here
Related video
'Top rate of Tax'
If politicians want to raise the top rate of tax, they need to do more to tackle tax avoidance and evasion. That is the main argument of Alan Manning.
View video here
Related links
Alan Manning webpage
Community Programme webpage
Labour Markets Programme webpage