George Trefgarne in the Daily Telegraph seems ot believe the flat tax is coming to Britain. In a piece titled Whatever Brown says, the flat tax is coming - confident chap, isn’t he? - he suggests that, with the tax being taken up by ever increasing numbers of countries - 11 so far - and getting steadily closer to the UK - Greece appears to be the next one considering it - it might be more difficult to resist the flat-tax than to advocate it.
The one country that, he speculates, might adopt it - and which gives him a spring in his step, evidently - is Germany:
The flat tax - where all exemptions and allowances are abolished and everyone pays the same rate - is marching across Europe, just as other ideas have conquered the Continent once every generation or so.
Judging by the polls, [covering Germany’s upcoming elections] Angela Merkel is likely to win on September 18: her rating soared after she appointed a slightly eccentric professor called Paul Kirchhof as her economic adviser.
In fact, Merkel is so far ahead that the stock market has leapt, too. Germany, investors believe, is at last on the threshold of economic recovery.
“With her surprise move to name Germany’s flat-tax guru, Professor Kirchhof, as her preferred choice for finance minister, Merkel has regained the political initiative and stirred up a healthy debate about tax reform,” writes Lorenzo Codogna, Bank of America’s European economist, in a note to clients.
“If Germany turned itself into the first major Western country to adopt a flat tax, it would probably become a much more attractive place for business investment in general.”
Professor Kirchhof believes he can slim down or scrap more than 90,000 German tax rules and 418 tax exemptions.
And what about for Britian? According to Mr Trefgarne things don’t look quite so rosy for flat-tax advocates. He says Mr Brown does not like the flat tax because it would see the end of his beloved tax credits. I would add that, if the claimed advantages of the tax were fulfilled we would need thousands - possibly tens of thousands - fewer government employees to administer it.
And that would never do.
