{"id":94879,"date":"2026-08-13T07:57:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=94879"},"modified":"2026-08-13T15:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:08:22","slug":"why-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/08\/13\/why-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Why tax?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since I wrote my book 'The Joy of Tax<\/a>', I have argued that there are six reasons to tax, none of which have anything to do with raising revenue to fund central government in a country like the UK.<\/p>\n

Getting this on an infographic took some work. I hope I have succeeded. Please let me know:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Note: Typos in boxes 1 and 4 have now been corrected.<\/p>\n

How to expand this image<\/b><\/p>\n

If you press CTRL or Command and Plus (+) on your keyboard, your browser should increase the size of your page every time you do this. Press CTRL or Command and the 0 (zero) key together to restore the screen to normal.
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

How to download this image.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

If you right-click the image, you should be given the option to download it to your computer. It is much easier to download it<\/a> from our image library.
\n\u00a0<\/b>
\nThe image library<\/b>
\n\u00a0<\/b>
\nWe have a library of these images. It is\u00a0available here<\/a>. All downloads are free, but donations help our work.<\/p>\n

AI use<\/b><\/p>\n

I wrote this infographic. I used AI to draw it, under my direction, until I was satisfied with the result (which took many attempts). I explain how I use AI here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since I wrote my book ‘The Joy of Tax’, I have argued that there are six reasons to tax, none of which have anything
 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":[204,35,236,147,174,224,106,223,98,97,12,150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-household-budget-myth","category-inequality","category-modern-monetary-theory","category-neoliberalism","category-politics","category-politics-of-care","category-progressive-taxation","category-tax-justice","category-tax-management","category-wealth-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94879","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=94879"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94892,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94879\/revisions\/94892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}