I gave at the Quakers\u2019 Yearly Meeting in Bath in 2014 from which the following extract is taken:<\/span><\/p>\nAt its core tax justice demands that each person pay the right amount of tax at the right time, in the right place and at the right rate.<\/em><\/p>\nRight has a special meaning here. It means that not only do you comply with the law. Tax avoiders can claim they do that. It does not even mean that you comply with the spirit of the law \u2014 which is what HM Revenue & Customs expect. It is about putting this desire to do the right thing into action, so that what is declared for tax purposes reflects the economic reality of what the taxpayer has actually done.<\/em><\/p>\nThat, at least, has been our usual explanation of the term\u00a0<\/em>\u2018right\u2019\u00a0but the reality is that it reflects something broader than that. It is our belief that we are people who live in\u00a0<\/em>community. But that community is not made up of those immediately known to us, as neoliberalism might, at best,\u00a0 suppose. We think that\u00a0 community between people\u00a0<\/em>known\u00a0and unknown is something that is a pre-requisite for a life well lived.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0Without that community there would be a continual struggle to preserve ownership of property, to secure the means for survival, and to maintain the boundaries around communities that are necessary if it is to invest in its own identity, traditions and future, as all do, for a community does reflect a culture, even if it is one that should develop and evolve over time.<\/em><\/p>\nTax\u00a0provides the mechanism to achieve these aims in a non-violent way. It\u2019s not just that it pays for the process of government that defines in turn the extent of the community, the way it identifies and transfers property rights, and which protects its more vulnerable members: tax does this in a democracy with the willing consent of the members of that society. That combination of consent and tax takes away as a consequence the cause for much dispute. As a result,\u00a0<\/em>tax\u00a0is one of the foundations of peace.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0We pay a price for this: indeed\u00a0 American Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said in a speech in 1904 that\u00a0 \u2018Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society\u2019. I would agree. But I would go further than that. I would suggest that we don\u2019t as such pay taxes. The funds that they represent are, I suggest, in\u00a0<\/em>fact\u00a0the property of the state. After all, if we give the state the power to define what we can own, how we can own it and what we can do with it \u2014 and we do \u2014 then\u00a0 I would argue that we also give the state the right to say that some part of what we earn or own is actually its rightful property and that we have no choice but pay that tax owed as the quid pro quo of the benefit we enjoy from living in community.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0This philosophy is, of course just about the polar opposite of that of the neoliberal who thinks that all taxation is, in effect, theft of the private property of the individual that the state must, by coercion and threats wrest\u00a0 from their possession.\u00a0 That notion of tax as theft is, by the way, commonplace in neoliberal thinking. Its expression in milder form gives rise to the term used by politicians of all parties in recent years when they talk about spending\u00a0 \u2018taxpayers\u2019 money\u2019, with the clear implication that the government really does not own the funds in its possession. Well let me inform you that there is no such thing as \u2018taxpayers\u2019 money\u2019: it is the government\u2019s money to do what it will with in accordance with the mandate it has been given and for which it will have to account. It is the government\u2019s money precisely because we owe it to them in accordance with the laws that we, by consent, have agreed to comply with and which underpins the society of which we are a part and in which we wish to live in reasonably peaceful harmony.<\/em><\/p>\n\u2013\u2014<\/em><\/p>\nIn so saying, of course, let me make clear that there is taxpayer\u2019s money: it is the money they have the absolute right to enjoy after they have paid their tax. I genuinely struggle to see why some have such difficulty in understanding this glaringly obvious concept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is a recurring theme of this blog that the money that \u00a0the government spends is not ‘taxpayer’s money’ but is instead money that is
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