... asks City AM.
Now, this whole "economy" thing depends on people exchanging labour, goods and services, no man is an island and all that, that is how wealth is created in the first place. So any tax or group of taxes which discourage such transactions are bad taxes.
So top of any sane person's list must be all such taxes - VAT, National Insurance, income tax and corporation tax, in that order.
VAT is the most distortionary and costs the most jobs and chokes off the most potential businesses; Employer's NIC is worse than Employee's NIC but both are worse than income tax (being applied to a narrower base); higher rate/additional rate income tax is worse than basic rate income tax; and corporation tax isn't exactly a good tax but it is not that bad, it's like having an unwelcome preference shareholder who gets a fifth of your profits in cash.
Between them, these four major taxes raise about £400 billion and give us a typical marginal rate on earnings/profits of nearly fifty percent.
So do the respondents mention these really bad taxes..?
Do they fuck!
City AM wishes to burnish its Home-Owner-Ist credentials and the two respondents single out Inheritance Tax and Stamp Duty Land Tax, which between them raise £10 billion or so; IHT on its own raises less than the TV license fee, FFS.
Don't get me wrong, IHT and SDLT are not in any way "good" taxes and I'd get rid of them anyway, but they are minor irritants in the grander scheme of things.