The public want honesty on tax. So why won't politicians give it to them?
We often say we want our politicians to be honest. Yet the nature of politics has in the past made honesty difficult for progressive politicians.
This is most apparent in debates over tax and spending. In Britain austerity has meant deep spending cuts but, perversely, generous income tax cuts too – as if the two are completely unrelated. When taxes have been increased it has been done stealthily and by tinkering around the edges.
The reluctance on the part of politicians to talk honestly about tax dates back 23 years. When the former Labour leader John Smith decided in 1992 to set out the party’s tax and spending plans in detail – i.e. to be honest with the electorate about what to expect from a Labour government – he was battered by a Tory poster campaign warning voters of a ‘Labour Tax Bombshell’.
An obedient press also toed the disingenuous Tory line: ‘Give more to the tax man with Labour,’ boomed the Daily Mail. ‘Kinnock’s middle-income massacre,’ declared the Express.
Perhaps the press was paying attention to the United States almost a decade earlier. In 1984, Democrat presidential candidate Walter Mondale pledged with unusual candour to raise taxes. “Let’s tell the truth…Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”
Mondale subsequently took a hammering at the polls, largely on the back of Republican attack ads which took his words and span them out of their original context.
The lesson politicians of the left took from these two episodes was that honesty on taxation does not go down well, especially if honesty means admitting to future tax increases.
Yet this long-standing fear of a tax backlash may be out of date. Though the spectre of John Smith may still haunt the Labour party, public opinion appears to have moved on.
To take just one example, according to ComRes polling from last year almost half of the electorate would be willing to pay more income tax if the money went to the NHS. According to polling by YouGov, 42 per cent of the public favour giving public services more money and investment even if it does mean higher taxes. This contrasts with just 14 per cent who wish to prioritise reducing taxation even if it results in public services having less money.
The public also appear to sit to the left of the political consensus in terms of the type of taxes they favour. The coalition has raised the personal tax allowance and increased VAT. The first move offers greater benefit to those higher up the income scale while VAT falls more heavily on low income households.
Yet polling by the Equality Trust from last year suggested that 96 per cent of people believe the tax system should be more progressive than it currently is. In other words, they would prefer things to have moved in the opposite direction to the tax policies of the coalition.
And yet because politicians won’t talk openly about tax, the case for progressive taxation is never made.
The current General Election campaign is a case in point. Because politicians refuse to publicly countenance any increase in income tax, the focus is always on which government departments the next government will slash and by how much.
Not only is this a huge concession to the right (income tax is bad whereas cutting is good) but it also risks leaving politicians open to accusations of broken their promises if taxes do rise (which they will if the next government is to meet bourgeoning NHS and pension costs). Broken promises lead to a further diminishment of public trust in politicians.
In recoiling from the dreaded T word, politicians are behaving like it is 1992. Meanwhile the public have moved on, and I suspect they might like a bit of honesty on tax, even if it hasn’t always worked out well in the past.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
62 Responses to “Tax increases are a real alternative to spending cuts”
themanwhocan
What did you expect? They’re just following the corporatist language that has seeped into the public sector in the last 20 years.
bobirving
And the Post Office sell-off was a work of financial genius? Privatisation of the railway system?
colonel_hackney
I suppose the argument I have with increasing taxes is the question – what did you do with all that money I gave you already?
It seems the appetite for government spending in some circles is insatiable. Spending has increased through the Tory years, but that’s not enough for James. There must be more and more and more. And once you’ve saturated the 1% and you’ve taken all you can get from them or they’ve fled to Monaco or Dubai, you’ll have to come after the rest of us to feed you money spending machine.
You say “the case for progressive taxation is never made”. We have progressive taxation now, in case you hadn’t noticed.
When the governments house is in order and there isn’t a single penny of waste (no vanity projects like the NHS IT system or HS2, or MPs frittering away money on expenses) at that point in time I will be open to an argument for more tax if a clear benefit can be shown.
Gerschwin
No you’re bored with it because you don’t like it. That’s too bad.
littleoddsandpieces
THE POOR DO NOT CARE ABOUT TAXES
AS GANDHI SAID, PEOPLE’S POLITICS ARE THEIR DAILY BREAD
The poorest workers long ago were dumped out of the welfare state and state pension by the LOWER EARNINGS LEVEL denying them any automatic National Insurance credits.
The flat rate state pension leaves them and many other people, but especially women, with NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE.
See why, at end of my petition, in my WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT section:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
AUSTERITY IS THE BIGGEST LIE
All parties in the media eye are obsessed about austerity, save Scotland’s SNP and Wales’ Plaid Cymru.
I would be entirely happy for Ms Sturgeon to be Prime Minister, with her demand austerity ends.
SPENDING CUTS HAS SAVED NOT ONE PENNY
There is no need of spending cuts at all.
In fact, none have happened.
The cuts to the starving from babes in wombs to grannies has just transferred cost to the NHS by the starving hospital admissions and GPs talking between each other of the great increase of the hunger symptom in kids of Rickets, effecting bone development, while the children bin-dip for food on the way to school.
100 PER CENT TAXPAYERS EVERYONE SINGLE ADULT
75 per cent of all tax comes from stealth taxes and VAT embedded in our daily lives, for all ages, in or out of work, however long we live, in work or a pensioner.
CUTS TO BENEFIT AND STATE PENSION IS MORAL THEFT
So the loss of benefit and state pension is moral theft from the poor left to starve.
Moral theft of tax money and moral theft of National Insurance Fund, taken from the social security department long ago into Inland Revenue.
RESPECT AND TUSC OFFER STATE PENSION AT 60
The flat rate state pension is presided over by the most lying of all parties, the Lib Dems Pensions Minister Mr Steve Webb, who said in newspapers that he was unconcerned about what people thought they were going to get (from the flat rate state pension on and from 6 April 2016).
People are getting forecasts as low as £38 per week with no top ups after 45 years in work paying Naitonal Insurance.
The current state pension is £113.10.
Itself in breach of the EU Social Contract, that says the level of benefit and state pension is too low under EU treaty.
SERPSs OPT OUT AND THE END OF PENSIONS
The SERPs opt out will become a greater scandal than Married Women’s Allowance that also gave nil state pension in the end.
But then the flat rate state pension grants
NIL STATE PENSION TO HOUSEWIVES, WIDOWS AND DIVORCEES who up til then got 60 per cent state pension from their husband’s NI contributions.
Many of these women will have no other pension provision, because they simply did not have the money.
The opt out from SERPs will hit works and private pensions, that have not gone anyway by the firms going bust.
SO POLITICIANS ARE LYING TO US ABOUT PENSIONS
AND BENEFITS AND AUSTERITY
VOTE DIFFERENT ON THURSDAY 7 MAY
LOTS OF PARTIES THE CURRENT PARTIES HAVE PUT A TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT ABOUT
Just so the Tories can sit in a caretaker government after a severe hung parliament for next 5 years.
Even more an unelected government, as the non-voters had a landslide victory and most if not all voting areas are marginals from 2010.
http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk