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Nonsensical bollocks on tax from the Sky Fairy folk

Every pound avoided in tax is a pound less to spend on childcare, social care, health or education.

Nonsense. Entire bollocks.

Every pound avoided in tax is a pound less for the government to spend on childcare, social care, health or education, this is true.

But when someone pays themselves a dividend not salary (recall, Ritchie tells us this is not only tax avoidance, it is tax abuse) and thus pays less tax, that money does not then disappear into the ether.

It gets spent or invested just like any and every other pound in the economy. If invested it increases the capital in the economy which then leads to future growth and thus higher standards of living for our children. If spent it becomes the income of someone else: and of course, some of it will be spent on childcare (nannies? au pairs?), social care (home helpers? paying the fees at granny\’s nursing home?) health (you have heard of BUPA?) and education (Eton anyone?).

Tax avoided is less money for government to spend on things, yes, and it\’s also more money for peeps tpo spend as peeps wish to spend it.

Which is why people do it of course.

10 thoughts on “Nonsensical bollocks on tax from the Sky Fairy folk”

  1. Every pound not paid in tax is a potential pound given to that charity.

    If they wanted to get more money into government coffers they could stop being a charity.

  2. When people of Murphy’s ilk say, “every pound avoided in tax is a pound less to spend on childcare, social care, health or education,” what they mean is, “every pound avoided in tax is a pound less to spend as I and my chums in the TUC see fit on childcare, social care, health or education.”

  3. They’re pointing out the regressive nature of fuel tax and VAT … but are they pishing for cuts in these taxes? Of course not, they just want to screw the ‘rich’ more as per.

    Strange how a ‘church’ group should be so guilty of one of the seven deadly sins: envy (but
    I suppose it’s really ‘a sense of social justice, yeah?’)

  4. I’m sure there’s accurate figures somewhere but I can’t be bothered to look. But for every pound collected in tax I’d be surprised if more than £0.75 got through to the intended destination, even if the tax was hypothecated.

  5. Better God, described by some as ‘The Sky Fairy’, than Adam Smith, described by others as ‘The Pie In The Sky Fairy’.

    Smith had a raging case of Tourette Syndrome – indeed, he was the worst echopraxic I’ve ever read about. If one has no other reason to be grateful to PJ O’Rourke for writing his otherwise dreadful book about Smith, at least one will always have that. Anyone with a copy can find the evidence on pages 172-173.

  6. I seem to remember deadweight cost of taxation usually being rule-of-thumb estimated at 30%, so split the difference. It’s a lot, anyway.

  7. I did suggest to Ritchie that the church could lead the way here and sell a chunk of their “property, pensions, antiques and jewellery” and give the proceeds to the government. Only seems “fair”.

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