Thursday, October 11, 2007

It wasn't reactive policy guv... honest!

How odd. On Tuesday, during his pre-electionBudget statement, the Chancellor, Alistair Darling made changes to inheritance tax as we all know. Then we were told that this idea was being floated all along before the Tories mentioned it at Conference and that assessments were being made on what could be done on IHT during the summer.

And yet, in response to a question from the Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire, David Gauke about "how many estates in 2006-07 were not liable to inheritance tax as a consequence of the exemption available for (a) spouses and (b) civil partners". The Financial Secretary said that no estimates existed "because the supporting information is not complete".

You'd think, if the Government really wasn't just playing catch-up on IHT with the Tories as it claims they would have completed all their assessments before the Chancellor made his announcement, wouldn't you?

3 comments:

Mulligan said...

Given the way that just about every Labour politician, think tank member and supportive journo went out of their way, between Osborne's speech and Darling's, to state what a good and fair tax IHT is (a mere 6% I tells you) the claims that they were going to do something anyway are, of course, entirely credible and believable (NOT).

Prodicus said...

Ha! :-)

sachab said...

So Labour attack the Tories, saying nobody can know precisely the number of non-doms and hence the IHT policy is not costed.

But Labour can introduce a similar policy and despite not knowing how many people will benefit, it's suddenly costed?

'plucking' and 'thin air' spring to mind.