Millennials are changing the political landscape with their tax-centric thinking
The millennial generation is a growing electoral force and their thinking on tax is changing the political landscape.
They believe in the moral imperative to pay for public goods and services, and are more hostile to government redistributing income than previous generations.
Millennials also tend to pay higher marginal tax rates than previous generations, with the current system of student loans and repayments effectively functioning as a tax.
This has led to many millennial graduates facing marginal tax rates of 41% or 51% on top of other financial struggles.
The political class has not addressed this effectively, and the Labour party's promise to scrap tuition fees has not addressed the issue for current students.
Scrapping tuition fees for the next intake would not help millennial graduates who are already struggling with their debt and high tax rates.
The article discusses the changing trend in voting patterns among millennials, who are demanding new ideas from political parties due to their unique economic circumstances.
Bim Afolami, a Conservative MP, suggests cutting national insurance for the under-40s and hiking it for older workers, while Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has committed to ending tax breaks for non-doms and taxing VAT on school fees.
Wealth taxes are also suggested as a way of shifting the burden away from millennials and onto older people, who have accumulated more assets due to their age.
The article concludes by mentioning that millennials are now the biggest age cohort in half of British constituencies and that ideas like a mansion tax on houses worth more than £2m may become more popular and less politically toxic.
The basic progressive case for paying taxes remains unchanged, but the way in which taxes are levied must change with the times.