Simplify the tax rates...

So Gordon Brown Alistair Darling is to introduce a new 50p top rate tax band on everyone who earns more than £150,000 a year.

Apart from breaking a manifesto pledge not to raise tax rates, when will Labour realise that you do not make the poor rich by making the rich poor.

Apart from making work for accountants (Hi Sean), why not simplify tax rates. On the first £10,000 you pay nothing – taking the poorest out of a vicious circle; 20p on £10,000.01 up to £50,000 and 30p on £50,000.01 to infinity and beyond.

If Labour is not careful, we will have another brain drain like we had in the 70s when income tax reached 98p in the pound. Utter madness.

Tax really doesn't have to be taxing...

News comes that Gordon Brown's tax credit system has cost £14billion in fraud, error and overpayment in just four years say the National Audit Office.

The tax credit system was created by Brown in 2003 to give otherwise unemployable people something to do. People on low incomes apply for tax credits to get back some of the money they have paid in tax. What company/government would take money from people, then employ other people to read forms filled in by the first people to get back some of the money they had originally paid? Utter madness.

Here's a radical idea. Change the tax system to introduce just three bands of tax that everyone can understand.
Band 1 for earnings up to £9,999.99 - 0p
Band 2 for £10,000 to £99,999.99 - 25p
Band 3 for £100,000+ - 40p
And that's it. Taxed at source so need for self-assessment - you know when the tax was collected by the Inland Revenue not the bodged HM Revenue & Customs.