Letter: Taxing factor

In HIS article, "George Osborne gambles on a move 'from rescue to recovery and reform'" (21 March), David Maddox asserts that merging our employee national insurance contributions with income tax "would mean adjusting the basic income tax rate to 32p, the higher rate to 52p and the top rate for those earning more than £150,000 of 62p".

This ignores the fact that above an income of 42,475 per year the employee national insurance rate drops from 12 per cent to 2 per cent in 2011-12, unless the plan is to abolish any notion of an upper earnings limit.

Of course abolishing the upper earnings limit would raise significant revenue for the Exchequer, so perhaps we should all be in favour of this in these straitened times.

Duncan Johnston-Watt

Dryden Place

Edinburgh