Call me Friar Tuck

Alternatives to the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition's cuts agenda emerge all the time. The IMF of all people have backed the idea of a "Robin Hood Tax" on financial transactions.

This hasn't been widely reported, and instead we get the usual stream of lurid headlines about public spending cuts. I'm not sure if the IMF's plans are strictly along the lines of the RHT campaign given that this calls for the money to be used specifically to tackle poverty and climate change at home and abroad.

Still, using the money to bolster public investment would be infinitely better than the reverse Robin Hood syndrome the UK government is currently implementing. Their plans will hit the poorest hardest.

As well as the £20bn that the RHT would raise, Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK has demonstrated the same amount could be brought in though a bit work to chip at the tax gap that exists. Instead, the Tories and Lib Dems are cutting HMRC operations too.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander will say that he announced extra money for tax collection this week. However, this is less than the amount that is to be cut from this work.

The coalition government have got no right to be instigating losses of jobs and essential services without having made any serious effort to get the income levels up. This is after all what has increased the deficit in the first place. They have no plan for growth, and any time new money is identified such as the £7bn they say they are going to raise through better tax collection, or through better than expected growth figures for the last few months, the news is not accompanied by good news of less cuts. That's what makes the spending vandalism ideological, and not necessary.

Instead we are treated to constant infantile similitudes with tightening household spending, which Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg treated us to again yesterday in his conference speech. Family finances are nothing like those of a state, but if we take Clegg's comparison, he is about to make members of his own family jobless and hungry in a wanton act of domestic violence.

Comments

[joe kane]

I thought these might be of interest.

'Tax gap' widens in UK to £42billion, £1,600 per home
Telegraph
16 Sept 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8007429/Tax-gap-widens-in-UK-to-42billion-1600-per-home.html

Official government info on the £42 billion taxes it doesn't collect -
Measuring Tax Gaps
HM Revenue & Customs
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/measuring-tax-gaps.htm

War on Want reckons tax cheats cost the country £100 billion a year, yet the government only plan to collect a measly 7% of that -
Tax dodging - who pays?
War on Want
http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/tax-dodging

[joe kane]

Instead of blaming the sick and the poor for the economic crisis and promising to go after the odd billion or two defrauded out the government from DWP welfare benefit,
maybe the ConDem government should go after the £120 billion a year tax cheats -

Revenue bosses massively underestimate billions in missing tax
Public and Commercial Services Union
17 Sept 2010
http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/F0B38940-69C2-4EFD-BBE04E6652F382F3

As someone remarked on a Facebook group - collect tax, scrap Trident, bring troops home from illegal foreign wars abroad - economy sorted!

All the best.