Tax = The will of the people

tax is news.

tax fraud £100 billion           vs          benefits fraud £2

inland revenue officers for benefits fraud are 10x the IR officers for tax fraud

inequality again


BUT what is tax for ?

Think about it - in Al Capone's words there is nothing certain except death and taxes. But that is not true.

Taxes were first raised in the UK a few hundred years ago - to finance wars.

However there is alot that governments do that has to be paid for and in a democracy we can choose what we want government to spend money on on our behalf.  Tax is the will of the people. We want to raise money for wars so be it.We want to raise tax for the NHS so be it.We want to subsidise the nuclear industry(NDA - the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - absorbs 70 -80 % of the Dept of Climate Change budget[Source Guardian Data Blog]).

It is not the sexiest of topics but think about it and you realise it is people power in practice.

Because our electoral system is flawed it is not reflecting the people's priorities but get that straight and then we need to embrace tax as the instrument it is.

so we need to start questioning why our tax code in UK - the manual - is the longest in the world(Hong Kong has the shortest). One answer I came across is that we have a vast financial sector that makes money by exploiting the difference between the rates in different countries (tax switching). This sector has no interest in harmonising tax rates across the world or even having multilateral tax agreements.Hence we have different bilateral agreements with dozens of countries across the world.

I am certain that tax does not have to be as complex as it appears to be.

So join in the conversation to stop the vested interests from pulling the wool from over our eyes.

I want our children to understand about not just personal finances but about what we do and can do together with our money.