{"id":35370,"date":"2016-11-16T06:35:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T06:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=35370"},"modified":"2016-11-16T06:35:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T06:35:29","slug":"would-a-citizens-income-reduce-tax-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/11\/16\/would-a-citizens-income-reduce-tax-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Would a citizen&#8217;s income reduce tax abuse?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spent yesterday afternoon at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales discussing <a href=\"http:\/\/citizensincome.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Citizen's Income<\/a>. This is not the time to note the details of the discussion. The concept can be summarised as a right to be paid an income as of right subject to the following conditions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u2018Unconditional\u2019<\/strong>: A Citizen\u2019s Income would vary with age, but there would be no other conditions: so everyone of the same age would receive the same Citizen\u2019s Income, whatever their gender, employment status, family structure, contribution to society, housing costs, or anything else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u2018Automatic\u2019<\/strong>: Someone\u2019s Citizen\u2019s Income would be paid weekly or monthly, automatically.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u2018Nonwithdrawable\u2019<\/strong>: Citizen\u2019s Incomes would not be means-tested. If someone\u2019s earnings or wealth increased, then their Citizen\u2019s Income would not change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u2018Individual\u2019<\/strong>: Citizen\u2019s Incomes would be paid on an individual basis, and not on the basis of a couple or household.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u2018As a right of citizenship\u2019<\/strong>: Everybody legally resident in the UK would receive a Citizen\u2019s Income, subject to a minimum period of legal residency in the UK, and continuing residency for most of the year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This would, then, replace almost all benefits and the state pension. It's a concept I have argued for in The Joy of Tax because it resolves very large numbers of problems with our existing benefits\u00a0systems, including poor take up (vastly more benefits\u00a0are unclaimed than are subject to fraudulent claim), the poverty trap when people transition to work and many issues relating to child poverty.<\/p>\n<p>An issue raised is affordability. I am convinced it is affordable; it just requires a change of mindset. An issue I raised yesterday was that most modelling is static: behavioural changes are hard to predict. Some say many would choose not to work: they would rather sit at home. Candidly, I greatly doubt that because most people seem to have a strong social desire to work. Others say it may force changes in the labour market by creating demands for better jobs tat employers could not meet. Actually, I think that would solve many of the UK's productivity issues.<\/p>\n<p>But the one behavioural response rarely considered is on tax compliance. If a universal basic income of significant amount was payable the incentive to be in the tax system would be high. The wholly unknown taxpayer would be much smaller in number. Yields are likely to grow as a result. I believe that this factor alone may considerably help the process of paying for a citizen's income. It's an idea needing more investigation by those who really work in this area, I suggest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent yesterday afternoon at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales discussing Citizen&#8217;s Income. This is not the time to note the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/11\/16\/would-a-citizens-income-reduce-tax-abuse\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[35,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35370","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=35370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}