People, since power shifted away from the nomadic tribe’s elder towards a monarch or bureaucracy, have been annoyed with their rulers for imposing tax.
Those in power fail, a lot of the time, to put through the reforms they wish to because so much time is spent on deciding how much tax to levy and what to spend that money on without focussing on the key element – what will be delivered. If a government could know how much money people were willing to give up of their earnings, then they’d be able to look at what needs to be spent and allocate funds as they see fit. This isn’t too far from Gordon Brown’s experiment with the Bank of England – take control of interest rates away from meddling Chancellors and let politics and economics stay as separate as they really are.
Now it isn’t true that tax is separate in the same way as interest rates are, but it is fair to say that the electorate regularly likes the policies of a government, but not their tax policy or vice versa. What if there was a way to separate these two issues and allow the blame for value for money to rest fairly and squarely on one group’s shoulders?
I think there may be. I suggest two parliaments,
- One that is elected based upon the amount of tax they wish to levy on the people, a “tax parliament”, and
- One that uses that money to run the country, a “policy parliament”
The people would elect a group of people who would decide tax levels not based on the policies they’ll pay for, but based on the amount of money the elecorate is willing to pay. The people, when making their choice, would balance their desire to pay, with their desire to have public services.
The “policy parliament” would then be given the funds that have been raised by the “tax parliament” and allocate them as the people preferred (having voted for this parliament based on their policies).
With the parliament as it is currently made up, if Gordon Brown (or any number of his predecessors) runs out of money, he just raises taxes as carefully as he can to make up for these earlier mistakes. This does not compel Mr Brown to be as frugal as he would be were he running a home, private company or anything else that uses money in the real world. It is possible under the proposed scheme, that the vote would show that people really do wish to spend inordinate amounts of their earnings on paying for public services. If this were the case, a government would have a clear and guilt-free mandate to spend more money than they do currently.
There are obvious complications to this plan including but probably not limited to:
- Stealth taxes and whether a flat tax would become a requirement
- Corporation tax and how people would vote on something that they normally have no involvement in
- What would happen to tax as policy
- What would happen if people voted for a severely conservative “tax parliament”
- What would happen if a conservative “policy parliament” failed to spend the liberal “tax parliament’s” levy
I will revisit this topic at a later date with some more thoughts… Let me have yours below.
Like this entry? Share it with others:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
#1 by John King on September 20th, 2005 - 3:59 pm
Hmm, I’d feel that people would just vote for the party offering the cheapest taxes. And I wouldn’t feel comfortable with the nation voting with their wallets, not their brains. If the cheapest ‘contractor’ can’t cover the cost of Mr Brown’s spending then services, such as the NHS, will suffer.
I’d prefer an overhaul of the transparency in the way taxes are collected and spent. If everyone knew where there tax money was going they would be able to argue over each detail with their MP – or vote accordingly.