New Tax System

The petition is entitled Abolish ALL individual tax's and replace with a fair single bill system and the explanatory notes say

"Our system of paying various & numerious tax's, many based on income or expenditure rather than benefit recieved, is completely unfair to all (particularly the people who are prepared to work hard for a living). This taxation should be replaced with a system where everybody in the UK, be them permenant or temporary, is given a single, detailed, bill for what it costs to live in the UK. Having a detailed bill will also allow the people of the UK to see where our money is spent, and can make informed choices about our leadership. Using this system would dramatically reduce the number of government bodies and employees who currently collect various tax's and therefore further reduce costs."

Apparently the petitioner doesn't like living in a moderately socialist society - doesn't, perhaps, believe in living in a society at all.

We do not pay our taxes for our benefit. We pay them that society benefits. In a very tiny way, the tax and benefit system is based on true communism: from each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs. This is justice. This is society. Action for the benefit of all.

And an insurance plan, of course, if you are entirely incapable of altruism. You pay your taxes to support the ill, the redundant, the elderly - and if/when you become ill, or redundant, or elderly, other people will pay their taxes to support you.

I wonder whether the petitioner is suggesting that the bill be based purely on the benefits to self (how on earth would you calculate road-use, library use, defence spending, for pity's sake?), or on a bill simply consisting of the total expenditure on societal things divided by the number of people in the UK (in which case - children? Do their parents pay?). Either way, it's sheer madness, as cim commented in response to my post Benefits and the NHS.

It astonishes me how few people have given thought to the purpose of the tax system as serving society. Perhaps they haven't thought about society at all. They need a good fwapping. I wish I thought that whoever writes the response to these petitions would provide one - but I fear that is over-optimistic in the extreme.