Ed Balls. Photograph by Underclass Rising
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has pledged to reintroduce the 50p tax for top earners if Labour get back into power at the next election.
The tax will charge 50% tax on all earnings over £150,000, and will be a return to an old Labour policy that was dismantled by the coalition in 2012 and reduced to 45% after George Osborne claimed it only raised £1 billion.
Ed Balls told the Fabian Society conference that the tax would raise £10 billion over the course of one parliament, claiming that the government underestimated the value of the tax. He went on to say that cutting taxes for the rich during a period of austerity and hardship was “unfair”, saying:
“When the deficit is still high, when tough times are now set to last well into the next parliament, when for ordinary families their real incomes are falling and taxes have risen, it cannot be right for David Cameron and George Osborne to have chosen to give the richest people in the country a huge tax cut.
For the next parliament, we will restore the 50p top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000.”
Balls went on to promise that Labour would erase the deficit by 2020 and would be running a surplus at the end of a new Labour government.
