How long will it be before UK politicians and economists realise that plugging
the holes on a sinking ship is not the answer and a new ship is needed? The
recent Spring Statement by Chancellor Rachel Reeves has again failed to admit
the fundamental iniquity of the UK’s fiscal system by merely tweaking some of
our current unfair, impractical and economically inefficient taxes rather than
addressing any of the system’s deep underlying problems.
The Labour Land Campaign (LLC) argues the UK’s tax system is not fit for
purpose for a host of economic, social and environmental reasons. The list of
shortcomings is endless: taxes on productive activity shrink the economy and
make many small businesses non-viable; people on low and middle incomes
pay out a far greater proportion of their incomes than those at the top of the
pile; taxes are avoided or evaded by the richest individuals, businesses and
landowners; our natural resources are wasted, held out of use and even
destroyed so their “owners” can make huge unearned incomes from their
economic value that we all create.
LLC Chair Murad Qureshi says “We need to step back and realise our tax system
is fundamentally flawed and unfair. We need to understand how past growth
in the economy has affected the economic value of land and other natural
resources and then apply that understanding to reforming our system to shift
taxes off earned income and onto the unearned income of the owners of land
and other natural resources. The value of these assets stems from society’s
need for homes and products but most of the financial benefit goes to a small
minority of citizens (and non-citizens). Given a centuries-long history of policy
making having been dominated by landed interests, it’s not surprising that our
current fiscal system favours those who extract wealth over those who create
it but surely it’s time for a progressive party to begin thinking about how to
redress such pernicious historical distortion.”ENDS