CITY AND SUBURBAN
The taxpaying peasants revolt — let that be a warning to Treasury ministers
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Idraw Treasury ministers' attention to the case of Shu Liu and the inspector of taxes. Described as a peasant, Mr Shu had refused to pay any taxes for the past 13 years. An inspector from the Shantung dis- trict came to dun him for arrears of 470 Yuan, or £36. Mr Shu, who was wearing a bomb, detonated it, killing them both. They are martyrs to a system of taxation which is reported to be bringing Chinese peasants to their knees and provoking mass demon- strations. It is an example to be watched. Here at home, the fiscal peasantry is restive. Sullenly we count the weeks until
24 May, Tax Freedom Day, when (as I was saying the other day) we can stop working for the taxman and start working for our- selves. Meanwhile the Chief Secretary, Michael Portillo, has devoted one of his weekly addresses to telling us what good value we get. There has been a revolution, so he says, in public sector management. A civil service 700,000 strong has shrunk by 25 per cent. Ten years ago the state owned 50 more industries than it does now and was losing £3 billion a year on them. So, after all these clearance sales, why is Tax Freedom Day still so late? On Mr Portillo's own figures, all that has happened is that the public sector has inched down, from 47 Per cent of the nation's total output of goods and services, to 45 per cent. The state has found other uses for our money. Social welfare, for instance, has grown strongly, and now employs more than 750,000 people — more than the civil ser- vice at its peak. I make that a change for the worse. I would rather see tax revenues spent, as they were, on productive indus- tries like coal and steel, when we might have some coal and steel to show for it. Better still if they were spent on me, and best of all if I could spend or save them for myself. Mr Shu may have felt that way, too.
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