The question of income tax is a thorny one.
On one hand everybody hates it, but on the other, no one seriously considers challenging it.
It's like gravity.
We simply accept it as if it were a law of nature.
Well it should be challenged, and here's why.
To avoid income tax by whatever legal means possible is entirely moral.
And the reason lies in understanding exactly what income tax is, and what it is based on.
To tax a person's income is to tax that person's life.
For consider this: when you work you expend time and energy.
You devote forty or more hours each week of your life to trading your life's time and energy for money.
That money is therefore a tradeoff for the time and energy you put in.
If the government takes 25% of that money as tax, then it is actually taxing your life at the rate of 25%, and saying in effect that one quarter of your life belongs to the state.
And if the government takes 50% of your money in tax (as the UK government has just announced as of writing), then 50% of your life has been commandeered by the state.
In order to make this point as clear as possible, consider the plight of black slaves in the early days of America.
A slave was someone who did not own his life.
His labour was expropriated by the slave owner.
Given this situation you could consider the slave's income tax rate to be around 80% - with the remaining 20% being taken off him as the cost of food and board.
So if having an 80% tax rate is slavery - where one's whole life is bound up with a slave master - then certainly having an income tax rate of 30% or 50% equates to exactly that same percentage of slavery.
Given a choice of being a 100% slave or a 50% slave, you may opt for the latter, but it would hardly be moral.
To tax income is to tax one's life.
The higher the tax rate, the higher the claim on one's life.
And no matter what percentage of income tax is levied, it represents a percentage of "slavery".
It's like the old story of boiling a frog in water slowly, so it doesn't realise it's being boiled to death.
The long suffering tax payer is just like the frog - being fleeced and enslaved by degree.
At what point does a self-respecting person stand up and say "No!"? Should he accept a 25% rate quietly, but get agitated when the rate creeps up to 40%? Should the long-suffering tax payer only complain when it reaches 50%? And if not, at what point does anyone stand up and say "Enough is enough!"? The truth is, no matter what percentage, income tax is a tax on one's life.
The more tax, the more a person's life is enslaved.
Apart from the moral argument against such tax, there are compelling practical arguments also.
As already stated, an income tax is a levy on one's own effort.
And as such it acts as a disincentive to work.
Just ask yourself the question - at what rate of tax do you start losing the will to work? And if the tax rates were lowered considerably, wouldn't you work harder, knowing you were keeping more of your own money? This fact is well known of course, and high taxing countries are forever suffering a "brain drain" as the entrepreneurial class pack up their bags and head overseas to countries where their life and money is more their own.
It's not by sheer luck or coincidence that the Chinese work hard.
It's because countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and China itself have very low income tax rates in comparison with other developed western countries.
As a resident of Singapore, for example, you are taxed at a rate of between zero and 20%, with 20% being the maximum.
If you lived in Hong Kong you would be taxed a maximum of 15%.
That's a big difference.
It doesn't take much thinking to realise that a worker in either of these two countries is going to be a whole lot better off than a high income earner under the new United Kingdom tax regime - where the top rate is now 50%.
Income tax is both immoral and impractical, and when it gets out of control, it destroys the very basis of any thriving economy.
It also creates demand for creative accounting services, to mitigate such high taxes, and the demand for tax havens and offshore bank accounts - where a productive and hard-working person may seek some respite from the clutches of the tax man.
So what's the alternative? There are a number of systems that could be put in place to fund the activities of government - all of which would be better than an income tax.
And here's a few ideas just for starters.
Income tax could be replaced with sales tax.
That would have the effect of eliminating the departments of inland revenue, abolishing the need for tax returns, and leave every dollar of income in a person's hands - letting them decide what to spend it on.
It could be replaced with a resident's levy - like a fee for services.
This levy would be the same for everybody, and would be paid say once a year - or even in installments.
The critical thing here is that such a levy would be like any expense and become part of a person's normal expenditure.
And the great benefit of doing it this way would be that, unlike the income tax, which is taken out at source, the paying of such money would be noticed by everyone.
And if the government were to get too greedy and increase the levy too much, then people would notice it and rise up to change the government.
Any system for raising government revenue would be preferable to the income tax.
Without it, people would get to keep what they earn.
A massive bureaucracy could be dismantled.
And a much more effective brake would be applied to spendthrift governments everywhere.
