What’s a word worth?
Posted at 10:32pm on Sunday, April 20th, 2008I have a thought that’s been bugging me over the last few days… Is the 10p rate of tax being abolished or doubled? Seems to me that the BBC et al are being rather generous with their semantics.
fourstar Says:
April 21st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Is it not to do with how it came into being? When it was introduced, the tax threshold remained the same but the first £x were taxed at a new rate (10p). So by ‘abolishing’ it the old rate (20p) returns over the whole amount, as it used to, without the threshold needing to change.
If they had moved the threshold down to accommodate the 10p rate, it would have been seen as a new tax ‘band’, and abolishing it would have meant removing that band, thus raising the threshold.
But, and I think this may be fairly obvious, I am not a tax inspector
Andy Says:
April 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Heh - that is very generous of you. I can’t help but feel that ‘abolishing’ a tax would remove it. I’m sure they ‘halved’ the 20p rate, so shouldn’t they be ‘doubling’ the 10p one?
TBH I was just getting annoyed by what seems to me to be some semantic jiggery pokery. I would hate to get led into an actual debate on tax