Increased taxes on wealthy individuals and businesses in order to balance the country’s books have the overwhelming support of the British public, a new poll reveals.
If true, that is deeply depressing. No one, no matter how much they earn, should be having 50% of any part of that income stolen by the state. The whole idea is deeply repugnant. It is nothing to do with fairness as it is immoral in principle. It is the base politics of envy and spite. We’ve always known that socialism is built on envy and spite, but this:
According to a survey by ComRes for The Independent, restoring the income tax rate for those earning more than £150,000 a year from 45p to 50p has the support of 77 per cent of the public, including 76 per cent of Conservative respondents.
When even the Conservatives have been infected by this disease, we are lost. Truly lost.
Increased rates of corporation tax on the profits of firms from the current rate of 20 per cent to 25 per cent are also supported by 60 per cent of those surveyed. Just 26 per cent disagreed while 16 per cent registered “don’t know”.
All of which tells us that these people are idiots, for they are saying that they are happy to be robbed blind by the greedy, avaricious state. Clearly they don’t understand who, actually, pays the corporation tax. Hint, it ain’t corporations.
As is usual if you ask people, they are happy to have other people robbed by the HMRC. It never seems to occur to them that it is they who will eventually foot the bill.
Got it in one.
Why not have tax at 100%? Then we can have the state provide us with what the state thinks that we should have. I’m sure that would work. What could go wrong?
Why not? Then the bureaucrats could do your shopping for you, making sure you didn’t buy too many things you actually liked. Unless of course you were in politics or a ‘celebrity’. Indeed, what could possibly go wrong?
Sadly true.
This is why progressive taxation is immoral and anti-democratic. Of course a majority wants a minority to pay more tax, safe in the knowledge that it will never apply to them.
As for corporation tax. These morons don’t seem to realise that we are in competition with other nations to attract businesses. Furthermore, as numerous people such as Tim Worstall have tried to point out many times before, companies don’t pay corporation tax, it falls on shareholders (often pension funds) in lower dividends, workers in lower wages and customers in higher prices.
Yeah, but, no, but, “fair share”…
“These morons don’t seem to realise that we are in competition with other nations to attract businesses.”
Is what I was about to say. Post Brexit lowering corporation tax would provide a massive opportunity to expand the economy and probably increase tax revenue as well.
“These morons don’t seem to realise that we are in competition with other nations to attract businesses.”
Or have heard of the Laffer Curve.
Certainly Cameron, May, Osborne, Hammond and Major & Clarke haven’t.
Mrs T, Lawson & Lamont understood. Trump too.
I read your comments policy and it appears that you might conceivably allow comments that disagree with you, so, at the risk of wasting some time, I’ll try.
Looking at one little aspect of a complex system leads to monstrous errors. Re your topic, consider a nation where crony-capitalism prevails and huge amounts of money are siphoned off to the wealthy via this method. Is a 50p tax on this unfair?
So, before making any remarks on whether a tax is justified or not, you must explain what your view is of the source of the income is that is being taxed.
Have a good day…
I don’t care where the money has come from. It is not for the state to punish people for having too much. And that is what the higher rate of tax is all about. It is morally repugnant.
The State punishes people for having too much every day of the week. But only if they steal it in certain ways, not in other ways. I think you answered my question, that if the wealthy were totally corrupt, obtaining their money through crony-capitalism, it would not be just to take it back. OK, thanks for your opinion. At the risk of overstaying my welcome, here’s another. Consider a nation where the wealthy are decadent to the core, and spend their money principally on monstrous yachts, island paradises, teenage prostitutes, and really good narcotics. The state wants to tax them at 50p and use it on building the infrastructure up to attract foreign investment to bring more jobs to the non-wealthy. Is this tax still repugnant to you? Just asking….
There’s nothing to take back. It didn’t belong to the state in the first place. Money and wealth are not zero sum games. You want more? Go out and earn it. Don’t steal it from others, which is what you are advocating with punitive taxation. BTW, “crony-capitalism” is merely a meaningless epithet for “people who have more than me” or “more than I approve of”.
