Politicians are full of good ideas. Sadly, they are also full of a lot else as well. In the case of the Conservatives, principally hot air. Three weeks ago the Tories announced a series of interesting proposals on tax – one of the more headline-grabbing measures was the suggested abolition of inheritance tax (IHT). The idea was welcome news to the millions of homeowners who have seen the value of their properties rocket towards or above the £300,000 IHT threshold in recent years.

Many people feel aggrieved, quite legitimately, that properties that were IHT-free a generation ago are no longer. Defenders of IHT cling to the notion that death duties are in some way worthy because they allow the talented but poor to rise to the top while undermining the feckless offspring of the outrageously rich. If only this were true. The reality is that the wealthiest employ all sorts of clever ruses to avoid the tax while the burden falls largely on the thrifty or those who die at the wrong time.

Yet any hopes that death duties would have a short lifespan under a Conservative government were cruelly dashed this week when the George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, committed the Tories to matching Labour’s spending plans for the first three years after the next election.

The Conservatives’ proposals to replace IHT with a reshaped capital gains tax are predicted to cost about £2.6 billion a year. If they are not going to fund this through lower spending, they will have to find the money elsewhere. As the Tories have promised only to increase so-called green taxes, this means that motorists or air travellers would most likely have to foot the bill. But with petrol duties already higher here than almost everywhere else in the world, and with more than 200 million people flying from the UK last year (compared with only 260,000 estates that paid IHT), it is unlikely that the Tories will be able to summon the political will to make their plans a reality.

Thankfully, however, you do not have to wait in vain for politicians to act. As we report on pages 6-7, there are already a number of legitimate strategies you can adopt to minimise your estate’s exposure to IHT.

Brown must rethink his discredited benefit scheme

It would be wrong to single out the Conservatives’ vacuous tax policies for criticism in the week that Gordon Brown’s tax credits system descended from shambles to farce. (Or was it farce to disgrace?)

On Monday a whistleblower at Revenue & Customs explained how the Treasury is facing the prospect of having to return about £500 million in tax credits that it had unfairly clawed back from low-income families after it had overpaid them in the first place. Confused? Those running Mr Brown’s pet project certainly seem to have been.

It is difficult to imagine how the implementation of tax credits could have gone any worse. Billions of pounds have been wasted, with tens of thousands of families having had their finances thrown into turmoil and uncertainty while tens of thousands of others who are eligible for help are still not receiving assistance. On top of that, another whole layer of meddling and expensive bureaucracy has been created.

While the tax credit scheme is admirable in theory – it rewards families for work, thereby reducing benefit dependency without offering tax breaks to the most wealthy – it has failed in practice. The system is too complicated to be run effectively; a failing that is symptomatic of Mr Brown’s entire tax agenda.

Only this week it emerged that Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook, an authoritative annual tax guide published by LexisNexis, the information services group, now has 40 per cent more pages than in 2001. And that is after the publisher has changed the layout and increased the number of words on each page in an attempt to shrink the size of the mammoth tome.

It is time that the Prime Minister swallowed his pride and embarked on a radical simplification, or even abolition, of the largely discredited tax credits system. The less well off and the wider economy would be served better by simply raising personal allowances or reducing the basic rate of income tax.

Societies parade high scorers in the battle for your cash

In football, local derbies can often be turgid affairs. Last weekend’s no-score bore draw between my team, Stoke City, and Wolverhampton Wanderers was a case in point. But in the savings league, local battles can be much more interesting, as this week’s scrap between the West Bromwich and Derbyshire building societies proved.

Savers were treated to a mouthwatering contest that started with West Brom offering an impressive one-year, fixed-rate savings bond paying 6.75 per cent. This was quickly followed by an even better one-year deal from Derby, at 6.85 per cent. Not to be outdone, West Brom struck back by raising its rate to 6.86 per cent.

This battle for your cash is a direct result of the turmoil in the global credit markets. The wholesale cost of money has risen sharply, forcing lenders to raise capital through the old-fashioned approach of issuing competitive savings bonds. For a list of the best rates, read our savings watch on page 14. In the meantime, enjoy the contest while it lasts.