Conservative plans to increase VAT to 20%, which have not been ruled out by their HQ, would be "intently regressive." It would mean that the poorest fifth of the population would spend a total of 13.8% of their disposable income on VAT, up 1.7 percentage points. This is more than double what the richest fifth would pay.
Despite reports on the BBC that the Tories have “absolutely no plans” to introduce a 20% rate of VAT, City AM this morning quotes a Conservative Party spokesman saying they “could not rule out the move.”
Analysis by Left Foot Forward – based on figures from the Office of National Statistics (Table 3) – outline the distributional impact of a VAT rise of 17.5% to 20% on disposable income. The policy would mean that the poorest fifth of the population would spend a total of 13.8% of their disposable income on VAT, up 1.7 percentage points. This is more than twice as much as the richest fifth would spend of their disposable income. Some of this would be mitigated by rises in benefit and tax credit levels but the outcome would remain regressive.
Writing on his blog earlier today, Richard Murphy – founder of the Tax Justice Network – said:
“VAT is intently regressive – meaning that the burden of the tax falls much more heavily on low earnings households than it does on those with higher income.”
6 Responses to “VAT increase to 20% would be “intently regressive””
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John77
Your data is (i) misleading because the bottom fifth at any one moment are spending more than their current income – they include a lot of retired people living off their savings and those temporarily unemployed so “disposable income” is not the same as money available to be spent (ii) just plain wrong because ONS admit that their data excludes one-third of the sum handed out by HMRC in tax credits. VAT is 7.9%, 7.9%, 7.8%, 7.7%, 7.1% of expenditure. The truly regressive tax is tobacco duty
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