My Annual Tax Rant

It’s coming up to that time of year when I have to pay my taxes again. That means I have made a profit so I should be happy right?

WRONG!

I’ve been thinking about all the taxes I pay.

When I employed 300 people my corporation tax bill one year was over £1 million. I’m sure the government think they invested it wisely into spanky new offices for their latest regulatory quango’s but I’m sure I could have invested it better into my business and created jobs that create real wealth.

This is the tip of the iceberg though. Some would say that I should pay higher taxes “Rob the rich to feed the poor” they say. However, every one of my employees was also robbed on taxes by a government who thought they could better invest the money.

It’s not just income tax that stings. What about Council Tax? I live in a big house and there is no street lighting. The road leading to it is unadopted so I have to contribute to repairs. My daughter went to a private school, the crime rate is low in the area and I pay for private medical care. If I want a bigger wheely bin though I have to pay extra.  Why, therefore, should I pay more council tax simply because I live in a house that’s bigger than I need?

I own a few cars but I can only drive one at a time so why do I have to pay road tax for each of them?

I sometimes wonder how much of my taxes are wasted in the process of just collecting them. VAT is a good example of making an industry out of taxes. Now we are all paying 20%.

I heard recently that a person earning £12,000 in the UK pays £7,200 in taxes when all taxes are taken into account. That’s hardly robbing the rich to feed the poor is it?

Just imagine what life could be like with no taxes at all for say 90% of the population. Some might say it would be anarchy but there’s proof that it wouldn’t and I’ll come on to that shortly.

If the entire public sector was privitised there’s no doubt it would run more efficiently. The largest employer in the UK is the health service. A huge chunk of our taxes pay for this service which is monopolised by the government and yet we have the worst rated health service in the developed world. A compulsory insurance scheme similar to the one in Germany could soon fix this.

Toll roads could easily replace road taxes.

Our public sector accounts for 53% of all jobs. If we assume that everybody paid 25% tax that would mean that 4 people would have to be employed by the private sector to pay for the public sector. However, that’s not the case so it’s easy to see why the country is getting deeper and deeper into debt. Even communist China only has 25% employed in the public sector. That’s less than half of what we have in the UK!

If the vast majority of the public sector could be privatised and 90% of taxes could be abolished we might have a chance to put the GREAT back into Britain.

Labour could be so much cheaper and companies would choose to move their manufacturing to the UK as a result, thus creating more jobs and bringing wealth back into the country. People would be incentivised to make something of their lives as the benefits system would disappear for all but the most vulnerable. Take away benefits, add jobs and even the laziest people will work to feed themselves.

I take little comfort in that a judge once ruled that it is perfectly legal for me to organise my affairs to pay the minimum amounts of tax. However, for now that’s what I have to live with so that’s what I do. I’d much rather be paying my accountant to help me grow my business though.

By the way, there is one country that has done pretty much what I’m suggesting here. It’s called Hong Kong and believe it or not it was a British man who created the framework for their success.

I’m not into politics and I don’t have all the answers. I just fancied a rant! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. If not, I hope you will find it therapeutic to post your response. Having got this off my chest I now feel a lot better. Re-motivated to continue to build my own business/property empire.

RANT OVER

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