If Rishi Sunak is elected prime minister, he has promised to reduce the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 16% by the end of next legislative session.
According to him, this would result in a 20% tax decrease, which would be the “biggest cut to income tax in 30 years.”
However, backers of his Tory competitor Liz Truss claim that the former chancellor has changed his mind and that people cannot wait for tax cuts.
Voting papers will eventually begin to be distributed to Conservative Party members.
On September 5, the winner of the leading competitors will be revealed, with Mr. Sunak and Ms. Truss vying for the position of No. 10.
The programme, according to Mr. Sunak, builds on his previously stated 1p income tax decrease in April 2024 but is still a part of his “radical” tax agenda.
By the end of the following parliament, which might happen as late as December 2029, he promised to cut another 3p.
As Ms. Truss has promised to eliminate the National Insurance increase that took effect in April, cancel a scheduled increase in corporate tax, and temporarily postpone green levies on energy bills, her supporters have proclaimed that she will “reduce taxes in seven weeks, not seven years.”
The candidates’ histories in government have also come under scrutiny in addition to taxation.
In response to accusations that he was a “backstabber,” in relation to leaving Boris Johnson’s cabinet, Mr. Sunak told the Today programme that there was a chance that his fellow MPs would look back on the previous few months through “rose-tinted glasses.”
More than 60 MPs had resigned, he added, and the administration had “caught itself on the losing end of a very major moral issue.”
I was one of them, he added, noting a divergence of views on the economy, “after much consideration and months of sticking by the PM.”
