A salt or battery

Hand over the condiments and you won’t get hurt. Much.

I think it was in The Scholars (儒林外史) that I first encountered the word gabelle, which is the name of the French salt tax. People were forced to buy salt each week. There was a salt tax in China and the British used it in India during the Raj for want of anything other means of acquiring revenue from the impoverished populace. The British planted a hedge around the area that was being taxed to prevent salt smuggling with the rate of taxation being nearly 25%. In fact, the word “salary” is derived from the Latin sal “salt”.

Tax is a word with thoroughly bad connotations. History is littered with taxes people have hated as governments have sought to squeeze money out of us. Although taxation would seem to be a necessary evil so that the government can pay for the services which the populace demands, it’s hard to get any sense that the money is being put to good use. Perhaps it is, but we’re more likely to read stories about another £40 million wasted on some failed NHS computer system. Life would probably become exceptionally difficult if taxes were abolished altogether and people had to provide for themselves. There’d be no NHS; the police would probably insist on being paid by the victims of crime (which means that if you’ve been robbed, you’re screwed); and if you were unemployed, you’d have to survive on savings or be destitute.

Perhaps in such a world, charities would thrive for want of the government providing various services which have an equivalent function.

The discussion in the book returns to Adam Smith who suggested that taxes should be

• affordable (kind of that whole profit margin thing again)
• anticipatable (you know it’s coming)
• proportionate (your share should be the same as other people’s; the Poll Tax so got that wrong)
• convenient (you can deal with it yourself)

Nothing generally wrong with any of that (in theory), but I’ve read in the past that the government gets far more out of us in taxes than we realise. On the last occasion I can recall reading such an article in the paper, we were relly being taxed at a rate of about 40%. Of course, the government might cut direct taxes, but in no way does the Treasury want to lose the income, hence they’ll get it sneakily via other means. This is why the Tories were such huge hypocrites when they accused Labour of being the party of tax-and-spend. In reality, it doesn’t matter who’s in power. It’s all about the taxing and preferably not too much spending.

Thankfully, we leave economics behind today and move on to the law tomorrow. Order in blog, I say.