The Fiction of Government Employees Paying Tax

It seems John Prescott, our larger-than-life Deputy Prime Minister, is once again in hot water for not paying the very taxes he is paid to administrate. But aside from his embarrassment, this story once again highlights the general fiction that people on public handouts (i.e. government employees, government pensioners, government welfare recipients) pay any tax at all.

Check out this quote from Uncle Murray:

It might be objected that, after all, a politician who urges higher taxes is not only imposing suffering on other people; he himself as a taxpayer will also have to bear the same deprivations as other citizens. Isn't there, then, a kind of nobility, even if misguided, in his plea for "belt-tightening" common sacrifice? To meet this question, we must realize a vital truth that has long remained discreetly veiled to the tax-burdened citizenry. And that is: contrary to carefully instilled myth, politicians and bureaucrats pay no taxes. Take, for example, a politician who receives a salary of, say, $80,000; assume he duly files his income tax return, and pays $20,000. We must realize that he does not in reality pay $20,000 in taxes; instead, he is simply a net tax-receiver of $60,000. The notion that he pays taxes is simply an accounting fiction, designed to bamboozle the citizenry into believing that he and the rest of us are on the same moral and financial footing before the law. He pays nothing; he simply is extracting $60,000 per annum from our pockets.

Check out the original article:

Babbitry And Taxes: A Profile in Courage?

Ask yourself the following question, particularly if you are a public servant, with no outside private income, who currently believes they pay taxes:

If for some reason we woke up in a world tomorrow where all taxes had been abolished, what would the wages be of the typical public servant?

Most people in the private sector would see their wages rise. Some in the private sector, close to the chaos of working on government contracts, might see their wages fall. Everyone in the public sector, who earned no outside private income, would see their wages drop to zero, except perhaps for a small amount of inflationary counterfeit cash printed up el rapido, on the Bank of England printing presses, thereby making clear the immediate need for the introduction of a 100% gold reserve banking standard to prevent this continuing government counterfeiting money supply fraud.

Let's just say this again, one more time. Government workers, pensioners, and welfare recipients pay no taxes. Don't ever let government payroll accountancy sleights-of-hand fool you otherwise. So why do they go through the bother of doing this? Wouldn't it cheaper all round if no politicians or public servants had to pay tax?

Yes, it would be a lot cheaper if everyone on the government payroll was simply excluded from the taxation process. But how far would a politician get if he stood up and told the rest of us that our taxes had to go up, again? Simon Hughes, the socialist muppet who is about to destroy the last vestiges of liberalism in the old Liberal Party, would look pretty much a fool coming out with cant such as the following:

"I hold to [a 50 per cent tax rate on earnings over £100,000]. We must have a progressive and fair tax system"

In a less opaque system, where it was clear that Simon Hughes paid not a brass banana in tax, Simon Hughes would be lynched for such a crass attempt to steal other people's money. As it is, with the government tax sleight-of-hand in place, he looks like a self-sacrificing hero; thank the Lord for the wisdom of Uncle Murray in making this clear.

So it's nice that my tax bill has just gone up again, to pay Prescott's wages, so he can pay his tax to pay another government official. It has a nice kind of merry-go-round feel to it, doesn't it? It's nice. But it is fictional that he has had to pay anything. It's still me holding the candle, baby. It always is.