A discussion panel at the Davos World Economic Forum has become a sensation after a Dutch historian took billionaires to task for not paying taxes.
Oh! So they are evading taxes, then?
In a video shared tens of thousands of times, Rutger Bregman, author of the book Utopia for Realists, bemoans the failure of attendees at the recent gathering in Switzerland to address the key issue in the battle for greater equality: the failure of rich people to pay their fair share of taxes.
There is no such thing as “fair share”. There is what the law demands. Nothing more and nothing less. So, these people are evading taxes, then?
“I hear people talking the language of participation, justice, equality and transparency but almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share,” Bregman tells the Time magazine panel on inequality.
So are they evading taxes, then?
Billions of dollars were leaked by tax avoidance every year which should instead be going to alleviate poverty in the developing world, she added.
Ah. No. They are not. They are paying what the law demands. Tax avoidance is not leakage it is what any normal, reasonable, rational person does when managing their financial affairs.
“No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue”
So, nothing to see here, then.
And does Mr Bregman make voluntary contributions to the Dutch exchequer such as to bring his standard of living down to a level equal to mine? If so, I admire his sincerity: if not, he is an authoritarian hypocrite so can just bugger off!
In my view, almost every penny that ends up in the hands of the state is a penny wasted. It would be interesting to know what proportion of the tax take is actually spent on the kinds of things that high tax advocates think that they should be spent on. My guess is that the actual figure will be vanishingly small. I would prefer that these obscenely rich people spent their money on the things that they consider to be important. It is likely that they will be far better judges than the politicians.