Lib Dems to scrap council tax

Nah, that's just a fudge, which neither end of the political spectrum would support.

Except you end up with some people not able to afford to pay their "share" for keeping public services running, or not having enough money to keep everything running.

Discourages those with skills/talent/luck from working to the best of their ability. Many will probably simply leave the country, rather than do without any reward whatsoever.

OK, take two individuals; one on 15K per year, the other on 15M per year.

Assume flat-rate tax at 30% (mid-way between current marginal rates of ~20% and 40%). The first individual now has 10.5K to live on, but the second individual has 10.5M to live on.

Compare that with taxing the first individual at 20%, leaving them with

GSV is right that everything else /is/ a fudge, but what in life isn't?

Personally, I favour progressive taxation, a greatly-simplified tax code (i.e. a single, progressive annualised income tax, replacing NI, income tax and council tax - and maybe VAT too (or replace it with an "environmental impact tax") - payable pro-rata according to how many partial months one is resident in the UK), and less bureaucracy in government and the public services (e.g. the current trend for seemingly excessive performance monitoring in health and education) as a means of reducing the overall amount of tax that must be collected.

Best Regards, Alex.

Taxes in this country aren't hypothecated. Some road services _are_ provided by councils.

Irrespective of specific incidents having a police force reduces crime and creates a safer community. Have you ever lived in a community without an effective police force (e.g., parts of Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia and so forth). We take a lot of things for granted and then gripe about the odd bad experience.

Who paid for their education? You are a net cost to the state in your youth and your taxes over your working life make you a net contributor.

Also the benefits for education are not simply directly to you. I like thea that local kids are in school, learning rather than nicking cars or mugging old ladies. I like the idea that when I'm in hospital the people treating me have been to school and then college. If you run a business presumably you like the idea that you can recruit people who have some education (e.g., can read, write and count).

You benefit from a society that has a critical mass of educated people everday day, directly or indirectly. Try living in a country where most people can't read and where technical skills are rare. It might be fun for a while until you get ill, the electricity (if you have any) gets cut off, the temperature drops ...

Thom

Why? Is it fair that the poorest people in society pay more of their income on council tax and VAT than the richest?

You can define fairness in a different way from the way I define it, but you can't expect me to agree with your assertion. Fairness as a concept is inherently about more than one person. It isn't, however, a simple concept to apply in practice when there are multiple perspectives or contraints.

Why not? A subsidy can be fair, though it might not be. Just think about it.

e.g., is it fair that a child born to a rich family should receive better medical care than one born to a poor family. Neither child has earned their access to medical care.

Thom

Anecdotally, people only seem to do so if they are very wealthy or have dodgy interests.

Thom

interests.

They are the only ones who make the news. The 100,000 or so others don't.