صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

A DEMOCRATIC BUDGET.

PUBLISHED BY

THE FABIAN SOCIETY.

"He who, as a tradesman, a manufacturer, or an artizan, earns an income by daily work, may run the risk of its diminution to-morrow; and he is unjustly taxed if he is expected to pay as much as the man who has only to take a pair of scissors and clip coupons, or to write a receipt for the tenant who pays him rent.” --PRINCE BISMARCK, Feb. 4th, 1881.

PRICE ONE PENNY.

TO BE OBTAINED OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY, 276 STRAND, W.C.

AUGUST 1892.

44

The National Housekeeper.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER is the member of the Cabinet who undertakes the national housekeeping. Every year he has to arrange for the expenses of the Army and Navy, the Civil Service, the administration of justice, national education, and the interest on the National Debt. When he sits down to count up what he will. have to spend, he finds that he cannot get out of it under eightyodd million pounds for the year.

Now, to pay this he has only got some four millions coming in from the profits of the Post Office, the rents of Crown lands, the interest on the shares which England holds in the Suez Canal, and one or two other matters. All the rest he can get only by levying taxes on us. And he cannot, as things stand at present, raise the whole sum by one sort of tax alone. For instance, if he were to try to raise it all by a tax on tobacco, tobacco would be made so dear by the heavy duty needed to make up so huge a sum, that it would be impossible to sell enough to bring in the tax. Suppose, on the other hand, that he were to propose to raise it by a direct tax on the incomes of rich men, the House of Commons, which consists. mainly of rich men, would refuse to give him the authority to collect such a tax. Consequently, he has to plan and contrive and calculate how he may best get the money together by getting a little from one sort of tax and a little from another. When he has made up his scheme of taxation, he brings it before Parliament; and it is this scheme which we call the Budget. If Parliament approves, the Budget is put into an Act of Parliament, giving the Chancellor of the Exchequer power to collect the taxes in the Budget with all the authority of the State; so that the collectors and excisemen set about their work with practically irresistible powers of compelling us to pay. There is no appeal against a tax that has been assessed. correctly in accordance with Act of Parliament. If any citizen were to resist it on the ground that Governments have no right to confiscate private property for public purposes, or were to describe such a proceeding as "plunder" or "spoliation," or to demand compensation for his loss, or to object on principle to contribute money for such purposes as making war and executing sentences of capital punishment, of which many persons conscientiously disapprove, he would not be listened to for a moment; he would be simply forced to pay exactly as if the tax were a debt which he had voluntarily contracted. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may be the most unscrupulous financier in the world for all the tax collector cares. Once the Appropriation Act passes, it is too late to protest, for that year at any rate. The citizen can only protect himself by looking to

the matter well beforehand, and using his vote so as to prevent unscrupulous financiers from getting into Parliament or into office.

In making up a Budget, a Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot proceed according to his own ideas of fairness. There is no use in his asking for taxes which the members of the House of Commons are unwilling to sanction, or which their constituents will not let them sanction. No Chancellor dare propose a tax that will offend a million voters at the next election, unless it is equally likely to gain over to his party more than a million other voters. And it must be remembered that every tax offends some class of voters. The old taxes on hearths and windows offended everybody, because they had to be paid by everybody; and the same may be said of the present taxes on tea, coffee, cocoa, raisins, beer and tobacco. But taxes on armorial bearings and powdered footmen only annoy the upper classes, and are popular with the masses. The higher the income tax is, the better pleased are all those who are exempt from it, and the more indignant all those whose incomes are above the level of exemption... Generally speaking, too, indirect taxation annoys people far less than direct taxation, because they pay without knowing it. For example, working-men pay a shilling for threehalfpenceworth of tobacco without much grumbling; whereas if a tax collector were to call and demand 10 d. from them every time they bought threehalfpenceworth of tobacco, they would regar lit as a most monstrous imposition, though it would not in reality cost them a farthing more than the present system.

These considerations will explain how it is that Budgets are always made up so as to throw the burden of taxation most heavily on those whose votes and political influence the Government has the least reason to fear; whilst the rich and politically well-organised classes are only asked to make up any deficiency which remains when the utmost has been got out of their poorer neighbors. At present, though the votes of the working-classes turn a large majority of the elections throughout the country, yet they are so ill-organised, so easily led away by the fine phrases of the political leaders of the upper classes, and so deficient in any genuine, practical, business-like knowledge of politics and finance, that every year brings us a Budget crammed with anomalies and absurdities, every one of which is in some way advantageous to the powerful property-owning class and injurious to the working-man. The rich are favored at the expense of the poor; the landlords and the capitalists at the cost of their tenants and wage-servants. The national expenditure, instead of being directed exclusively with a view to the public good, is so managed as to afford a large amount of what Cobden rightly described as "outdoor relief" for the poor relations of the aristocracy; whilst the humbler servants of the State often receive only the wages of the sweater's den. The accounts of these matters, instead of being published in a clearly intelligible form, are purposely allowed to remain involved in needless obscurity, lest the public should insist on reforms inconvenient to the permanent officials and their patrons.

"Financial Reform," in fact, means something different in the mouth of every class that professes it. Both Liberals and

Conservatives clamor for it; but each party really does as little as it can in the matter from the working class point of view. Conservative finance is avowedly directed towards a diminution of what the party writers call the " 'burdens" on land, instead of towards an increased appropriation for the public use of that rent which the labor of the community creates, and which is now pocketed by the idle landlord. Liberal finance is rich in promises as to the conversion of direct into indirect taxation; but it has been, of late, poor in performance. Neither party exhibits any determined intention to bring about that Democratisation of Finance which must, sooner or later, follow the extension of the franchise to the working classes.

In the following pages an attempt is made to give a concise account of the present system of our national finances, together with a program of immediate practicable reform, both in taxation and expenditure, that may fairly be insisted upon from any Chancellor of the Exchequer and any Government professing to act in the interests of the people.

Where the Money Comes From.

The main source of the national revenue to-day is taxation, which is of a dual character--indirect, by means of the duties of Customs and Excise, &c., and direct (i.e., levied directly and avowedly upon the payer himself and not upon the goods he purchases), by means of the Land Tax, Income Tax, Death Duties, &c. The secondary sources of revenue consist of (1) the profits arising out of the Postal and Telegraph Services, and the administration of the Crown Lands-public property which, according to a constitutional fiction, is surrendered by the sovereign in return for the Royal Civil List; (2) dividends on the Suez Canal shares and interest on certain loans; (3) the miscellaneous revenue, which is a financial hotchpotch consisting of a variety of items such as passport and naturalisation fees, fees paid by pedlars and London chimney sweeps, profits on the bronze coinage, sale of waste paper, legal fees, patent fees, