The Tories are proposing that the exemption threshold for Inheritance Tax (IHT) should be raised to £1m. They’re doing this despite getting the following advice from Treasury civil servants:

This comes from a leaked Treasury memo courtesy of Richard Murphy’s invaluable blog.

This new exemption wheeze will not, of course, affect 99.9% of voters [see correction]. But it might keep wavering Tories in line, especially in the South East.

And here’s Ben Goldacre on why Inheritance Tax is a good idea.

Correction Government statistics reveal that 97% of all estates in 2011-12 were below the current IHT ceiling. On those figures, the new Tory concession benefits only about 3% of the population. Guess who most of them vote for?

For me, the first really interesting moment in the election came last week when Ed Miliband announced that if Labour got into power he would abolish the ludicrous loophole which allows 110,000 fabulously wealthy people to live in Britain full time while pretending to be domiciled elsewhere, thereby paying tax only on whatever income they funnel to themselves in the UK.

Even more interesting — and depressing — was the resulting ‘controversy’ about the pledge, which seemed to revolve entirely around whether Miliband’s policy would result in more or less tax being gathered by the Inland Revenue. This is another illustration of the extent to which neoliberalist iron has entered the souls of the political elite. At base, the non-dom issue isn’t about the pragmatics of taxation; it’s about whether something is morally right or wrong — whether there should be one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. Even if there were a net loss to the Exchequer, the loophole should be closed for the simple reason that it is iniquitous.

And then, in a real you-couldn’t-make-it-up development, we find that (a) the Governor of the Bank of England and (b) Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, have non-dom status. Even more bizarrely, Rothermere inherited the status from his father.

“Pretending we are all separate but equal conceals the the effects of real power and capacity, real wealth and influence. You describe everyone as having the same chances when actually some people have more chances than others. And with this cheating language of equality, deep inequality is allowed to happen much more easily”.

The late and much-lamented Tony Judt, quoted by Nick Cohen in a fine column about how euphemisms in British politics “mask a savage attack on the menatally ill”.