Unite the Union asked me to write their submission to the Labour Party policy review on tax. I've now done that and you can get the 28 page submission here. As I said in the summary:
Labour knows it needs to raise tax revenues. What this submission makes clear is that this is possible, but that it is best done by thinking about the design of our tax system to make it fairer not just for each and every person in the UK who now pays their taxes in full, but also for the UK's honest businesses who have for too long suffered competition from businesses that have avoided their obligations to pay in full and so have gained an unfair competitive advantage over their honest rivals. That reward to cheating has to end. This submission explains how Labour could do that.
It would be good to think Labour take it on board. I live in hope.
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Presumably then the Labour Party will have to reverse its ‘relaxed position’ on those becoming extremely rich.
I take it that a Labour HMG would also shut down – not just regulate – all the tax havens where UK businesses like to ‘park money’ e.g. the gambling firms based in Gibraltar.
“Complementary to social objectives. What this means is that tax should encourage what society thinks desirable, and discourage what it considers harmful. This, amongst other things, embraces the idea of green taxation;”
So are you saying that you want UK consumers to pay higher taxes for power and heating simply to meet some odd notion of ‘green power’ when the rest of the world is doing nothing similar?
Are you proposing that ‘green taxation’ should drive the cost of energy up for industry – the very same industries that you claim are needed to ‘rebalance the economy’?
Again, whilst the ‘green taxation’ you appear to support drives up costs in the UK, all that happens is that jobs move to areas where lower taxes lead to lower costs for energy. Is that what you want…’high UK green taxes’ but no real jobs?
After all, in the real world, away from the HoC and cosy chats, high energy costs driven up ‘green taxation’ mean this sort of thing happens:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/policy-and-business/news/rio-tinto-alcan-reveals-plan-to-close-northumberland-smelter/1010935.article
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab4bf9bc-6942-11e1-9618-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2MWinATXL
Respectfully, I think global warming a real issue
I have no desire to leave a world in which my children or grandchildren cannot sustain life on earth
I think that a higher goal than short term profit
Maybe you don’t
Without a strong manufacturing sector the service sector has nothing to underpin it. The manufacturing sector is going to become even more crucial as DC and GO work to trim the size of the financial sector. I would also argue that without a healthy and vigourous manufacturing sector, those who work in the service sector won’t get many customers.
For example, close the steel works in the town where I live — perhaps by driving up energy costs via the green levy and other green stupidity and about 5% of the towns (entire) population of 65,000 would be out of a job. This means of course all those service industries like restaurants, coffee shops, shopping centres and such like would all take a massive hit.
That is reality. At least from where I’m stood.
To be honest Conservative, Lib-Dem and Labour ‘greens’ and their ilk seem to be on some sort of moral crusade to put environmental issues first….regardless of the damage done to the jobs and economy of the UK.
So let the stupid [again insert expletive of choice] drive the ‘green tax agenda’ if you like and watch them destroy UK industry in the process as ‘green taxation’ drives up the costs of energy and production but then be prepared to stand aside and watch as the production moves to Brazil, India, China and Eastern Europe.
And as for all the ‘Green’ supporters drinking their ‘Fair Trade Coffee’ and riding your bamboo bikes, no doubt you’ll feel get to feel good when the plants shut but when towns die, then no doubt, you’d start to moan about the lack of hi-tech, highly skilled jobs.
And of course the Church would then start to complain about the poverty and deprivation.
Don’t forget of course that steel is one of the most recycled materials on the planet. Virtually all of the everyday items you use are manufactured by machines and tooling made out of steel. Let’s seen the ‘greens’ – who love to fly around the world causing huge amounts of polution – actually do that on aircraft made of tree bark. Might be a bit difficult to get to all those nice cities where those sorts of conferences take place without modern transport.
The UK has one of the most hi-tech steel and metal processing industries in the world.
And the last time I checked aircraft carriers and the blast protection barriers of the House of Commons and the US embassy in the London, aren’t made out of plastic.
Big hint…..a big UK steel producer produced the steel for the items above……
I’d also like to point out that some industrial processes are inherently dirty and will cause pollution of some form, whether it is actually mining the required ore, refining and processing it or finally making the finished product – bit like the manufacturing process for the vastly expensive wind turbines that still need conventional backup power generation on-line for the days when there is no wind.
So to all the ‘Greens’ out there cheering on the utter tools that are in the HoC trying to make energy ever more expensive, I’d like to ask the following question;
“Do you want to keep heavy industry & manufacturing working or would you prefer to get all your manufacturing done over-seas?”
And of course no industry means no jobs. Or rather jobs exported elsewhere!!
Interesting choice isn’t it: insist on rigid, impossibly high environmental standards relating to the production processes in industry plus pile on ‘green energy’ costs and watch the jobs go elsewhere where rules aren’t so tight….
…or in essence let the firms get on with production, monitor pollution, live with it and keep the jobs (keeping the Blue-Greens and the Red-Greens and the Yellow-Greens and their acolytes silent and away (sorry not just away but totally remote from) any sort of power.
I wonder what shopkeepers and other traders in the area that those firms operate think! I know where I would stand and yes I am proud to call myself a fifth generation iron and steel worker.
And I live in a town in the UK not more than two miles from an integrated steel works.
So feel free to urinate all over industry by piling on additional costs of production but please don’t expect me and thousands of workers like me to cheer and stand by and say nothing.
Well I hope you feel better for revealing your contempt
But what I’d ask you is why are you so keen for profits to go untaxed?
Mr. Murphy,
I’m not that keen on profits being untaxed, I was taking up your submission at the point at which you talked about Green taxation.
I noticed that you failed to make any response to my points about ‘green taxation’ adding costs to UK firms that competitors around the world aren’t even dreaming of imposing on their own firms.
After all such ‘green taxation’ generally means a levy on the power that people and manufacturers use – this then drives up costs – when our competitors are doing nothing of the sort to hamper their industries. To give you some idea of the power requirements; a modern, high tech, large steelworks uses approx. £65,000 per day of electricity thus even tiny increases in each unit of electricity bought add massively to the final costs of production.
Once these costs get too high, works become uncompetitive and close – thus no taxation on profits but a huge demand for benefits. It is not contempt for ‘greens’ per se, but rather their blantant disregard for the real-world consequences of their actions while they still want to use all the ‘modern’ real world equipments to make their lifestyle as nice as possible even when those items are made abroad in conditions that they would not want in the UK.
Perhaps, once the BRIC economies have the same level of ‘green taxes’ imposesd on their operations by their govts. then I might be a little more sympathetic towards taxation policies that threaten to add to the costs of production in the UK.
It is not taxation at all I object to – public services have to be paid for – it is misguided ‘green taxation’ policies I object to.
You are welcome to burn the planet
I won’t
And I accept tax needs to be reformed: wait for my CLASS paper in a week or so