VIEWPOINT
The great tax swindle
GEORGE GALE
I recall once asking Jim Callaghan, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, since he,
like the rest of his party, was supposed to be in favour of social justice and equality and all that sort of thing, whether he did not think it to be morally outrageous that certain people should be taxed infinitely more savagely than others with the same income and responsibilities. I explained that I had in mind the huge imposts paid by those who, for example, smoke and drink, and who, in consequence, subsidise the miser- able swine who do neither. He conceded, in an amused and academic sort of way, that he thought perhaps I had a point. But when his next Budget came out, he did nothing what- ever to remedy what is easily the most glaring fiscal injustice suffered by the better part of the British electorate; and I dare say, although I cannot remember, that he might actually have aggravated the injustice.
Years ago I wrote a piece pointing out how much the so-called sinners subsidised the rest. Again, people thought I had a point of sorts, a debating point as it were, but not one to be taken seriously. The drinkers and smokers, the gamblers, people who went to the cinema in the days when cinemas were successful, or who went to the dogs, or to football matches: all these people subsidised the dull dogs who stayed at home chewing chewing gum, reading books borrowed from free libraries, guzzling sweets, drinking tea and coffee, smoking herbal mixtures, riding bicycles to the danger of tax-swindled motor- ists, and procreating either through catholic conviction or agnostic fecklessness, or sheer bloody-mindedness, or just for fun, vast numbers of children they expected those enfeebled by drink and impoverished by tobacco to support.
No doubt I ought to declare my interest. I am a moderate drinker, sometimes maligned by those whose capacity for schoolboy wit finds ready expression in that successor to the Boys Own Paper, Private Eye, and that successor to the Times, the Times. I used to be a heavy smoker, sixty to eighty a day on the hard, untipped stuff, until brought to my senses by Doctor KellerFan of Col. chester, to whom more power to his prose- lytising. He is the only preacher who has made sense to me, principally because he is the only preacher who has preached sense. I
Sir Denis Brogan is ill and hopes to be able to resume 'Table Talk' soon.
do not eat much in the way of sweets; have been permanently cured of any latent fond- ness for the cinema by the enthusiastic film reviews of women critics; I am in favour of bicycles in theory but not, alas, in practice; have not gone for several years either to football matches or to the dogs des- pite the slanders of enemies; mildly disap- prove of people reading on the cheap; and regard cricket as a tolerable excuse for wast- ing time and an absurd pretext for the demonstration of political self-righteousness.
In short, I am a thoroughly civilised Eng- lishman who has managed to get out of his system a taint of Scotch blood and an infec- tion of Presbyterianism. I say all this to establish my credentials, as it were, which are that I am not excessively interested financially in the views I have to propound.
It is clearly and unarguably a very great injustice that is yearly enacted in the Finance Act which follows each Budget. All sorts of fancy arrangements are devised, so that the burden of income tax should be equitably distributed throughout the nation. All sorts of elaborate calculations are made so that national insurance payments can incorpor- ate an element of redistribution of income. Great fusses are made on behalf of old-age pensioners, the chronically sick, the mal- adjusted, children, unmarried mothers, students and other such victims of our grasp- ing society: but the great injustice is that perpetrated on those who smoke and drink. This might be defensible if the smokers and drinkers, in their smoking and drinking, were somehow or other getting more out of the kitty than the rest: but they are not. Quite the reverse. They are smoking and drinking themselves into their premature, pre-pension- able graves. It is—I am quite serious about this—a national disgrace, a financial swindle of immense proportion.
It is not only a swindle. It is a restriction of liberty. The forcible collection of cash is the main peacetime demand made by rulers upon law-abiding citizens. Such taxation should be fair. It may be that the taxpayers in their capacity as electors choose that the richer among them should pay absolutely more than the poorer, and indeed the electors by majority vote will always thus choose, because there are more poor people than rich. It may well be that the taxpayers, in -their charity or greed, will go further, and determine that the rich shall pay proportion- ately as well as absolutely more than the poor—as indeed they have done, in most well-ordered and democratic societies. But I cannot think that at any British election the taxpaying electors have said, 'Smith, who earns £20 a week and has a wife and two kids shall pay so much tax a week, while Brown, who earns the same and has a wife and two kids the same, shall pay twice as much tax a week'. Yet this is what can happen, if Brown happens to like a smoke and an occasional pint.
It is odd that the drinkers and smokers and the other sinners whose pleasures are penalised by the taxation system have not yet rebelled. They must make, after all, a pretty formidable pressure group. The use of taxation as a means of inflicting fines upon those whose behaviour is regarded, or once was regarded, as morally reprehensible, is itself indefensible. It is good that essen- tial things should be taxed, if things are to be taxed at all, for then the distribution of such taxation is equitable. It is monstrous that certain inessential or optional pleasures should be taxed and others not. Sweets, especially when consumed by children, cause great damage, far more than alcohol or tobacco. If we are to moralise about our taxa- tion practices, let's start with some really swingeing taxes on sweets. Let's legalise drugs and make hundreds of millions out of the sale of them, like we do -from the sale of cigarettes and booze. Let's have dirty books carrying dirty great taxes. Let theatres pay taxes rising according to the number of nipples, bums and penises on show. Let's tax Hair—or hair.
Or let us be done with all such nonsense. Let us, or rather let some intelligent and radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, realise that Budgets and fiscal demands are not suit- able instruments for deceitfully inflicting moral judgments, punishments and rewards, but should, instead, be the occasion for raising revenue with justice, equity and de- _ cency. But will we ever get such a paragon, a radical and intelligent Chancellor of the Exchequer? It is consumption which ought to be taxed, for when you consume, you consume the work of other men, and the more you consume the more you should pay. Nothing else matters. If you hoard, or invest, you give your money to the state or to the company in which you invest, and that is very nice of you and the rest of us should all be grateful. It is only when you spend. when you consume, when you take some- thing away from somebody else, that you should pay the rest of us for it. How you choose to spend your money is, but should not be, the business of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. —
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