LABOR MP Calls for an End to UK’s Death (”Inheritance”) Tax

Stephen Byers is the MP and former cabinet minister who must have some of his colleagues catching their breath:

Former cabinet minister Stephen Byers has called for inheritance tax to be scrapped and replaced.
He told the Sunday Telegraph removing the tax would allow Tony Blair’s successor to show New Labour’s middle class electors had not been forgotten.

He also described the tax as “a penalty on hard work, thrift and enterprise”.

The Treasury insisted that inheritance tax was “fair” and that an 18p increase on petrol duty would be necessary to plug the gap left by its abolition.

The Blairite MP and former transport secretary, who resigned in 2002 after a series of controversies involving his department, is a close ally of the Prime Minister.

He warned that soaring house prices threatened to bring millions more within the scope of inheritance tax, which was designed to target the very wealthy rather than ordinary families.

It’s not being received well, but the fact that it’s being brought up at all by a Labor official is remarkable.

Perhaps US death tax repeal opponent US Senator George Voinovich from Ohio might care to comment on how someone from the UK’s very liberal party gets it, yet he doesn’t.