Unfunded Tory Tax proposals are utterly feeble say Liberal Democrats

4.05.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 2nd Oct 2007

Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne has announced proposals for a series of tax cuts. In his speech to the Conservative Party conference he said a Tory government would:

· increase the threshold for inheritance tax from £300,000 to £1m

· scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth up to £250,000

· pay for these via a £25k levy on business people who register abroad for tax purposes (non-domiciles)

· introduce tax benefits for married couples with children

Any expectation that the Conservatives had a radical and meaningful plan for fairer taxes has been blown out of the water with this utterly feeble set of half promises and unfunded commitments.

INHERITANCE TAX: We support the principle of raising the threshold but where we have put forward practical proposals for reducing avoidance from very big estates, the Tories have apparently made a large open-ended commitment without explaining how it will be paid for.

NON-DOMS: They have borrowed from the Liberal Democrats the idea of taking action on non-domicile residents in the UK but their proposal is completely inadequate and seems to be entirely voluntary.

STAMP DUTY: We agree that the burden of stamp duty should be cut, but George Osborne is missing the point. The real problem occurs for properties worth £250,000 or more that carry a 3% tax on the whole value of the house purchase. George Osborne did not suggest anything to deal with that and is unable to explain how his proposal will be financed. The Liberal Democrats propose to make stamp duty genuinely progressive; cutting stamp duty on lower value property by increasing it on very valuable property.

GREEN TAXES: After all the huffing and puffing about green taxes, the Tories have backed away from any meaningful commitment to shifting the burden of taxation from work onto polluting activities.

FAMILIES: The so-called family fund will not offer a genuine tax cut but a means-tested benefit which will be denied to families whose parents are unmarried or to the families of widows.