Economics -
Taxes
29th
April 2001 - TAX rises imposed by Labour over the
past four years mean that people are having to
work the equivalent of an extra two weeks to pay
them, Michael Portillo, the Conservative Treasury
spokesman, said yesterday.
Tax Freedom Day - the day when people stop
working to pay taxes and instead start working
for themselves - has moved from May 27 in 1997,
the 
year
the Tories lost power, to June 10 this year. In
the Commons last week, under pressure from
William Hague, Tony Blair said it was
"true" that tax revenues had risen over
the first part of this Parliament. Mr Portillo
said Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, had embarked
on a path of higher public spending that meant
taxes would have to go up.
The Government was now spending £12,000 of
taxpayers' money every second. Under Labour the
tax burden had risen by £28 billion, the
equivalent of 10p on the basic rate of income
tax.
Mr Portillo said Labour promised a
"revolution" in the quality and
delivery of public services and said that it had
"no plans to increase taxes at all". He
added: "They have broken both promises.
Taxes have gone up but services have not
improved. Under Labour people are paying more and
getting less." Labour had taxed the poorest
hardest. Under Labour, the poorest fifth of
households had to pay more than 41 per cent of
their income in tax, the highest figure since
records began. In 1997, the figure was 37 per
cent. Mr Portillo pledged that an incoming
Conservative government would cut taxes by £8
billion within three years. It would abolish
taxes on savings, take one million pensioners out
of tax altogether, reduce taxes for families and
cut the duty on fuel. Stephen Byers, the Trade
and Industry Secretary, gave a strong hint
yesterday that Labour would go into the election
repeating its 1997 promise not to increase the
basic or higher rates of tax.
He told GMTV's Sunday Programme that Mr Brown
would be able to fulfil promised increases in
spending on public services even if there was a
slight slowing in economic growth. He said:
"We can do that because of the economic
success that we have seen." Mr Byers added
that he and Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary,
would be making announcements this week about
improvements to maternity pay and leave.
During
the past century there has been an unprecedented
interference by government in everyday life, with
the creation of structures and attitudes that
were not dismantled with the passing of the total
wars that justified them. The socialist
assumption that people should be "looked
after" from cradle to grave so penetrated
the body politic that many are now incapable of
seeing state welfare as merely one of the roles
of government, albeit an important one. They
think it is what government is for. The
pre-Budget revelation that we are taxed so much
more than necessary that the Government had a
£40 billion budget surplus provoked no riots.
Downing Street was not stormed because nearly 40p
out of every pound is taken in tax (perhaps as
much as 53p gross), which means that, in a
working year, you now toil until early June for
them.
Because of the culture of shoulder-shrugging
resignation in the UK - governments do what they
like, there's nothing we can do about it, they're
all the same anyway etc. And so Tony Blair's
pre-election pledge - "We have no plans to
increase tax at all" - is not thrown back at
him in every interview, as it should be. After
all, his government averaged about one tax
increase every month in its first three years,
and has been pretty close to that since. But
there is another reason for our meekness in the
face of the tax gatherers. The expansion of state
welfare has created three large groups of
citizens, only one of which has any serious
interest in halting or reversing the process.
First, there are welfare dependants who receive
more in state benefits than they contribute in
taxation. Second, there are those who, though
taxpayers, make their living either from
administering and encouraging welfare provision
or from being servants of the state or local
authorities - teachers, NHS staff and the various
kinds of civil servant. Third, there are
non-state funded taxpayers, both individuals and
businesses. These are the milch-cows that keep
the whole thing going but their ability to do so
declines as state provision increases. Yet they
have no more say over how money seized from them
under threat of criminal sanction is spent than
do those upon whom it is spent.
Next >>>
Home
These articles
have been collected from various sources. If you
are the copyright owner of any of them, contact us for
either a credit and link to your site or removal
of the article.
--------------