Hold your horses, I quite like this idea from Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan

Welcome to today’s tax irony corner: that tycoon tax pushed by Nick Clegg is a British equivalent of the US Alternative Minimum Tax which in turn was a successor to that country’s Minimum Tax.

As my headline rather gives away… it was two of the more right-wing Republican Presidents who oversaw the introduction of the American equivalent to Nick Clegg’s Tycoon Tax.

Somehow I can’t see Nick Clegg boasting at the Liberal Democrat conference next month, “Conference, after decades out of power we’re now in power and implementing Nixonian policies!”.

However, perhaps the fact that even Ronald Reagan* supported the idea of a minimum tax level for the richest may help reassure George Osborne…

* Actually, some of his early 1980s tax reforms were impressive regardless of your political view: getting hugely complicated tax rules simplified in the face of a range of vested interests all wanting their own special tax breaks is something politicians across the political spectrum often talk about and achieve far less than Reagan did. His record at balancing the budget is another matter…