Please take my money
People are strange.
There seems to be a common consensus that somehow taxes are a Good Thing.
Personally, I recognise that some taxes are necessary. Someone has to pay for the services we all expect, such as street lighting or teachers’ salaries but apart from the essentials I strongly resent my taxes being spent on vanity projects or services for a minority group that should be capable of funding themselves. Out gubmint seems to be under the impression that income from taxation is a pit of free money for them to throw away without any regard for its source.
So where possible I evade tax. And if circumstances allow, I avoid tax. If there is a tax allowance, I will claim it and if I can pay for something “under the counter” I will do so. I consider it my moral duty.
What baffles me though is the number of people who will actively call for greater taxation to further some pet cause and to “nudge” people into the path of righteousness. Someone perceives that there is a problem somewhere and their first suggestion is invariably taxation. This seems to be a fairly new phenomenon and my theory is that it traces back to tobacco taxes.
A case in point is a suggestion that the gubmint should lower alcohol taxes to prevent cross border trade with Norn Iron. When asked if this is a good idea however, around a third of the population think this is a bad idea. These people think it is right that alcohol tax should remain at exorbitant levels and assuming that a fair proportion of these people partake in a drop of libation then I can only assume that they are willing to freely give their money to the gubmint to piss against the wall.
I have a limited bank account in so far as there is only so much arriving in it. If I try to spend more than the current balance I get into severe trouble. If there are insufficient funds then I can’t spend. If I were a gubmint however, I just slap an extra tax on something and watch the funds increase and carry on with my profligate spending.
I wish I were a gubmint!
Because, in their rose-tinted world, it won't be them being actually hit with this extra taxation. It's the lumpenproletariat (or, basically anyone who isn't them) who'll be paying.
Because gubmints always know better than you what to spend your money on.
But always with a little bit of it sticking to the spenders.
With you 100% Grandad. It is extremely offensive to me to have to pay a bunch of idle w@nkers to lord it over us. They award themselves better pensions, health care, perks etc. while just sitting on their arses and putting spokes in the wheel whenever possible.
Taxation is theft!
It always amuses me to hear people saying they think taxes should be higher. Most countries, including the UK and I'm sure Ireland is no different, have procedures for people to gift money to the country. According to this 2017 story in the Financial Times, there were just 200 "patriotic gifts" in the UK between 2000 and 2017: https://www.ft.com/content/4b3e6db0-e57a-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec
I do wish people would put their wallets where their mouths are. Or maybe when they say they want taxes to be higher they really want me to pay more tax, not them.
Hey, c'mon Gramps. It's not so bad. If one-third of the population thinks that high alcohol taxes are A Good Thing, ergo that means that a whopping two-thirds think that they're not. Two-thirds is a big majority. If Leave had won our referendum by two-thirds to one we'd have been out by the end of March!
And don't overlook the "swelling" of numbers by astroturfing – always a very likely factor when there's a "cause" to be pushed. In fact, you can probably slice that one-third in half, if not more, if you take the astroturfers out of the equation.
I always treat those Journal polls with a massive grain of salt, but it is still surprising the numbers who are not only happy to pay taxes but are quick to suggest new ones.