Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted that the Conservative Government will not increase VAT for the next five years if the party wins the upcoming General Election on 8 June.<\/p>\n
However, the PM has refused to confirm whether other levies \u2013 such as Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs) \u2013 will remain unchanged should the Conservatives remain in power.<\/p>\n
Speaking in an interview with ITV\u2019s Peston on Sunday<\/em>, the Prime Minister implied that that her party are considering an election pledge not to increase the UK\u2019s total tax take.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cWe have no plans to raise the level of tax. In relation to specific taxes, we won’t be increasing VAT.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it’s important that we look at the overall burden of taxation… my desire, my instinct and what I absolutely want to be able to do is reduce taxes on working families.<\/p>\n However, the Prime Minister added: \u00a0\u201cI’m also very clear that we don’t want to make specific proposals on taxes unless I’m absolutely sure that I can deliver on those\u201d.<\/p>\n Following the interview, the Institute of Economic Affairs has raised concerns that Mrs May\u2019s \u201cwording suggests that taxes will probably go up if she is re-elected\u201d.<\/p>\n Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: \u201cThere is no reason why she could not commit to the total tax burden falling as a percentage of overall national income if the economy continues to grow.<\/p>\n \u201cClaiming to have no plans to raise taxes is standard politicians’ code for increasing tax due to supposedly unforeseen future circumstances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted that the Conservative Government will not increase VAT for the next five years if the party wins the upcoming General Election on 8 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}