I’m afraid that the only conclusion I can draw from your post and Chris Giles’ post is that neither of you are aware that there are two parts to NIC. To coin a phrase, “this is elementary business stuff” – and neither of you, no doubt having never employed anyone yourselves, are clueless of it.

What about the rest of his tax packege?

After all, all Tory governments increase VAT and, tellingly, the Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce said on the radio that VAT was the lesser of 2 evils.

Despite the fact that an increase in VAT would directly effect those retailers!

http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2010/04/08/uk-election-2010-national-insurance-nonsense/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ft%2Fmoney-supply+(Money+Supply)

I’m honestly not sure how £6billion giving money back to consumers and business will endanger the recovery- surely it is a perfectly valid stimulus to get people spending more and not to discourage employers from hiring?

“the respective positions on NI means little in economic terms” Really?? Why then have all business groups, GB’s own advisors (no they are not tories before you try that old hat) said that it is?

Simple economics; the more you tax employers on the staff they take on the less profitable it is to do so. Companies are motivated by profit, decrease the profit margin on an activity an decrease the incentive.

I REALLY REALLY want to see the author respond to mine, Tyler and Mr Furious concerns.

Labour then attack the Tories by saying it is impossible to cut £6 billion (the amount of ‘lost revenue’ from not putting up the employer’s contribution to NI by 1% point) from the government’s budget without affecting frontline services. This year the Government is budgeting to spend £655 billion. £6 billion is therefore 0.9% of this total. Its ridiculous to say that you can’t reduce this budget by less than one percent without endangering frontline jobs.

Labour then say you can’t afford to take £6 billion out of the economy at a time like this. Firstly it is not being ‘taken out of the economy’ – its actually just not being taxed out of the productive side of the economy and eaten up by government. The money remains in the hands of companies who can use it to boost their profits and thus potentially hire more employees, spend it on developing new products, etc. etc. Secondly, the UK’s GDP in 2010 is estimated to be about £1,200 billion. The so called £6 billion ‘cut’ is only 0.5% of that total. Even if that sum was to be magically ‘taken out of the economy’ (which it isn’t) it wouldn’t make any difference.

How this can actually be a ‘debate’ mystifies me.

Let’s get rid of corporation tax (a tax on jobs, obviously), income tax (deters people from spending, so destroys jobs), VAT (ditto), IHT (stops dead rich people from spending money). And so on.

3. Withdrawing £6bn from the economy? Not taking money out of people’s pockets, and allowing them to spend it as they see fit is “not taking mony out of the economy”.

Oh….but you’re a socialist, aren’t you? Spending other peoples money is what socialists do, until it runs out, isn’t it.