The Chancellor has announced that we are all going to get personal statements which give the breakdown of how our tax money was spent. That is a breakdown of the ££££ we personally paid to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs as income tax or national insurance, broken down into broad categories – eg ‘Housing & environment’ - pro rata to the share each takes of total government spending.
There will be lots of room for quibbling about the breakdown & the labels put on each category; the effect (if any) on the public perception of whether or to what extent & for what purposes they want to continue having their money hijacked & spent in this way can only be guessed at.
A Times leader has already commented that voters may be surprised to see that we still spend more on Defence than on Public Order & Safety at home; I wonder what will be the effect of the revelation that we spend more on paying the interest on our national debt than on either of those two fundamental requirements – indeed ‘debt interest’ is the single biggest category, after the two real biggies of Health & Welfare which together account for more than half of what the government need all that money for.
My main worry about the possible effect of these statements is however a more subtle one – that people might think that these services cost us, collectively, a lot less than they really do. This is because income tax & national insurance provide, between them, less than half the government’s total income & even all the other ‘hidden’ taxes which we pay, one way or another, fail to fill the gap - the Chancellor still needs to borrow, in our name, nearly £1 in every £7 that he spends.
The personal statements I fear will also serve only to make rates of income tax even more the focus of the fairness debate by ignoring indirect taxes which, other things being equal we would expect the rich to pay more of simply because they buy more of everything
True fairness demands that we also, each & everyone of us (including babies) should receive an annual personal invoice which shows the true cost of all the benefits, goods & services bestowed upon us by ‘the government’ which have cost our fellow taxpayers so dear.
But – one step at a time. It’s a long journey
