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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Heather Stewart Economics editor

Badenoch’s inheritance tax gambit makes no economic sense

Kemi Badenoch at the Conservative party conference.
Kemi Badenoch’s proposal would wipe out half of the £15bn revenue inheritance tax is predicted to bring into the treasury by 2030-31. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Kemi Badenoch’s inheritance tax gambit is a Conservative classic. After all, it was George Osborne’s high-profile pledge to “take the family home out of inheritance tax” in 2007 that put Gordon Brown off calling a snap general election.

In practice, Osborne’s plan involved a £1m threshold for inheritance tax – and given the global financial crisis had blown a hole in the public finances by the time the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition came to power in 2010, it never came to pass.

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