My problem is they tax you your whole life when you’re alive and then when you’re dead?

No they don’t. They tax the estate. You are dead, it is irrelevant to you. As Bill says, the people who inherit the estate have not earned it.

Why not start by getting rid of 100 MP’s?

You want less representation? That’s odd. I actually want more, and more accountable representatives.

What will cutting 100 MPs achieve?

1) @£65k each that will be £6.5m per year. Not much really. (OK, so pension benefits will boost that amount, but we are still not talking much when compared to the £200bn debt).
2) It will mean that boundaries will have to be redrawn. This is not a trivial task. There is a lot of consultation involved when there are boundary changes and cutting 100 MPs will mean that boundaries of *all* constituencies will have to be redrawn to even out the effect. My guess is that it could not be done within one parliament. I would also be interested in estimates of the cost of this. I bet it would eat up all the “savings” from #1.
3) It will make MPs more aloof and disconnected from their constituency (cf MEPs for an example of what I mean). The expenses scandal has shown that the public want their MPs to be more accountable to the public. Making them more aloof is going in the wrong direction.
4) It is blatant gerrymandering from Cameron. ‘Nuff said.

http://jonathantodd.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/cracks-in-tory-discipline/

And:

http://jonathantodd.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/dave-v-boris/

The dynamic effect of taxation and its chief proponent Arthur Laffer are both discredited because they have never been proved empirically.

Johann Hari did an excellent explanation a couple of years ago: http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/11/supply-side-economic-tax-rich

And even theoretically, you never know whether you are on the up or down side of the Laffer curve (ie the margin at which higher taxes start resulting in lower revenues could be 70%).

Will

That is the whole point. The higher tax rate will, in the end, lose more revenue than it raises. This is called the dynamic effect of taxation. Low rates are an incentive, high rates are a penalty.

The introduction of the 50p rate is nothing more than a Labour trick set to trap the Tories. Gordon Brown is not stupid, he knows that the higher rate will raise precious little in revenue, but he does not care. That is not his purpose. If he can lay a trap for the conservatives, then he is like pig in muck.

It’s immoral and when Alistar Darling doubled the threshold for it last year to let more people keep more of their loved one’s money, I for one supported him.

Look at America with Reaganomics – as bad as the finances are, we are where we are and if this government can resist overtaxing us we’ll just grow our way out of the problem.

Couple that with Labour cuts of 9.3% or the Tory cuts of 10% – either way, assuming the Lib Dems don’t get in we will be OK.

I’m no economist but I wish people would just calm down. Why not start by getting rid of 100 MP’s?

My preference is for St. Vince’s ‘mansion tax’. Very hard to avoid, very popular with the masses (despite the kicking given to it by the well propertied newspaper editors and commentators) and targets unearned wealth rather than income from work.

Labour should swallow their pride and work with the Lib Dems on a joint manifesto commitment to it.