Do the Tories’ Inheritance Tax Plans Add Up? | IEA Podcast

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics, is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA.

This week, Kemi Badenoch’s speech to Conservative Party conference is up for discussion, from her pledge to exempt the family home from inheritance tax and raise the tax-free allowance on other assets to £1 million, to her plan to scrap the £100,000 cap on free childcare.

Would a total exemption on the family home encourage wealthy people to pour their savings into ever bigger houses, and what can Spain’s wealth tax tell us about how people respond? With the country borrowing around £150 billion a year, is this really the most growth-friendly tax cut on offer, and why not relax childcare ratios instead?

The discussion then turns to the latest riots in France, asking why calls for more public spending persist in a country where the state accounts for over half of GDP, and whether some riots are less about politics than spectacle. The discussion closes with Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act, from the former Future Generations Commissioner’s role in cancelling road projects to why vague but legally binding goals make it so hard to build anything in Britain.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.