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What do you mean you hadn’t noticed? Perhaps you were too
busy campaigning for a ‘living wage’ or ranting about fuel poverty to notice
that the policies beloved by left and centre fall hardest on the poor. Indeed,
rather than babbling about that ‘living wage’ maybe we should mention that it
is quite repulsive – truly hideous and ghastly – that anyone on minimum wage
has part of that income taxed.
But I’m not here to talk about income tax – although I
don’t think anyone earning less than average income should pay any – but about
all the other imposts, duties and proposals that fall most heavily on the poor.
Here’s a little list:
- Energy prices. All those jolly schemes to promote ‘green energy’ and save the planet are little more than a tax – the planet may need saving (although I think she’ll be fine and hunk dory for quite a few million years yet) but is it right that we do this with a regressive tax? Worse still a regressive tax that those with large roofs for solar panels or paddocks for windmills can avoid – and those are things that someone’s granny in a council flat doesn’t have.
- Tobacco duty. OK this is about making people healthy (or so we’re told by assorted nannying fussbuckets) but we also know that people from the C2DE categories (i.e. the less well off) are far more likely to smoke than those in the ABC1 categories. Raising the duty year after year above rates of inflation is a huge tax on the less well off – except for those who now smuggle the stuff, of course!
- Employers National Insurance. No this really isn’t a tax on the employer – they have a budget to employ people and the NI is in that budget. If employers didn’t pay national insurance then wages would be higher – we know that rises in employers NI reduced wages.
- PAYE. You’ve read all those stories about how rich folk with clever accountants reduce their tax bills? Ever wondered why you can’t do this? It’s called PAYE – lower paid people don’t fill in a tax return and the employer does the payments. All those allowances, fiddles and dodges that you’ve heard of – they only apply to people who fill in a tax return. I’ve no doubt that there are thousands – perhaps millions – of people paying too much tax. And they’re mostly the lower paid.
- Minimum pricing for alcohol. This is the most blatant – “we don’t approve of the poor drinking cheap cider” is effectively the message that it sends out. After all it would be simpler to just increase the duty on alcohol (something that us middling sorts consume more of that the poor) but the moralising ‘return of gin alley’ arguments dominate.
I’m pretty sure there’s more of these – even without me
mentioning the de facto tax that is allowing inflation to run at two per cent
plus. And – all with either the direct intention or the unfortunate side effect
of falling more heavily on the less well off.
Perhaps we should think about taxing the poor a little
less?
....
