Au contraire, I don't think it says very much at all, except that there obviously has to be some form of taxation if certain taxpayer's expectations are to be met - and there is no justifiable reason for the taxpayer not to include in those expectations at least a reasonable sense of value for money being given by the Treasury.

Tax pre-Thatcher did at least have the advantage of greater transparency and simplicity, even though income tax in those days was vastly higher than it has ever been since, but in that era far more of the working population was employed and far less self-employed and there were far fewer home-owning and shareholding workers than there have been since, so, to be fair to both ways of taxation, the climate in which the taxes are imposed has changed considerably (not that this alone justifies either) - furthermore, far fewer working people had estates that would upon death become subject to the predecessors of inheritance tax.

The greatest problem with present-day UK taxation, as I have suggested previously, is its vast range and complexity and the consequently high cost of administration and collection - costs which are reflected in and compounded by the miles upon miles of taxation tomes and the fees of accountants, lawyers and financial advisers who help their clients to reduce their tax burden as far as possible.

Not for nothing has it been suggested that if every taxpayer made use of legitimate tax reduction/avoidance advice and everyone entitled to state benefits claimed every penny of them, the Treasury would find itself in a far more parlous state than Northern Rock recently did (and, in raising this, I am in no sense talking about breaches of tax or benefit law).

We have now, however, come rather a long way from Gordon Brown, vision and music education in the country of which he is prime minister, so I think that it would be good to get back onto that ground.

Best,

Alistair

There are many people in the UK who don't pay taxes (and I'm not saying that everyone should) but I'm going to be controversial and say that I thought that Thatcher's poll tax was the right idea but just badly implemented. The more that people have a stake in things, the more they consider their responsibilities and appreciate the value of services and how public money is spent.

Indeed. Shareholders have an influence over the policy "their" company follows. We had more of a stake in how the country was run when utitilities were state-run, ie. before they were sold off cheaply and ended up in the hands of ramshackle operations whose CEOs take home astronomical salaries.

Furthermore, shareholders' influence is directly proportional to the amount of stock they own (a majority shareholder obviously has far more influence than one who owns a small handful bought during a government sell-off, for example). If the voting system was like that, then those who pay higher taxes would have more votes in elections - I can't believe even Alistair would advocate that. Redistributive taxation works on the principle that tax is collected from the better-off to help support the less fortunate, whether or not the former perceive themselves to directly benefit from such a thing. The poll tax negated all of that, and was a reversion to 14th century economics. Even the biggest sceptic towards ideologies of progress would surely concede that we've moved on somewhat for the better since then?

It was intended as a euphemism, of course, rather than to be taken absolutely literally, but the point of that euphemism is that taxpayers don't just pay tax because the government says so and because "it's the law" but in order to make business service provision possible (by which I mean healthcare, public transport, etc., all of which are run by businesses - the fact that they are for the most part public rather than private businesses should make no difference in reality). Taxpayers are, in other words, investors; the only difference between this kind of investment and any other kind is in its the compulsory nature. At least, that's the way I see it. On a local taxation level, for example, whilst it might seem inconceivable in practice for a local authority's spending policies to be so financially successful that they make an overall profit, it could be imagined that it might pay a dividend to its shareholders (i.e. council taxpayers) even if only by way of a reduction in subsequent tax invoices; not for nothing did someone recently say that, in Bath, where I live, had the local authority invested wisely over the years in the city under its charge, it would be paying the residents by now rather than the other way around. Of course I accept that this kind of thing is an exceedingly unlikely scenario, but it remains technically possible...

Best,

Alistair

Yes it should! The idea that they should be "businesses" rather than "services" is a crucial part of Thatcher's redefinition of the agenda. A "service", as its name implies, exists in order to "serve". A "business", while it might incidentally provide a service, is in the "business" of making money for its owners. Completely different (and indeed fundamentally incompatible) priorities, in other words.

One of the great myths that enables the 'businesses are services' ideology to continue is the idea that in the marketplace, the consumers rather than the producers run things. It ain't so.