On one hand everybody hates it, but on the other, no one seriously considers challenging it.
It's like gravity.
We simply accept it as if it were a law of nature.
Well it should be challenged, and here's why.
To avoid income tax by whatever legal means possible is entirely moral.
And the reason lies in understanding exactly what income tax is, and what it is based on.
To tax a person's income is to tax that person's life.
For consider this: when you work you expend time and energy.
You devote forty or more hours each week of your life to trading your life's time and energy for money.
That money is therefore a tradeoff for the time and energy you put in.
If the government takes 25% of that money as tax, then it is actually taxing your life at the rate of 25%, and saying in effect that one quarter of your life belongs to the state.
And if the government takes 50% of your money in tax (as the UK government has just announced as of writing), then 50% of your life has been commandeered by the state.
In order to make this point as clear as possible, consider the plight of black slaves in the early days of America.
A slave was someone who did not own his life.
His labour was expropriated by the slave owner.
Given this situation you could consider the slave's income tax rate to be around 80% - with the remaining 20% being taken off him as the cost of food and board.
So if having an 80% tax rate is slavery - where one's whole life is bound up with a slave master - then certainly having an income tax rate of 30% or 50% equates to exactly that same percentage of slavery.
Given a choice of being a 100% slave or a 50% slave, you may opt for the latter, but it would hardly be moral.
To tax income is to tax one's life.
The higher the tax rate, the higher the claim on one's life.
And no matter what percentage of income tax is levied, it represents a percentage of "slavery".
It's like the old story of boiling a frog in water slowly, so it doesn't realise it's being boiled to death.
The long suffering tax payer is just like the frog - being fleeced and enslaved by degree.
At what point does a self-respecting person stand up and say "No!"? Should he accept a 25% rate quietly, but get agitated when the rate creeps up to 40%? Should the long-suffering tax payer only complain when it reaches 50%? And if not, at what point does anyone stand up and say "Enough is enough!"? The truth is, no matter what percentage, income tax is a tax on one's life.
The more tax, the more a person's life is enslaved.
Apart from the moral argument against such tax, there are compelling practical arguments also.
As already stated, an income tax is a levy on one's own effort.
And as such it acts as a disincentive to work.
Just ask yourself the question - at what rate of tax do you start losing the will to work? And if the tax rates were lowered considerably, wouldn't you work harder, knowing you were keeping more of your own money? This fact is well known of course, and high taxing countries are forever suffering a "brain drain" as the entrepreneurial class pack up their bags and head overseas to countries where their life and money is more their own.
It's not by sheer luck or coincidence that the Chinese work hard.
It's because countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and China itself have very low income tax rates in comparison with other developed western countries.
As a resident of Singapore, for example, you are taxed at a rate of between zero and 20%, with 20% being the maximum.
If you lived in Hong Kong you would be taxed a maximum of 15%.
That's a big difference.
It doesn't take much thinking to realise that a worker in either of these two countries is going to be a whole lot better off than a high income earner under the new United Kingdom tax regime - where the top rate is now 50%.
Income tax is both immoral and impractical, and when it gets out of control, it destroys the very basis of any thriving economy.
It also creates demand for creative accounting services, to mitigate such high taxes, and the demand for tax havens and offshore bank accounts - where a productive and hard-working person may seek some respite from the clutches of the tax man.
So what's the alternative? There are a number of systems that could be put in place to fund the activities of government - all of which would be better than an income tax.
And here's a few ideas just for starters.
Income tax could be replaced with sales tax.
That would have the effect of eliminating the departments of inland revenue, abolishing the need for tax returns, and leave every dollar of income in a person's hands - letting them decide what to spend it on.
It could be replaced with a resident's levy - like a fee for services.
This levy would be the same for everybody, and would be paid say once a year - or even in installments.
The critical thing here is that such a levy would be like any expense and become part of a person's normal expenditure.
And the great benefit of doing it this way would be that, unlike the income tax, which is taken out at source, the paying of such money would be noticed by everyone.
And if the government were to get too greedy and increase the levy too much, then people would notice it and rise up to change the government.
Any system for raising government revenue would be preferable to the income tax.
Without it, people would get to keep what they earn.
A massive bureaucracy could be dismantled.
And a much more effective brake would be applied to spendthrift governments everywhere.