Taxation, representation and justice...
Keele University's report: "Law-abiding majority? The everyday crimes of the middle classes" saw national media making hay during a slow summer. Inter alia, about a third of us avoid tax, using the black economy.
When this phenomenon is observed in a sector that generally prides itself on good citizenship and adherence to the law there is a deal of tut-tutting. Shouldn't we examine possible causes? Has general morality declined? For sure, we have seen myriad immoral and reprehensible examples from those who lead us in Government, the Churches, and other professions including judges. But where taxation is concerned, many good citizens feel aggrieved and unjustly treated. They're sympathetic to its avoidance, even evasion.
We pay quite enough in tax. You earn £100. Forty percent goes in income tax, another tithe in national Insurance, another in council taxes. Of the £40 or so pounds left, if you save it for your heirs another forty percent is whipped off, and when they finally get to spend it, over a fifth of the remainder goes on VAT. After the many hidden taxes and costs imposed by government national and local, the value of your hundred pounds is reduced to less than £25. When good citizens are paying that sort of money to government, they expect to see it well and wisely spent. Yet they see vast amounts spent on foreign commitments that do not always enjoy their support. They see bloated management staffs in a National Health Service that fails to provide for beds, doctors, nurses, patients, drugs and equipment. They see their money used for the political pork-barrel by politicians who attempt by legislation to suppress information about their publicly funded expense accounts, while for all that money paid in tax, somehow there aren't enough police, enough prison cells, adequate rail safety…..
Local taxpayers see their money being 'redistributed' up the M1. They see their State schools forced to raise money by dunning parents directly, or by cutting back on staff and reducing teaching hours. They see ever more attempts to extract additional money from them by charges of one sort or another. Plans to make us pay twice for our rubbish collections by levying further fees. Surcharges on road use and parking charges on top of road tax. They also see smart offices with large staffs, while roads are ill-maintained, drains left blocked, streets not properly cleaned.
When taxpayers complain about the state of facilities and services, whether national or local, the response is to reshuffle or restructure, to appoint more staff to the bureaucracy - whose bosses then get promotion and more pay under their Job Evaluation Schemes. To spend more public money on Public Relations spin to try to convince the public that really, all is going wonderfully well. Look - a kitemark!
Do you wonder that the hard-working, thrifty middle classes resent the level of tax and the use to which it is put? That they try to avoid it? That they won't inform on their friends and neighbours as officialdom wants them to do? There is a difference between the Law, and Justice. When that difference becomes too great, Justice may encourage the thought that the Law be disobeyed, and Government loses consent.
'Dittonian' (particulars supplied)
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