If they have obtained it legally, it is none of the state’s business how much they have or how they spend it – that is the politics of envy and spite.
If they have obtained it illegally, that’s a criminal justice matter. There is no situation where a 50% tax take is ever justified. Indeed, anything over 20% is too much.
Perhaps ‘take back’ is an unfortunate phrasing, and better would be ‘take away and spend on those who previously owned it’. Sorry for any misunderstandings.
Let me summarize your statement. I asked you about a hypothetical nation that was crony-capitalist to the core, and whose wealthy spent their money on debauchery and luxury. You said, I think, that if these wealthy had bribed the right politicians, who then legalized their method of theft (many examples exist), that that was OK with you and to tax them would be envious and spiteful. Thanks for your opinion. Am I right in assuming you represent ‘libertarian’ thinking, or am I unclear about this label as well?
It is fairly well known that the cost of bribery is so low that it is the most productive way for the wealthy to spend money, at least until the right laws get passed. ‘Crony-capitalism’ is just a shorthand for a nation’s economic system in which the politicians and the wealthy are both corrupt and in cahoots. I think you implied that was impossible to happen, but excuse me if I misinterpreted again. I think we are done here, and I understand your opinions.
Thanks for not censoring me. I get tired of thinking about a topic only to have my comments disappear.
You are attempting to build your own framework in order to justify your position. Capitalism is merely the means by which the market works. There is a case for some light regulation where there is the potential for abuse, but otherwise, the money that changes hands changes freely, which is how it should be. If someone else owned it beforehand, they exchanged it for something they wanted, therefore it would be immoral to “take it back”.
Bribery is illegal, so my earlier point applies. Prosecute and punish those who do it. Tax is not the appropriate tool here. Tax is a necessary evil that should only be used to raise necessary funds for essentials, not to punish people for having too much.
More classical liberal or minarchist.
I never delete comments that merely disagree with me, only those that are unnecessarily abusive or spammy.
Hong Kong has a maximum Income Tax of 15%. The (Colonial) Government left it that after determining that any increase in this tax would have provided a diminishing return. It would have been more profitable for a person of high income to hire a tax consultant rather than paying the tax. Galbraith’s Theory of Diminishing Returns anyone? This Income Tax level is still in place and that ex-Colony has more money that it knows what to do with.
Before the hand-over of Sovereignty in 1997, the introduction of VAT was mooted and very rapidly dropped as almost ever business which would have been involved stated that they would charge the Government for tax collection. The High Court decided that performing a service (tax collection) on behalf of the Government of the day constituted labour on behalf of the Government and should be recompensed accordingly.
Result? No VAT.
There’s a lesson somewhere in the above.
Yes, indeed. You might want to tell Jose above – he seems to think that punitive tax is somehow a good thing.
Being self-employed, I could register for VAT. There would certainly be some financial benefit from doing so. However, the work involved – working for the state as a tax collector – is not worth doing.
I am constantly reminded of the Chesterton quote, “For every complex problem…” I think that punitive tax is sometimes a good thing, and you need many elements of data to figure out when it is a good thing and when it is a bad thing. That was the reason I taxed your thinking by concocting a hypothetical nation, in which I thought it would be obvious that it was a good thing, but my concoction failed to ring the right bells.
Oops, forgot another point I have spent some time on. A 50p tax should be designed to be very specific about what is taxed, and a broadbrush one would likely be inferior (maybe both good but one not as good as the other, or vice versa) to a more selective one.
Hypothecation would be a nice idea. If I had the choice, I would withhold funds from all those nasty fake charities…
Hypothesis is the wrong tool to use. Stick to real world examples.
Punitive tax is always wrong in all situations. If someone has obtained money by deception, fraud or whatever, then there is appropriate law in place to deal with it – not using the tax system.