Taxing questions
Sir: Fraser Nelson writes (‘A tale of two Gordons’, 2 May) that internal Treasury documents justify the 50p tax rate on the basis that ‘Karl Marx’s progressive tax structure was designed so that the tax burden was heaviest on those who were most able to contribute’.
Certainly, Labour spokespersons daily repeat this cosy doctrine about the taxation of the rich, in exactly these words. But where is Marx supposed to have said it?
For Marx, the demand for progressive taxation was purely part of his revolutionary programme to destroy existing social institutions, not to make them fairer. In his time, the most that reformers were demanding was that all rich people should pay the same amount in tax as everybody else. But if a reforming government did become more radical, he said, and should come to propose proportional taxation, ‘the workers must demand progressive taxes’. Then, if a reforming government should put forward a moderately progressive tax, ‘the workers must insist on a tax that rises so steeply that big capital will be ruined by it’. As far as I know, that is the only line that Marx ever followed on either flat, proportionate or progressive taxation.
It would be interesting to discover whether the writer of the Treasury memo is simply ignorant of what Marx actually had to say on the subject, or knows it only too well.
Norman Dennis
Director of Community Studies, Civitas
London, SW1
Sir: Fraser Nelson is a logical man, so could he please answer the following points. The Thatcherite wing of the Conservative party cite 1979-1990 as a period of industrial and entrepreneurial renaissance for UK Plc. Until 1988, however, the top rate of income tax was set at 60 per cent. Michael Caine was warmly welcomed back from tax exile by Margaret Thatcher during this period. So why is there all this fuss about 50 per cent?
Of course, no one disputes that the reduction of the top rate from 83 per cent was a sensible idea. There is, however, no evidence at all that the further reduction to 40 per cent was fiscally productive. President Bush Sr saw and lamented the consequences in the US of similar measures: more real estate and stock speculation and the beginning of a derivative market to mop up the tax windfalls that the Reaganites bestowed on America’s wealthiest. There is no evidence to make sacrosanct the 40 per cent level, which was the arbitrary choice of a history-minded Nigel Lawson.
Alan Sharples
Via email
Funded by the fat
Sir: Dan Jones repeats and amplifies an obvious canard, accusing fat people of overconsuming society’s resources in the form of healthcare expenditures (‘No sacred right to be a slob’, 25 April). There are two obvious flaws in his argument. First, if you consult an unbiased healthcare actuary, you will see that most of the money spent on anyone’s medical care (thin or fat) is spent during their final illness. Expenses incurred along the way are relatively minor, even for a diabetic.
Second, by dying at a younger age, the fat save society vast sums in unpaid pensions. How many fat 80-year-olds do you see? Hardly any. The fat pay taxes all their working lives, then die years earlier than their thin and healthy neighbours. As it is, the fat are actually subsidising the thin. So instead of offering tax rebates to the thin, as Mr Jones suggests, the government should institute a fitness tax on thin people to help pay for their extra years of indolent leisure. The same goes for non-smokers.
John Klein
Florida, USA
Bad maths
Sir: Rod Liddle (Liddle Britain, 2 May) makes a convincing argument for the claim that Harriet Harman lacks an understanding of the differences between the sexes. However, her (and possibly his) understanding of maths is just as suspect. From the fact that men earn 20 per cent more than women it does not follow that women earn 20 per cent less. The correct figure is actually just under 17 per cent.
John Campbell
London SE3
In the hands of the Taleban
Sir: Brahma Chellaney rightly claims (‘India is in peril. Obama is making it worse’, 2 May) that the Taleban are Pakistan’s strategic partners, not enemies. The Swat peace agreement signed between Pakistan and the Taleban was meant to confine the latter to the Swat Valley, which would have provided them with much-needed strategic depth within Pakistan, resulting in enhancing their spatial manoeuvrability against the Nato forces. However, by stepping out of the Valley, the Taleban breached the agreement. The army will now act to make sure that they are pushed back to the Swat Valley. But no effort will be made to disarm or finish off the Taleban.
Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province are controlled by the Taleban. No real progress on international terrorism can be made unless the West finds a way of liberating these areas from their control. As Pakistan has neither the intention nor the foresight to take on the Taleban, is it not time that the FATA and NWFP provinces were temporarily detached from Pakistan and placed under UN trusteeship?
Randhir Singh Bains
Gants Hill, Essex
Pollster power
Sir: Fraser Nelson tells us that ‘the pollsters… have all too great an influence in the shaping of Tory policy’. Up to a point, Lord Copper. For years the polls have revealed that a substantial majority of the public have a perfectly reasonable aversion not to the EU but to their country’s slavish obedience and relentless capitulation to Brussels. These poll findings are continually ignored or dismissed with contempt. Can the towering intellects grouped within your portals explain why this one single subject is to our entire ruling class, Tory leadership included, like a needleful of heroin?
Frederick Forsyth
Hertford
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