Open the financial pages of any newspaper, and you are bombarded with acronyms: ISAs, SIPPs, CDOs, ETFs, Derivatives.
It feels like a deliberate fog. A language designed to keep you out, while the “experts” in the City gamble with the economy.
At COMMONS, we believe that complexity is where fraud hides. We believe that a strong economy should be simple, transparent, and boring.
Article 12 is our “Simplification Act.” It clears away the clutter of the old tax system and shines a light into the darkest corners of the financial world.
The Bonfire of the Acronyms
In the old world, the government created dozens of complicated schemes to encourage saving (like ISAs and Private Pensions) because Income Tax was so high.
But remember Article 1: We have abolished Income Tax.
This means we don’t need the complicated “wrappers” anymore.
- No more ISAs.
- No more SIPPs.
- No more Capital Gains Tax rules.
Under Article 12, saving becomes beautifully simple. You earn money. You keep it. You invest it. Any return you make is yours. You don’t need a financial advisor just to navigate the tax code. The entire tax-avoidance industry disappears overnight.
Banning “Shadow Banking”
The 2008 crash happened because banks moved risky bets “off the books” into the unregulated shadows. They created complex derivatives that nobody understood.
Article 12 introduces the Transparency Standard.
- The Ban: We are banning “Shadow Banking.” If an institution acts like a bank (lending money), it must be regulated like a bank.
- The Rule: All financial derivatives must be traded on public, transparent exchanges. No more secret deals in back rooms.
This ensures that we can see risk building up before it becomes a crisis. It protects your job and your home from the gambling of speculators.
The “Casino Tax”
While we want to encourage investment in real businesses, we want to discourage high-speed, pointless speculation.
We are introducing a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT).
- It is a tiny levy (just 0.1%) on financial trades.
- For a long-term investor (like a pension fund), it is negligible.
- For a “High Frequency Trader” (algorithms buying and selling stocks 1,000 times a second), it shuts down their business model.
This pushes the market back towards sanity. It encourages long-term investment in British industry, rather than millisecond gambling on price fluctuations.
A System You Can Understand
Article 12 is the final piece of the economic puzzle.
It creates a financial system that serves the real economy, not the other way around.
- Simple Savings.
- Transparent Markets.
- Real Investment.
We are building a country where you don’t need a degree in economics to know your money is safe.
This concludes our deep dive into the 12 Articles of the COMMONS Manifesto.
We have laid out a roadmap for a new Britain. A Britain of 0% Income Tax, Shared Wealth, and True Democracy.
The only question left is: Are you ready to make it happen?
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