I was an international tax specialist. Yeah, I was an international man of mystery and tax specialist.
In the middle of a recession, where we're just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.
Taxes do have a clear record of curbing the consumption of, and thus the public-health impact of, tobacco and alcohol.
While deficits are often inflationary and always pernicious, curing them by raising taxes is equivalent to curing an illness by shooting the patient.
The U.K. is already disadvantaged on the wholesale cost of energy, and then it puts taxes on it. Anybody who's an energy user is just going to disappear.