This article is from the March issue of Total Politics
There’s an obsession with the balance of the tax burden. It’s an obsession that should beg the question: what is the role of tax in the modern society? Many on the left (and across the spectrum) believe tax should be used for social engineering, to ‘redistribute’ money from the wealthiest to the poorest.
I disagree.
Tax should be used to pay the government’s bills and that’s it. When devising taxation schemes, the people at the lower end of the income bracket in our country should be shielded from a burden that’s too high. But beyond that, everybody else should pay a similar proportion of their earnings in return for operating, living and making money in the system that we all own.
The ideal proportion of income to tax is something for experts and politicians to decide, but proportionality is fairer than so-called ‘progressive’ taxation as everybody knows that they will pay a fair share of their income into the kitty.
Besides, proportional tax (or you could call it flat tax) still puts a higher burden of taxation on the richest. If somebody is earning a lot more than an average wage-earner, their 25 per cent tax (for example) will be worth a lot more to the state than the 25 per cent of the person at the bottom end of the income bracket.
The British tax system is notoriously complex and loophole-ridden. It needs sweeping reform and it needs it soon. The political leaders should keep in mind that their job is to pay the country’s bills, not to punish the rich for success. So long as the poorest in society are getting the help they need to get on up, and all of our other bills are paid for, we should resist pick-pocketing people just because we can.
Luke Bozier blogs at lukebozier.co.uk
Comments
Babak Moussavi / February 27 2012 9:43am
Mr Bozier has set up a rather obvious 'straw man' argument here. Yes, of course the state shouldn't "pickpocket" people. But that is missing the point. The real argument for progressive tax policies is not the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, but the redistribution of opportunity. As long as social immobility and income inequality correlate (a contention supported by a wealth of research), a progressive tax system may be the only real method for ensuring everyone has a genuine chance at "success".
Ariel Adam / February 27 2012 10:55am
The wealthy can keep everything they earn, as long as there are no police or courts. I wonder how wealthy they would in the long run.
William Richard Hughes / March 24 2012 8:10pm
The best sort of tax in my opinion is one that recognises the citizens right to keep all that they work for, earn; especially as there is a readily available source of tax that citizens don't work for but recieve as a tax free windfall and that is a tax on the unimproved value of land.
The savings to government would be immense, mainly revolving around the fact that a land tax would be easier to collect than current taxes on income as land cannot be whisked off to an offshore tax haven.
Ryan Jones / April 08 2012 8:34pm
as long as we can collect wealth, be it through property aquisition, digits on a bank balance, or golden coins, society will always be stratified and only the removal of this extremely outdated notion of private ownership and wealth collection will result in an equal society for all of humanity. Removal of the tools of control is the only way to remove control.