CPAG calls for tax changes in comprehensive spending review

The comprehensive spending review must end the disproportionate impact of the tax system on poor people if the government is to meet its child poverty targets, say poverty campaigners.

The Child Poverty Action Group today published its demands for the review, which will report this summer and set government spending limits from 2008 to 2011.

It is thus vital to the government’s target to halve child poverty by 2010.

CPAG said the tax burden fell too heavily on the poor due to taxes that were unrelated to ability to pay, such as VAT, or those such as council tax which took a larger share of poorer families’ incomes than other groups’.

It also called for support to be directed at those children most at risk of poverty: children in large families, disabled children, those with disabled parents, black and ethnic minority children, asylum seekers and travellers.