{"id":25621,"date":"2014-08-03T17:45:06","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T16:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=25621"},"modified":"2014-08-03T17:45:06","modified_gmt":"2014-08-03T16:45:06","slug":"tax-is-the-natural-frontier-for-general-election-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/08\/03\/tax-is-the-natural-frontier-for-general-election-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax is the natural frontier for general election debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Observer's main editorial today<\/a> is headlined:<\/p>\n

\n

On tax, our politicians are just too cowardly<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I promise that as the author of The\u00a0Courageous State<\/a> who specialises in writing on tax more than anything else I did not write this headline, although I agree with it. I also agree with the conclusion, which was:<\/p>\n

\n

The slimmer the majority, the louder spin doctors' warnings ring in our leaders' ears and the greater the inclination to tell the public they can have their cake and eat it on the NHS and care. We shouldn't have to rely on secret recordings to learn what politicians really think about tax. But we may have to for some time yet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It's my belief that tax \u00a0should be the key issue at the heart of debate in the next general election campaign. In saying so I am not referring to peripheral issues like the mansion tax or the 50p tax rate. These, candidly, make little difference to our overall tax system, however much heat they generate. Nor do I think \u00a0the debate should \u00a0be dominated by any of the camps that are identified by the Observer, \u00a0such as the economists who discuss disincentive effects, spin doctors who only consider the impact on focus groups, technocrats who only discuss how to beat evasion (to which group, on occasion, \u00a0it might be suggested that I subscribe), \u00a0or even philosophers who discuss the fair imposition of the overall tax take. \u00a0Each of these proposes far too narrow a focus \u00a0by themselves.<\/p>\n

Instead, I think that the general election debate should be about the nature of the society that we want. \u00a0To put it very bluntly, but entirely fairly, \u00a0do we want to live in a society where we are indifferent to the needs of others and are willing to abandon our commitment to them to the point where some live in hunger, despair, deprivation and even pain because we are not willing to contribute to their well-being or do we instead wish to live in a society where care for each other is our paramount concern, not just for the selfish reason that we have no idea in what situation we might find ourselves in the future, but because it is simply the right thing to empathise with others who \u00a0at this point in time \u00a0do not enjoy the best of fortune for whatever the reason?<\/p>\n

The first of these options will, undoubtedly, be on the general election agenda. It is my wish that the \u00a0alternative is as well. If that happens then the nature of the tax system is the natural frontier on \u00a0which debate should take place. \u00a0If it isn't \u00a0then, in itself, the general election will fail to address the issues that this country really faces at this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Observer’s main editorial today is headlined: On tax, our politicians are just too cowardly I promise that as the author of The\u00a0Courageous State who
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}