I will be spending much of today with medical professionals. They're also activists. We'll be talking about health care and tax justice.
In my opinion the two are inextricably linked. Tax justice is, I think correctly, focussed on the mechanisms for creating appropriate and fair distributions of both liability and collection within tax systems, but I know of no one who is linked to it that does not think this is a process linked to tax outcomes.
Good healthcare for all is a tax outcome; it cannot happen without tax. I am well aware there are those on the right who argue otherwise but I do not think either the USA or Singapore prove otherwise.
The questions for the day then are to ask how these links be made explicit and how can awareness of them be raised?
Right now the link between austerity and services has become apparent, but that focusses on the spend element of the tax and spend cycle. What about the tax bit?
And does tax have a greater role to play in creating healthy behaviour?
Is it appropriate as well to ask about the tax dimensions of NHS privatisation - where, I can assure you,mtax havens feature in a big way?
Plus, is the NHS the right way to draw attention to the tax gap?
I am sure these are some if the questions that will be asked. And there will be others, I am sure.
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I believe that health care, including care for the elderly infirm, is a perfect candidate for hypothecation. Like NICS (which only part funds it now) it would include contributions from employers, but covering all personal income and not stopping at retirement. It can then be seen clearly as health insurance. SERPS for pensions could then replace current NICS. This would be anathema to my fellow LVT campaigners (Georgists) who don’t like tax at all;o)
carol -would it be fair to say that the ‘Georgists’ are low tax/small Government but are also anti oligarchy/Kleptocracy and see capitalism itself as wealth distributing (in the JS Mill sense)?
Georgists consider that LVT is not a tax. And it is not actually, it’s a fee for exclusive use of part of the commons. They believe in ATCOL (All Taxes Come Out of Land). Therefore LVT could provide all government expenditure. With a ‘small state’ this would allow sufficient revenue to provide a citizen’s income as well. I am sure that LVT would make capitalism function better, so am personally conflicted.
Carole, it seems to me that in light of what is currently happening at present anyone who still believes in ‘small state’ economics is deluded. The failure of ‘small state’ thinking is writ large in the current flooding across the country. LVT can only work as part of a ‘big government’ model. What value is there now in the vast swathes of the Somerset levels or large parts of East Anglia that lie under water? If the value of the land is to be protected against the vicissitudes of climate change it will require huge investment on the part of central and local government. (It would probably require something in the order of £15-20 billion for Cameron to make good on his ‘money no object’ pledge, for example. And that would simply be for remediation and a degree of future-proofing. There would of course be a corollary cost for ongoing maintenance).
Without such large-scale investment by Government LVT slips into a spiral of diminishing returns, as the amount of usable UK land (and hence taxation) decreases.
As for ATCOL what of those companies who in an age of global, digital-based trading need only the most notional physical footprint in the country? I can only presume your colleagues are share-holders in Amazon, not Waterstones…
I am a believer in LVT, but as a part of the solution, not the whole of the answer. And it can only work as a tool of the ‘big state’s.
Richard -Has there been any totting up of the amount of public money spent on privatisation processes affecting the NHS over the last two decades? It must be astronomical, surely?
Not sure…..aboyt data that is
We could punitively tax foodstuffs containing refined carbohydrates. That’d save billions in healthcare.
A 1 percent tax on all currency speculation? How much would that raise? 🙂 And what government would have the b***s to do it? 🙂
0.01% s the demand
The revenue raised us open to dispute
I’m sure you’re right, but isn’t the money generated on the currency markets something like £1 trillion a week?
That is a conservative estimate, so I’ve heard. £52 trillion a year taxed at 1 percent equals £520 billion potentially, does it not?
It may have the added benefit of killing off currency speculation too.
But less than 1% is made in those trades
I agree with putting a spanner in the works of much socially unproductive financial speculation but the tax yield is then zero.
I see. I do see the value of bringing in a tax to at least curb speculation, though.
I’m cannot say for certain, but I would imagine the trades and money made is a little more than 0.01% as Me Worstall is implying.
Even though £10,400,000,000 per year on average is certainly not an insignificant amount, I would suspect more is made.
Actually, I misread what Tim Worstall said! At 0.01% over a year would be, according to my calculator at any rate, £72.8 billion.
Would it not be possible to tax the gains rather than the turnover? This would have to be taxed at 5 to 10% to make it worthwhile, however.
Turnover in FX in London is more like $2 trillion a day.
However, at a 1% tax the revenue would be zero. For the market would cease to exist.
Margins on FX trades are in the region of 1 basis point. 0.01%. The 0.01% called for as the Tobin (or Robin Hood) tax would kill off much of the trade as well. So revenue would be paltry at best.
Richard says he wants to reduce the trade as the purpose of the tax, something I profoundly disagree with. But that is at least logical in its own terms: the idea of gaining significant revenue from such a tax is not.
There’s a good reason why Sir John Mirrlees, a Nobel Laureate for his study of taxation systems, advises that a transactions tax is an extremely bad tax indeed.
Also why he advises that if you want more tax from finance then put it into the VAT system.