If you were Chancellor of the Exchequer......

[Mullardman]

I don't mean if you were Hunt .. I suspect most of us can predict how he will deal with 'difficult decisions.'...
I mean if you could apply your own politics and your own grasp of economics to the current situation..what would you do?

 

[narabdela]

Resign, and take the lifetime pension.

 

[Nero]

Wealth tax, universal income, print money and introduce a child tax, delayed for 9 months natch.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Wealth tax, universal income, print money and introduce a child tax, delayed for 9 months natch.

What Nero said, but specifically 'print' money for major national and green infrastructure - better public transport links, more electrification of transport, more renewables, more local CHP, possibly small scale nuclear, including research into Thorium. Lots of grants for high tech research into energy efficiency and other tech, including carbon capture. A tiny 'transaction tax' on every financial transaction. More money for health and social care - probably a lot more.

 

[flutteringwow]

Wealth tax, universal income, print money and introduce a child tax, delayed for 9 months natch.

100%.

 

[ff1d1l]

Extensive renationalisations - rail, mail, utilities. Tax breaks for renewables, both installation and existing companies. Make all profits from investing in renewables tax free for a specified time with the likelihood of extension. Reinstate attractive home generation tarifs, including a household meter that deducted your generation from that your house consumed, effectively using the grid as a battery.
Funding this? Taxing oil gas and nuclear, and swingeing fines on poluting utilities, including fines personally levied on executives.

I'm sure other measures will occur to me as well.

 

[foxwelljsly]

I honestly don't know, but I suspect that unless we stop thinking of economic growth as being a main policy objective and find a way to make a swift decline in our economic activity palatable, and deliver it, as a species, we're ****ing stuffed.

The exchequer can come up with plenty of sticks to make that happen (50% VAT, anyone?), but the carrots have defeated the best minds of our generation.

Aspiring to fund and deliver an electrified freight distribution network that takes everything within the last mile of the point of consumption and is completely prioritised over personal journeys would be a bloody good start, though. And funding a massive expansion in renewables to power it.

I'd also throw money at taxation enforcement and collection and get rid of non Dom status, as that would be easy extra bucks.

I would not throw another single public penny at expanding or subsidising powered personal transportation, be it rail or road or air, as that, perversely, is a very good way of getting us exactly nowhere.

 

[snowflake]

Hide under a duvet...........

 

[rbrown]

Track down and recover billions lost in PPE fraud, abolish charitable status for public schools, impose windfall taxes on petrochemical companies and banks, raise NI contributions in line with earnings in the same way as income tax.

 

[flutteringwow]

2nd home ownership banned.

 

[Snufkin]

Tax land ownership.

 

[gintonic]

tax landlords

 

[hifinutt]

tax landlords

they already do that !! thats why students are having to defer courses in many cities and shortage of private rental

 

[hifinutt]

if i was chancellor i would raise taxes on the billions shell has made and invest in the NHS

 

[gintonic]

they already do that !! thats why students are having to defer courses in many cities and shortage of private rental

no that is because of over recruitment. We have no such problem

 

[daytona600]

Go after the tax dodgers Amazon , Non Doms . Offshore Havens 100billion in a day. Workers get the 100billion in Tax cuts & Pay rises Bottom up economics

 

[Martin J]

A few have mentioned wealth tax. What form would that take? I suspect for most ordinary people the majority of their wealth lies in their home and their pension pot. Would you tax those and if so how?

 

[Bob McC]

£2 million personal IHT allowance transferable to partner.
100% IHT on everything left.
Abolish all dodges like trusts to get round it.
US style income tax. As a British citizen You pay tax on income wherever you earn it in the world.

 

[Joe Hutch]

End non-dom tax breaks. Regardless of how much revenue it brought in, it would piss off the owners of the Mail and Torygraph, so worth doing.

Adjust tax system so that maximum income cannot be any more than, say ten times minimum income.

With that in mind, introduce a statutory living wage.

 

[crimsondonkey]

Give money to people on lower incomes who will spend it rather than save it; tax those who have too much to realistically be able to spend it rather than just stash it away, and use the proceeds to invest in the countrys infrastructure which has been left to rot over the last 12 years.

Try not to spook the markets too much with silly ideological flim flam like borrowing beyond means or printing money willy nilly.