The Anonymous Widower

Do 50% Tax Rates Work?

I don’t think so, except for financial advisors and accountants.

When the rate gets too high, people see an increasing amount of their money going in taxes and do something about it.

I remember, an accountant once told me of a client, who asked him to cut the amount he paid in tax. The client by the way had a small but successful manufacturing company.  He told the client to leave some of the money he didn’t need in the business and invest it to make the business grow. The tax bill went down, but the wealth of the client’s company grew. I just looked it up on the Internet and its even bigger. Sadly the accountant carried on smoking like a chimney and died of lung cancer.

So I’m in favour of reducing the tax rate and removing the loopholes.  This incidentally, is what Mrs. Thatcher did and the tax take rose.  It also made a lot of accountants and financial advisors unemployed.

You could argue that we need a very simple tax system, that everybody on the Dalston Omnibus could understand.

But no government would ever do this, as they’d have to deal with large numbers of irate civil servants.

September 11, 2011 - Posted by AnonW | News | Cancer, Politics, Smoking, Tax