Taxing the gambling industry just won’t work

Ahead of the Budget on 30 October, Rachel Reeves is being bombarded by lobbyists urging her to loot their enemies. The New Economics Foundation wants a ‘jet-setter tax’ on frequent fliers of €100 per flight. Action on Smoking and Health wants a levy on tobacco companies. Greenpeace reckons it can raise at least £26 billion a year by levying a wealth tax on the ‘super-rich’. An assortment of think tanks and pressure groups linked to the Labour donor Derek Webb think they can squeeze another £3 billion out of the gambling industry by doubling gaming and betting duties. Meanwhile in Scotland, the neo-temperance lobby are demanding a ‘levy’ on alcohol retailers who, they claim, are getting rich off the back of minimum pricing (a policy that only exists because they lobbied for it). 

The appeal of these taxes lies in the old adage ‘Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree’. They will, supposedly, only affect faceless corporations and ‘those with the broadest shoulders’, and who cares about them? Alas, it is more complicated than that and the Labour party is starting to realise that if there were billions of pounds lying on the pavement, the last government would have picked them up.