Cllr. Gavin Ayling from Adur publishes what one presumes is the Tory "line" on Lib Dem tax plans. Whilst I'm not clear from his comment:

Just a direct quote from CCHQ today, it’s all pretty obviously wrong… And yet the LibDems steal votes from the Tories in the country and from Labour in the cities… They’re lies, people, let’s hear that before wasting our votes!

...whether he's saying that the message put out by CCHQ is "all pretty obviously wrong" and "lies" but that aside, let's have a look at some of their criticisms:

Among the Liberal Democrats’ plans for over 40 new taxes are:
• VAT on new homes. Liberal Democrats would make homes less affordable by slapping VAT on new housing – inflicting a stealth tax on homeowners, especially first time buyers. New homes currently do not pay VAT. They advocate ‘new homes paying VAT at our new harmonised lower VAT rate’ (Liberal Democrats, Affordable Homes in Safer, Greener Communities, Policy Paper 69, November 2004, p.20). VAT at 7 per cent would add £12,000 to the cost of an average new home in the UK.

The purpose of this change is made explicit in the document cited (I was on that policy working group). The fact that VAT is not charged on new homes but is on renovation and repair of existing homes is a disincentive to better use of our existing housing stock. We cannot unilaterally abolish VAT on such renovations and improvements so the only way to negate this disincentive is to rate both at the same, lowest possible, level. Currently most renovation VAT is at the higher rate I believe - so this would reduce that by as much as we are able to whilst levelling the playing field.

For a party that tends to fight against new build, I would have thought that the Tories ought to support something that encourages better use of current housing stock in preference to giving in to pressures for new build sprawl.

• Tax to park at work or to shop. They would ‘establish private non-residential parking levies (including out-of-town retail and workplace parking)’ (Liberal Democrats, Policies for Transport, Policy Briefing 24, March 2003).

Yet it's okay in Tory controlled Oxfordshire to charge us to park at home? Or on-street parking up by 170% explicitly to discourage driving into town at certain times?

• Pensions tax. Liberal Democrats stated yesterday that they would raise £3 billion by scrapping tax relief on private pensions for higher rate tax-payers (The Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2006). This would further weaken pension saving.

If they were worried about the effect on investment I would agree. However to imply that this is going to jeopardise the savings of those who already don't save enough or at all for their pensions is just naive. Salting excess income away in the form of additional pensions contribution, whilst good for investment, is also one of the biggest and most exploited income tax avoidance measures in use in this country by the already very wealthy usually with very good pensions provision already. Together with the proposed removal of the plan for a 50% tax rate on incomes this is likely to be neutral at least on everyone but the very wealthiest. Most people who have only average pensions savings or none at all would be a million miles away from being affected by this change.

But the point is taken - the Tories do now have to fight for their core constituency haven't they...:)

• Second homes tax. Liberal Democrats have already called for 200 per cent council tax on second homes (Policy motion passed at Liberal Democrat Party Conference, September 2003). Under local income tax, this would be replaced by punishing business rates on second homes (Liberal Democrats, Scrap Council Tax: Liberal Democrat plans to replace council tax with a local income tax, January 2004).

Actually since policy is also to change Uniform Business Rate into a locally set and collected Land Value Tax (called Site Value Rating) second homes would fall under this regime and not UBR. And rightly so. The monopoly of holding land out of its best permitted use ought to be taxed as it has a social cost in the form of availability of affordable housing for the resident population of any area. If they want to publicise our policies, they could at least get them right!

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