Barra Roantree

We don't tax property enough, we tax income too high.

But that's not, again, what we're hearing from anyone proposing this.

Even Barry, I know he's not the Minister for Finance, but he's supporting the measure, but without identifying, well, what exactly is the billion, one and a half billion that he'd not spend things on, that he would raise taxes from instead.

And I think that they're the serious conversations we need to have and that we never really do.

And again, I know politicians can go, well, that's fine for you and your ivory tower as an academic.

That's true.

But also, it would be great to hear more politicians confront the actual trade-off.

I think it's important.

There's a case for reformed taxation of savings investment.

How we design the scheme is important.

And the way it is currently following the Swedish model would essentially give the biggest tax cut to very high, very large savers who are getting high returns.

I think there's a better way of doing it.

But again, the real, I think, issue here is if you're coming up to the budget and you've got the savings account, you're going to do the high rate of tax.

there's actually nothing there for the vast majority of people who are in that, you know, in that space of very low to middle earnings, right?

No, but in that space, right?

There is a whole bunch of people who are talking about essentially the bottom half of the income distribution, because again, there's a load of people, let's not forget, who don't work, who are also experiencing the cost of living crisis.

So again, it could be something government does, but if it does, I can...

tell you very surely what it would do would be something that would increase inequality.

It would be giveaways to the top and not to the bottom, right?

And that's fine for the government.