Paying Taxes -- both a virtue and a necessity

 Why pay tax? 

    It is amazing how many people in Britain think taxes are wrong and should be avoided where possible. 

    Nevertheless, I was slightly surprised the other Sunday when the subject cropped up over a pre-prandial pint in the Greatworth Inn. My friend 'the accountant' said he thought that death duties were wrong; that they amounted to double taxation and little different from plain theft. 

    "Maybe", I said, "but still necessary", for I saw an opportunity to lay out my favourite recent aperçu.

    (Apparently it takes a certain sort of intelligence to realise that there are benefits that accrue from taxation: railways, roads, bridges, medicines, the disposal of waste, safety from violence, etc. Some rare citizens even wince at the sight of poverty in the streets. Many can be cajoled into paying taxes by ensuring that all people pay them in some sort of 'fair proportion'. But defining and ensuring fairness is far more easily said than done.  A few years back I crossed swords with a 5th Viscount over the existence of 'altruism' in human populations, which he pooh-poohed . 

    "What about in the paying of taxes?" I had said. 

    "But we do not pay taxes willingly" he objected. 

    "Of course we pay them willingly", I expostulated. "That is to say, a majority of MPs in the house of Commons voted through all the relevant legislation."  The Viscount turned then to other questions, and I was left with the distinct feeling I had routed him.)

    "Have you noticed," I said, returning to my accountant friend and my recent aperçu, "how money continuously flows from poor people to rich people, steadily and inevitably; taxes are needed to return money to the poor so the process can continue." 

    This is a novel idea, for even quite poor people think of  tax as a net loss rather than a net gain, which to them it clearly is. 

    "But, but, but !!! " he protested; "The large incomes of the rich are the result of market forces; it is earned income; the money belongs to the rich by right; they are paid well because they are worth it."

    "All that may be true", I replied; "but it still has to be returned to the poor. It is the accumulation in the hands of the rich that has to be prevented. If the rich spent their income properly, that is to say fully, the inequality might be better tolerated. But they hoard their wealth. And so it must be prised out of their clenched fists." 

    Silence fell.

    "Who is for another beer?"  I offered, for I realised my companions were not up for radically rethinking taxation, and I could see another aperçu coming towards me: "What is a fair tax regime?  It must clearly be a tax regime that prevents the rich from getting richer, and the poor from getting poorer."

    Rather neat, do n't you think, for a Sunday morning?  Death duties are obviously the best way of collecting what must be collected; for only then is it clear how much is involved. (See also: https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2016/09/estate-tax-and-limits-to-wealth.html)

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