"When I was 21, I
attended a meeting at my trustee’s office in London. The old head of the firm,
who wore pince nez spectacles, striped trousers and a blacktail coat, pushed
this letter across the green baize tablecloth from the Inland Revenue demanding
tax on three quarters of all my income stretching back to when I was 12." Haley Mills
IN THE YEARS leading up to my puberty, at which point sex
imposes itself on the innocence of childhood love, I had a deep crush on Haley
Mills. Today she gives an interview in the Sunday
Telegraph, where she speaks of being
put in the supertax bracket of 90% in the 1970s, and how her father helped her
fight this iniquitous practice by thieving class war Labour politicians; cheered
on by the envy of their supporters. She was eventually saved by Lord Denning; " I fought it like crazy. It went
through five years of Court of Appeal, Commissioners and then up to the House
of Lords. Lord Denning, who headed the Court of Appeal, found in my favour but
he had to grant HMRC the right to appeal. It went back to the Lords, who did
everything by the book, and bingo!…"
It does
not matter how much a person works to earn or make, taxing the rich more than
anyone else should never be taken to such extremes as it was in the 1970s by
Labour governments. Michael Cain, who I read the other day tries legally to
avoid paying his full whack, was one of those, like Ms Mills who was expected
to hand over 90% of his income in the 1970s, but rightly fled abroad to avoid
such legalised theft; and if he finds a way of legally not handing over 40% of
is earnings (earnings remember) then
I support him, and anybody else with ambition to succeed.
This
addiction by the state to dip their hands so freely into people's wallets, is a
relatively new phenomenon in our nation's history. It used to be the case that
if a man or women worked all the hours under the sun; they had every right to
keep that which they had laboured to earn and spend it how they wished to spend
it without any portion being taken from them by politicians, who always believe
they know better how to spend other people's money, than the people themselves.
The outrageousness of this state of affairs would have been apparent to earlier
generations; but, since the end of the war, Robin Hood type taxation Ms Mills
experienced is the real villain.
The
direct taxation people pay according to their earnings is between 20% and 40%[1] of income. Which means
even at the lower level of one fifth (a day's wages and a day's work) is handed
over to the government. So for one day a week a worker effectively works for the
government. But remember this is only direct taxation. If it ended here it may
not seem so bad; but this is not the end, only the beginning of the great state
fleecing of the people that even the Sherriff of Nottingham would have been
proud to have been able to emulate.
INDIRECT TAXATION
comes on top of the direct kind; and the different forms of this are
legion. Let me list some of them: National Insurance, Corporation Tax, Capital
Gains Tax, Alcohol Duty, Air Passenger Duty, Tobacco Duty, Fuel Duty, VAT,
Stamp Duty and Land Tax, Gambling Duty, Climate Change Levy, Landfill Tax,
Vehicle Excise Duty, Business Rates, Capital Gains Tax, Company Car Tax, Bank
Levy, Venture Capital Tax, Switzerland Tax, Inheritance Tax, Company Car Tax,
Carbon Price Floor, and HGV Road Users Levy.
Indirect
taxation is the great smoke screen that the politicians have over the decades
added to direct taxation. By doing so they either sought to raise revenue for
public spending, or to help lower previous deficits. The Labour Party were part
of the former, and the Conservatives, the latter. It was Labour under Tony
Blair who promised, if you remember, not to raise direct taxation during his
first term in office. But new and old forms of indirect taxation made up the
shortfall.
Both
parties have in their way added to the bounty of the Exchequer but for different
reasons. Labour believes in taxing, borrowing, printing, and above all spending. The Conservatives use to
believe in small government, and minimal taxation, believing that the people
themselves knew best how to spend their own money – money hard earned, and as
much part of their private property, as the houses they live in, whether rented
or privately owned.
TAXATION SHOULD never be seen as a passive, acceptable
practice that it has now come to be seen by both parties, but particularly the
Conservative Party. Taxation takes money from people who have worked hard in
order to provide for their families. Income Tax, first of all should be the
only tax demanded from any government from its people. These indirect taxes are
acts of larceny by our elected representatives, who believe, for instance, that
the freezing of fuel duty on petrol represents some sort of favour given by
them to the road user. It is no such thing, especially after that latest price
drops in a barrel of oil. The government demands the vehicle owner pays not only the price at the pumps; but a
fuel duty on the petrol purchased; on top of which VAT is also incurred. Yet a
government spokesman has the audacity to demand that the petrol stations drop
their petrol prices by two pence a litre.
Indirect
taxation, probably accrues more revenue for the exchequer than does direct
taxation. But when I hear that the country's financial sector - the City of London; coughs up £20 billion a
year in what I suppose to be Corporation Tax, or various other little heard of and little
understood appendages to such a tax accumulated within the Red Book at every
budget; I begin to wonder why such banking talent is being so much maligned
- £20 billion after all, buys a lot of
hospitals, schools, or houses.
HALEY MILLS was right to stand her ground when she did.
She earned her money. It belonged to her and nobody else. Nevertheless she
would have been no doubt willing to pay a reasonable amount of tax comparable
to the PAY E of the ordinary worker at the time. She was a child star earning
amounts of money that would have been deemed exorbitant by a Labour government
of the 1970s; but it had no right to demand
a 90% super tax from her, or any
other 'wealthy person' by vindictive lefties.
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