[jkat]

Originally Posted by RXP

Because that's the fairest way to raise funds for public spending. What is currently happening is that masses of taxes are being diverted from income tax to all sorts of sales tax - this is regressive and hurts the poor more. Of course you can take it to extremes and target abusers of the system, but overall it's the best way. Your anger would probably be directed better at the super rich, rather than the 'lay abouts', who benefit far more from the welfare state than poor people (corporate welfare)

What should alarm anyone is that large corporations pay less tax than real people (30% versus 40%), they get tax cuts for a variety of reasons, escape taxes on dubious legal grounds and benefit from massive corporate welfare - subsidies, tariffs, various military/pharmaceutical projects that socialise risk, while priviatising profit. These profits are then tunneled into off shore bank accounts ,where they are free from tax when the rest of us earn tiny salaries in comparison and pay 40% of it to the government.

In the UK, we probably raise enough money from taxes to have the worlds best public services - unfortunately our governments are so corrupt that they sink billions into wars and oil, then claim that too much public spending might cause 'upwards inflationary pressure' to borrow the over used excuse.