What have obesity, misbehaving banks, unaffordable London housing and farting cows all got in common? They are all problems which, according to various campaigners over the past week or so, can be cured through the imposition of new taxes. Those calling for fiscal therapy included the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which suggested a 20 per cent levy on sugary drinks, the Liberal Democrats, who want wealthy home-owners to be subjected to a new mansion tax, and the Swedish Board of Agriculture, which wants a levy on meat to reduce methane production from livestock.
All these, of course, come on top of the EU’s proposed tax on financial transactions, the repeated attempts by elements in the British Medical Association for a tax on fatty foods, and the demands of Lib Dem activists this week for a tax on jewellery. The world, it seems, is full of budding Chancellors of the Exchequer, who dream of solving the world’s problems through ever more ingenious levies and charges.
There is nothing, they believe, which cannot be put right with one wave of their imaginary red briefcases. We have arrived at a strange inversion of pork-barrel politics: rather than devise a giveaway to tempt each voter’s snout into the barrel, our political parties have taken to devising taxes that appeal to every voter’s pet hate. Anti-car? Vote for us for a new tax on cars. Anti-housing estates? Vote for us for a new tax on housing development.
There is one fundamental problem with the idea that society’s ills can be cured through tax. If taxes are a cure-all, then why do we have any problems left? In under three years, the Chancellor has already introduced 254 new taxes or rises in existing taxes, and this on top of a decade of fiscal innovation on an unparalleled scale, which has given us landfill taxes, air passenger duty, carbon credits, aggregates duties, congestion charges, the Community Infrastructure Levy and many others.
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