Showing posts with label income tax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label income tax. Show all posts

Thursday, 30 August 2012

The Taxman's Lament

“It's the same the whole world over, It's the poor what gets the blame…”

Yes you, you stupid poor people. You’ve screwed everything up what with your ‘needs’ and your ‘human rights’ and your ‘fairness’ and your simple base human nature.

Council houses weren’t good enough for you, so we sold them to you for a knock-down price. But then you wanted to parade around in your chavvy BMWs, so we let you over-mortgage to the point where you managed to break the housing market. You wanted cheap package holidays so we invaded Benidorm, which you then contrived to turn into a sort of sunny open prison.

You wanted your expanding multitude of idle thick kids to do well, so we dumbed down the curriculum, inflated the grades and pretended they were all university material, yet those who do find work ended up in ‘retail’ (shops assistant) or ‘catering’ (McDonald’s). You didn’t want to do the dirty jobs so we opened up the borders and let the rest of the world in to do it instead. You wanted ‘cheap’ and your yearnings fuelled globalisation.

See what democracy did? You demanded choice – now look what you’ve gone and done with it, you stupid, stupid, poor people, you. It’s all your fault.

It’s the silly season, what with the footie coming back and the end of the summer holidays, the autumn storms approaching and the MPs returning to Westminster on Monday. Now is the time for that peculiar form of political prestidigitation, which exchanges lovely new money for old and conjures new imperial clothes from fresh air.

“It's the rich what gets the pleasure…”

There are no more poor people to tax – they’re all on benefits now - and no more palatable general taxes to raise, so the only thing left is to tax pleasure. With that in mind I commend my autumn budget to the house:

Let’s tax fun – it’s all we’ve got left and it will have the delicious trickle-down effect of spreading the warm glow of schadenfreude throughout the land. So, from now on you’ll be taxed on every smile, laugh, grin, chuckle, fumble, tickle, giggle, guffaw and gurn you engage in, be it at home, on the bus or at the dentist – a laughing gas tax, if you will.

You don't deserve me, you really don't - here I am bailing you out yet again! What’s that, Mr Clegg, how will I levy said tax? I’m the ideas man here mate, I imagine whatever mechanism you dreamed up for your wealth tax would probably work fine, you twonk.

Oh fuck it... let’s all of us just give up, hand over every penny and work for the state - it's where we're headed anyway.
                                              

“Ain't it all a fucking shame?"

Sunday, 19 August 2012

Budget Regard - Going Cheep

How about this for a radical idea: Instead of government deciding what it wants to do, producing a ridiculously under-estimated budget, going ahead without proper consultation, going ten times over that budget and then increasing our taxes accordingly to pay for it all, how about WE decide how much tax we're going to pay and the government has no choice but to spend within its means. How about that, eh?

In my dreams, I know...

When William Pitt introduced income tax to pay for the Napoleonic wars it was levied at tuppence in the pound (Old pounds. So it started at 1/120 - for the modern scholar, that's less than 1%) ) rising to 10% for those with an income over £200 a year (about £17k at today's rates, but with none of today's modern fripperies to pay for). It was abolished in 1802, only to resurface once more between 1803 and 1816.

Sir Robert Peel brought it back for good in 1842, since when it has been up and down like the proverbial yo-yo and a constant source of tension between government and the governed. As government ambition has soared and spending risen through the ceiling, successive administrations have found ever more inventive ways of taxing you to the hilt. If you die without leaving any realisable assets - that's most of us - you have, effectively been taxed at 100% of your life's income.


So here's my plan. Reduce income tax to a 20% flat rate and cut the fuck out of public spending (for real this time, not pretending to, like they are at the moment). Then, if they want any more, ministers have to personally come to the door of each and every tax payer and explain nicely what they want it for.

Then, they have to stand still for a full minute while you laugh in their face.

Comments are always very welcome.