{"id":3596,"date":"2009-04-14T10:08:12","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T08:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/04\/14\/the-privilege-of-tax\/"},"modified":"2009-04-14T10:08:12","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T08:08:12","slug":"the-privilege-of-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/04\/14\/the-privilege-of-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"The privilege of tax"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s against the rules to reproduce three letters from the Guardian in a day, but I had a hand in two and I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2009\/apr\/14\/tax-avoidance-wealthy\" target=\"_blank\">can&rsquo;t resist this one<\/a> because of the sheer abundant relevance of much (most) of it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Three cheers for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2009\/apr\/11\/tax-alistair-darling\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Wilby's timely call<\/a> for a radical reform of the tax system, and not least for an end to the myth, so convenient to high earners, that progressive taxation is a disincentive to effort and innovation. And while we're about it, why not ditch the negative concept of taxation as a &quot;burden&quot; and talk about &quot;the privilege of taxation&quot; instead? I'm quite sure that those of us at or below the average income of around \u00a323,000 a year would be delighted to be taxed at 50% if our taxable incomes were more than \u00a350,000 a year, never mind the government's rather pathetic 45% for incomes over \u00a3150,000. It's time our highly paid politicians got real.      <br \/><strong>Peter Wrigley       <br \/><\/strong>Birstall, Yorkshire<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s against the rules to reproduce three letters from the Guardian in a day, but I had a hand in two and I<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/04\/14\/the-privilege-of-tax\/\"><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":[10,55,32,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-avoidance","category-tax-evasion","category-tax-havens","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596","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=3596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}