Below is the front-piece to my next promised taxation post, which may not go up to the New Year, as I’m still thinking on some aspects on it.
In my previous taxation post, The Morality of Certainty, I quoted UK Tax Director Mike Flemming regarding how HMRC – England’s IRD - is ever widening its powers to arbitrarily force on the UK taxpayer what ‘definitionally’ constitutes tax avoidance, which it is doing by rolling back the previous certainty gained from the final wording of the taxing legislation binding both taxpayer and the tax authority that is the essential feature of the rule of law. As Mr Flemming summed up regarding the UK’s upcoming General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR): “…at the very least, we deserve certainty when dealing with the state in terms of tax. The government plans to introduce a scheme which will undermine this. Where’s the morality or common sense in that?”
I also said I would show in my next piece how exactly the same process is happening in New Zealand under the current Minister (those before him also, but particularly this Minister). Note I don’t think this creeping evil is deliberate, if it were, it would be so much easier to de-horn - on Twitter Peter Dunne seems like an ‘ok’ bloke, he’s even got a sense of humour; it’s just that our state school system (read my by-line above) has been for some generations producing people that now rule in Parliament, and constitute what formerly existed as the individual’s protection from abuses of Parliament, the judiciary, to the point where neither of those institutions collectively understand any longer the tradition they should have been working within; the tradition that made Western culture the highest peak of civilisation and decency, and had resulted in the highest standard of living man ‘had’ yet achieved. That tradition is, sorry, was, known as classical liberalism and because it’s no longer taught in our state schools, I’ve needed this whole blug to keep explaining what it is. Perhaps the best encapsulated definition would be as follows: remember those brave and desperate individuals over many decades that were shot by the Stasi trying to cross the Berlin Wall from East to West? Well what they were trying to escape from was the collectivist hell known as the Gulag of Caring, Fairness and Equality, which was communism, that handed the individual’s life to the State; and what they were trying to escape to, was classical liberalism, which is freedom, individuals living peacefully on their own terms, pursuing their happiness in a society of the voluntary transaction, state as servant, not master.
I don’t believe there is a single recorded case of an individual from the West, trying to ‘escape’ into East Berlin. I'm not saying New Zealand is a communist system, but I am saying that cruel society, in the only way that's important, that is, in the minds of people, is now closer to the one we’ve voted in, than the free society; and no one that matters - given the individual voice no longer does - understands that this is a tragedy. Pertaining to the questions at hand in this blug, the Minister is keen to excuse his every tax grab on the basis of fairness, however, it has become evident through the doublespeak what is ‘fair’ for the IRD, won’t be fair for the taxpayer, and the taxpayer has no protection anymore, via the judiciary, from the unprincipled, irresponsible spending of politicians who have made available to themselves the lolly shop of our wallets.
More coming in the New Year, but in the meantime, as a lover of the English language, I would exhort all politicians to please stop using the word ‘fairness’ – you’ve gutted and hollowed out that noble little word until there is no point using it in the literature anymore. Unless, of course, in relation to our taxing legislation, you think you can define if for me, on this link? Or can the Minister cite one example of his use of 'fairness' where he hasn't been targeting some group or other of taxpayers paying more tax, but less tax?
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