Daily Mail Highlights Veritas Tax Plans

The Daily Mail, linked here, has just issued a detailed description of the radical Veritas tax proposals to be launched this morning with the Party's other policies in its Manifesto which may be read in full from this link.

The Veritas flat rate tax proposal at twenty two per cent also received headline coverage on the BBC Radio Four eight o'clock news bulletin

The Mail report states:

Robert Kilroy-Silk will promise to take 10 million people out of income tax altogether by introducing a new flat-rate scheme if his Veritas Party wins power.

The Veritas manifesto for the May 5 General Election, launched in Westminster, proposes a 22% flat rate for income tax, with payments starting only when earnings reach a threshold of £12,000 a year.

The party believes the scheme - used in Hong Kong and the Channel Islands for many years and recently adopted in Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia - could boost the take-home pay of low-paid workers by as much as 12%.

Veritas deputy leader Damian Hockney said that if the scheme were successful, the personal allowance for earnings on which no income tax is payable - now £4,895 for most people - could be increased to £15,000 within two years and eventually as high as £25,000.

"A flat-rate is a much better way of imposing income tax," he said. "It is fairer - we will take 10 million of the poorest people out of the tax bracket completely.

"It reduces compliance costs and evasion and in all the other countries where it has been introduced, it has worked very well."

At present, income tax is charged at 10% for the first £2,090 over the allowance threshold, 22% for the next £30,310 and 40% for anything above that level.

Mr Kilroy-Silk founded Veritas after quitting the UK Independence Party earlier this year, following a row over his ambition to lead the eurosceptic party, for which he was elected an MEP in June last year.

The party is putting up at least 79 candidates in the election, including the former TV chat-show host in Erewash, in Derbyshire, where Labour are defending a 6,932 lead.

The manifesto - already published on the Internet - also calls for withdrawal from the EU, strict immigration controls limiting access to the UK to those with in-demand skills as well as "our fair share" of refugees, more police, life sentences for paedophiles and a Royal Commission to review the drugs laws.