Chancellor could start by taxing the non-essentials

Published: 12 August, 2010

• JOHN Mills asks (Forum, August 5) what we would do if we were the Chancellor. 

Well… if this country is living beyond its means, we must either make and sell more or buy less. 

Mr Mills reasonably, recommends the former, but I think regenerating industry must inevitably be a longer-term goal. 

In the meantime we need to buy less.

As far as I can make out the government’s strategy for this is to impoverish people by axing lots of public sector jobs. 

Wouldn’t it be better to act directly on consumption by taxing non-essentials, especially those such as aviation (which currently pays no VAT) and motoring which harm our environment?

This would spread the pain more fairly and, even more important, avoid hardship to those who depend on public services.

JK Galbraith made his name by highlighting the contrast between private affluence and public squalor. 

I remember hearing the Liberal Democrats claim affinity with his values when I went to a talk by him that they had organised. 

So why have they now repudiated these values?

Another worthwhile change would be to make council tax for more expensive properties proportional to their value instead of capping it at band H. 

This was how the pre-Thatcher system of domestic rates worked. How is the present system better?
Simon Norton
Howitt Close, NW3

Innovations

• IF Chancellor I would ask: “What human values other than those of goods and services should be reflected in our common currency?”

I would recognise that the ultimate economy is that of self-regulation and as a natural resource, human self-regulation is integral. Our innovations should serve us, its innovators and users. The present disturbing circumstances do at least provide a vantage point for individual reflection on the subject.
Name and address supplied
NW3

Unkind cuts

• IN response to John Mills, (Forum) I feel very strongly indeed, that before any cuts were even proposed there should have been radical reform of income tax.

It seems absurd that there are so few tax rates and that the top rate is so low. 

There should be should be far more rates: from 5 per cent for the lowest paid to 90 or 95 per cent for people on the opposite end of the scale.  Premiership footballers, for example, are paid (I won’t say earn) weekly amounts in excess of what many people earn in years.  

People in this position could easily afford to pay this 90 or 95 rate and still be better off than people whose salaries render them liable to pay the lowest rate; surely it would be much fairer than for people at the bottom of the income scale to be facing cuts . 
Margaret King, 
NW3