TPA – Another Glorious Failure

Today brings bad news for the dubiously talented array of non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), and that news comes from a source that they might expect to be of sympathetic mind towards them, the Maily Telegraph. Because the paper has told that the Coalition will not be moving to abolish the 50p tax rate, at least this side of the scheduled General Election in 2015.

Is it too comfortable in Tufton Street?

The reason for this is straightforward: despite all the parading of Laffer Curve arguments from the TPA and its soulmates in the libertarian and right leaning part of the political spectrum, it appears that the 50p rate is set to bring in “hundreds of millions of Pounds” per year, the article even describing the rise in revenues as a “surge”. And, right now, Government needs that revenue more than ever.

This cannot be what non-job holder Rory Meakin had in mind last September when he claimed the support of “20 Top Economists” in his efforts to abolish the 50p rate. Or the very next week when he cited Rupe’s upmarket troops at the Sunday Times. Only two days later, Meakin’s pal J-P Floru made the magnificently fraudulent claim that the 50p rate “harms the poorest in society most”. Yeah, right.

Meakin was back in early October, now citing his other pals at the Institute Of Directors (IoD), who also urged scrapping the highest income tax rate. He has at least been consistent in calling the 50p rate “unfair”, although by sheer coincidence, those who bankroll the TPA are the very same folks who trouser sufficient dosh to have to pay it – the 1% of top earners.

But if the Telegraph story is correct – and it sounds right, especially the part about the upcoming HMRC report, which is definitely on its way – then all the TPA’s advocacy has come to nothing. That means the same level of success as their campaign against HS2, if the indications that Justine Greening is to approve the project, as I noted the other day.

So all that money thrown at comfortable offices, all that supposed “talent”, and the entire machinery of PR and lobbying, has on these two major issues brought the TPA’s overmonied, greedy and cowardly backers no reward. Nothing. Zero. Not a sausage. All that this Astroturf lobby group needs to put the lid on it is for its campaign against Trade Union facility time to be rumbled.

And that is coming along nicely, as this blog has demonstrated recently. Plus, as I’ve also shown, the TPA is now getting rumbled across the board. So if folks don’t listen, what is the point of it? Time, perhaps, for them all to get proper jobs.