Tuesday 8 February 2011

Britain - Tax, Tax, Tax, Tax....

So far, the Coalition government in Britain has been an enormous failure when it has come to issues of taxation.  After a promising start where the income tax threshold was raised from £7,500 to £10,000, it was then announced that in order to "make up" for the loss in taxes, the middle class and the rich would predictably get soaked some more in order to compensate for it.  They then raised the already high VAT (or sales tax) from 17.5% to 20%.

While this wouldn't be a disaster in a normal country, in socialist Britain where everywhere one turns there is another large tax waiting for you, it is yet more theft from those who work hard to provide for themselves and for their families, and who have dared to have the audacity to be successful.  Iain Martin has written an incredible article on this, and I fully recommend that anyone interested in this subject takes the time to read this article, as it sums up brilliantly the current state of taxation in Britain and the Coalition's decision to make it worse.

In addition to a now 20% sales tax in Britain, from this year those earning over £35,000 (approximately $50,000) will be hit with a 40% income tax.  Even when one considers the raising of the threshold, this is still an unbearable tax burden.  Add into this things such as the high corporation tax that affects those working in business, inheritance taxes, National Insurance taxes and enormously high fuel prices, and the result is a Britain that is not an easy place in which to work or do business.

We have known this for a while, but for the predominantly conservative Coalition to be making this worse and not better, is a real scandal.  It needs Brits to begin putting pressure on their government to ease the tax burden, just like Americans have been doing through organisations such as the Tea Party, as it seems like all of our political parties have one thing in common - they want to tax us more!

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