Fair taxes

The Sunday Herald asked me to write a comment piece on taxation for today's paper. Taxation is a subject that politicians hate to talk about. However, in the current financial crisis we need to have a grown up debate about the relationship between quality public services and the tax needed to finance them.

And not just any old tax. Examples of fair taxation include:

£4.7bn could be raised every year by introducing a 50% tax rate on incomes over £100,000.

£14.9bn could be raised every year by using minimum tax rates to stop reliefs being used to disproportionately subsidise incomes over £100,000.


£20-30bn could be raised every year by introducing a Major Financial Transactions Tax (or "Robin Hood Tax‟) on UK financial institutions.
 
Fair taxation also has a redistributive impact, creating a more equal society. As we know from the work by Wilkinson and others - more equal societies do better in almost every way.