Graham

I don't know how things work where you come from, but in the UK if you can "barely feed your children" you don't *pay* much, if any tax!

I suggest you look at http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/rates/it.htm for some more information.

A single person can earn up to £4,615 before paying any tax. A couple can earn up to £5,565. If they're married they can earn a minimum extra £2,150 (actually *this* is the unfair bit as it penalises unmarried couples). There is also a system of "child tax credits" which give extra, tax-free, allowances.

The next £1,960 is charged tax at only 10% and then all earnings from £1,961 to £30,500 are taxed at 22%. Earnings above that last amount are taxed at 40%.

(NB ADDENDUM back in the 1970s under the last left-wing Labour government, the top rate of income tax actually reached around 90%!! This resulted in a large number of wealthy people leaving the UK to go into "tax exile". Such an option would not be available to poor people if the taxes they pay on basic goods were to go up)

As others have pointed out, VAT (Value Added Tax) is already at 17.5% in this country and higher in some other EU countries and there are suggestions from the EU that we "harmonise" it at anything up to 22.5%!!

VAT is supposed to be a "luxury" tax(!) (any women here agree that sanitary protection is a "luxury" item?!) so when the UK joined the EU they managed to get exemptions for items such as printed papers (newspapers, books etc) and childrens' clothing, but the EU want us to broaden the scope to add this tax to *everything*!

VAT doesn't go onto *all* food items, however it's a long known fact that there are several absurdities in the system, eg chocolate coverered biscuits have VAT charged on them, but cakes are exempt.

This caused problems for the makers of Jaffa Cakes (a chocolate covered "biscuit sized" cake) because the VAT man decreed (of course) it was a biscuit and thus VAT-able, but the makers argued that it was a cake and thus exempt.

Evetually, when the case got to court, McVities, the manufacturer, produced a 12" Jaffa Cake, thus convincing the Judge of the general cake-iness of the item!

However the point is that what the system that you read about proposes is that we somehow determine what is a "necessity" for poorer people and what is not, and thus use that to determine how much tax they pay and that, trust me, would lead to a *much more* iniquitous and unfair tax being levied on the poor who would have no alternatives, whilst the rich would be able to afford alternatives and would end up better off.

If you've ever read Discworld, think about Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of economy. It works like this. A poor person will buy a cheap pair of boots costing ten dollars that will last a year, then wear out, requiring them to buy a new pair. A rich person will buy a good quality pair of boots for 100 dollars that lasts 10 years and will then need replacing.

So, over 10 years, the net amount each will have spent the same amount of money on boots, but during that 10 years the poor person will, for a large proportion of the time, have cold, wet feet.

Effectively what this ill-thought out theory proposes is that the poor are forced into a "subsistence level" existance where they live from hand to mouth, only able to afford the most basic items because everything else that they may desire is taxed to put it at a level which puts it out of their reach.

I don't know about you, but I consider that much more unfair than taxing on income with a sensible system of personal allowances.

Nice theory, Jerrek, but no cigar.