Key to Labour’s emerging strategy is promulgating the myth that raising the inheritance tax threshold is designed to protect the Tories’ rich friends from the great unwashed. Despite its sojourn in the wilderness, the politics of envy remains crude at best. Raising IHT thresholds favours hardworking, modest Middle England.
The super rich can protect their fortunes without the help of threshold raises, which are negligible by their standards in any event. James Macintyre proves as much in his latest New Statesman column. When detailing Tory donor Lord Harris’s IHT avoidance, Macintyre writes:
‘The Tory peer, whose wealth is estimated at roughly £285m, donated £90,000 to Cameron’s campaign. In 1997, he sold £23m of shares – shares that would have been liable for inheritance tax – and used the proceeds to buy artworks, which are exempt from inheritance tax.’
This casual reference to ‘artworks’ makes Lord Harris sound like a compulsive bric-a-brac enthusiast.
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