Taxes, thousands of ‘em! In her bid to alienate the bulk of the British electorate, it seems that Rachel Reeves can add another to her enemies’ list: film legend Sir Michael Caine. The Zulu star – a true working-class talent made good – used an interview this weekend to send a warning about the Budget changes unveiled on Wednesday.
Caine, 91, famously left Britain in the late 1970s because of punitively high taxes under Jim Callaghan’s Labour government that peaked at 92 per cent. And he now warns about the same thing potentially happening again. Caine raised the spectre of multi-billion-pound tax rises being seen as a ‘punishment for success’, telling the Sunday Times:
Rich people can move their money about, and they do, especially nowadays. But if you’re just an ordinary person trying to work hard to help your family have a better life, higher taxes are going to clobber you. That’s when people say, “why should I bother to work harder if so much of what I earn is going to go straight to the taxman?
He said that in the 1970s Labour’s ‘super tax was really meant to be a punishment for success’, adding:
Nobody minds paying their fair share, but it can get to the point where you’re raising less money as a country because the tax rates are so high.
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