Thursday 23 February 2012

Why Do We Pay Taxes?

Ok, so the question isn't really why pay taxes at all; that is obvious. What I mean is, why pay the taxes we have and certainly the level? Consider. Personal tax on income (which includes National Insurance) is routinely a third of 'earnings'. More as you get clobbered higher up the pay scale (unless you dodge). Your employer also has to pitch in an additional 13.8% of your gross pay.

When you buy something with the money you earned and were generously allowed to keep by the goverment, about 16.75% of the price of the goods will most often be tax. If the product is petrol the tax take is 80.1p (on a litre at 132.9p). That's over 60%.

As you can't take it with you when you die, the government helps itself to 40% of anything over £300,000 that you leave. Remembering that when you bought your house, at between £250,001 and £500,000 you had to pay the government 3% of the purchase price (it goes from 1-5% based on price). Then there is all the tax on companies and share dealing; it goes on and on.

Now I don't know about you, but I find, whether I like it or not, I have to buy quite a lot of things. I have to buy petrol to get to work and sometimes, mad fool that I am, I might like to drive somewhere for pleasure. So the ringing of cash till bells may not be creating angels' wings, but it is certainly creating that vast amount of money that the government sprays around.

It may be a vast amount but a) Gordon Brown made it 'not enough' so borrowed a whole mountain more and b) it doesn't seem enough for the things we thought it was for; a decent hospital service, police forces, fire service, bins emptied regularly, roads kept open in winter, armed forces and some people to watch we don't get poisoned or ripped off by the local curry house or the energy company.

What we do get is MP's expenses and Quango's to do what the MP's are paid to do. The Quango's then hire Consultants to do their job and just to make sure, the MP's hire Consultants who tell them to create more Quango's. We get MoD procurement that pays for things we don't then get, or don't work, hosiptals that pay £2400 for £16 worth of drugs and IT systems that don't work. Plus our contributions to pay for the EU and its cock-ups.

What I do understand is that the government has a massive incentive to make sure not many people hold on to their money. Imagine if you could just pass on your wealth to your children unhindered, just how many generations would it take before a significant proportion of the population had enough wealth to be largely independent of government? Enough money that you can escape their clutches if need be. Doesn't bear thinking about if your job is to tell people what to do.

There isn't an argument about 'big government'. It has to stop. No, seriously it has to stop. Government should do very little, tax accordingly and leave us to spend our money creating wealth all round, getting richer by each generation. We should keep our money rather than have it appropriated by governments who then, basically, lose it.

No comments:

Post a Comment