8. Existing and historical approaches to redistribution

• Perameter interventions - eg, one off payments to help pensioners deal with high fuel bills
• “Britain’s leading tax experts - the Institute for Fiscal Studies – said that despite the billions of pounds spent on tax credits, Labour had yet to meet its 2005 benchmarks for reducing child poverty by a quarter.” Guardian 11.06.०८
• different approaches to income from ownership: Denis Healey put a 98% tax on unearned income in १९७८ (History of Modern Britain)
• cost plus' - form of regulation where companies are allowed to make back cost put a specified percentage and no more. Cap on profit essentially, sometimes used with utility companies

http://moneyterms.co.uk/cost-plus/

The problem with cost-plus pricing is that it pays no attention to market prices. This means that it inevitably leads to either margins that are lower than they need be, or less sales. In the extreme case, applying cost-plus pricing to a commodity (not that anyone would — not for long anyway!), could lead to no sales at all if the cost-plus price was above the market price.

A pricing method similar to cost-plus is sometimes imposed by regulators on monopolies such as some utilities (Ofwat's methods of setting prices, for example). This is usually somewhat different as the the price setting process is modified to give sellers motivation to be efficient: for example, by basing it on what the regulator calculates costs should be, rather than on actual costs.

Banks et al 200:27

• "prior o the mid 1980s in Britain there was a tax bias away from direct holidings of equity towards wealth held in housing or occupational pensions, since equity was more heavily taxed than consumption, and housing and pensions benefitted from tax advantages relative to consumption... The introduction of personal equity plans and employee share ownership schemes meant that, from 1987 at least, equity could be held in a more favourably taxed manner by British households."
• Dividend income is taxed in both the US and UK.
• Stamp duty - 0.5% levvied on all share transactions in the UK