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Chancellor should resign over 10p tax Balls-up

It would be astonishing if the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, actually intended that low paid workers should end up paying more as the result of abolishing the 10p tax band. And his successor, Alistair Darling should have picked up the potential problem as soon as he took over. Which makes things all the worse.

It would have been the simplest matter to test out the effects of the change on a spreadsheet. The Chancellor presumably did not think of asking his Treasury advisers to do so, and, probably that those advisers failed to suggest that the figures be checked out - unless Darling routinely ignores them.

However this has come about, there is gross incompetence at the highest levels and the Chancellor, and possibly some of the Senior Treasury staff, should be sacked. The most important financial decisions affection the country cannot be left in the hands of people who are numerically illiterate.
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