Our MP is a bit of a lad. During the 2015 general election he released a news item about his Labour opponent and accused him of telling lies. This is a bit like the kettle raising questions about the colour of the pot. When we look at his own website we can see he is often quite free with l'actualité himself.
Nigel told his constituents in February 2016 that "Britain has no control over the VAT rates it applies to goods. This power lies with the EU and even if we wanted to change it, we could not have done so". You can see this on his website HERE. He knows, or as an MP should do, that this was not true. The BBC did a fact check on the same claim made by Michael Gove, which is available HERE. So we can use his own pants on fire pic in this post.
The EU sets a minimum rate of 15% so the government could cut VAT tomorrow to this level. VAT has to have some harmonisation otherwise countries in the EU could undercut each other. The government here wouldn't allow Cheshire for instance, to reduce VAT otherwise neighbouring counties would have to respond and very soon there would be no taxes at all.
Apparently, EU rules say anything that was zero rated before 1990 can still be zero rated. Amazingly, we could have had 0% on domestic energy if the Conservatives had not put 8% on it in 1993. After that it was not possible to cut it below 5%, so for him to claim we can't reduce it now is particularly galling. It was his party that made it so.
When in 2014 Scotland wanted control over corporation tax rates, David Cameron said they couldn't have it (HERE) and Lord Kelvin warned that this would create a “race to the bottom”, whereby Westminster and Holyrood compete to attract business by driving the rate down but the net result being lower overall tax receipts. So, its fine for Scotland to have fully harmonised rates with us but not OK for us to have partly harmonised rates with the EU.
Finally, there are currently proposals in the EU to give states more flexibility on VAT rates and again, for someone so steeped in energy policy, he should know this. His website and Hansard are full of these sort of thing so I intend to return to it again - and again - and again.
Finally, there are currently proposals in the EU to give states more flexibility on VAT rates and again, for someone so steeped in energy policy, he should know this. His website and Hansard are full of these sort of thing so I intend to return to it again - and again - and again.
