Aphorisms Something or Other…
The taxman and his enemies… There’s a war of immorality and feeble justifications raging through England. On the one side you have the taxman… the government must tax work. Without tax we would have no infrastructure; schools, teachers, hospitals, doctors, nurses, roads, bridges, tunnels, power stations, telecommunication, public transport, police, armed forces and the list goes on and on… but where do they get these taxes from? What is a fair tax? A tax on your earnings… on an amount agreed by the population, a population that should be educated in such a way as to understand the necessity, seems to be a fair tax… and that’s where it should end.
Why should you be taxed for owning a car, because you use the roads and they require maintenance, but then everyone pays tax which goes towards school, even if you don’t have any children… Are we taxing fairly, equally, or not? Should we tax someone more because they earn more money? They will automatically pay more tax because if it a percentage of their wage and they earn more they will have a larger number deducted from their salary, so why should we put people who earn more into a higher tax bracket? If it is immaterial how hard they work, what education they received, what service they provide society (should doctors or teachers pay less tax?), why should it matter that they simply earn more than someone else – they are being penalised for earning more money? Why should someone be taxed for dying? This one, and I’ve written about this before, seems the most offensive tax conceivable; you work throughout your life, honestly pay taxes on your earnings, save money for the future, for your children rather than spend or squander it on satisfying your own wants and desires, and when you die that money, that already taxed money, is taxed again…! I see this as nothing more than theft… Why should the government impose more tax on smoking and drinking… are they my mother, trying to discourage me from doing harmful things to myself? Should they be my mother… will they tax salt next, Macdonald’s and crackling on the Sunday roast? If the argument is related to the amount of money they are likely to cast the National Health Service then shouldn’t people who have more dangerous jobs be taxed in a higher bracket (thus allowing them to claim more wages from their employers), and what right has the government to tell me to force me to take better care of myself… when did we had over our rights; when did we tell these people they were no longer administrative tools, but now where morally and intellectually superior to us and could take our freedoms away if they believe they know better? Along the same lines should people owning older cars, sports cars, and motorcycles, be taxed more as they are more likely to have accidents and thus consume more national resources, should we be heavily taxing bacon sandwiches, but reducing the tax on lettuce and brussel sprouts? Should we be more heavily taxing running shoes and reduce the tax on steel toecaps, because our feet are safer, less likely to be damaged and thus stay well clear of sapping the NHS?
On the other hand you have the workmen (I don’t want to go into tax evasion on a larger scale at the moment: offshore accounts, staff perks and benefits, tax avoidance, non-payment, legal interpretation, failure to take reasonable care, and error), working for ‘cash-in-hand’; money he or she does not have to disclose to the taxman because they will never know it existed.
It is estimated £8,000,000,000 a year goes unpaid (if tax is 20% this suggests the work done at £40,000,000,000, or some such); how many schools can you open for eight billion…? You could certainly put contracted teachers and doctors through university without them having to take out vast student loans… (if you count the other ways the taxman misses his due – mention within the parenthesis above – we are looking at an estimated £35,000,000,000 - £80,000,000,000 – what’s national debt up to at the moment…?), and unfortunately these are some of the voices heard all too often complaining about the state of the roads, the quality of the schools, the equipment and beds available in the hospitals, and most of all the unfair heights taxes seem to reach… (relate this aphorism to the blog Morality vs. Legality)
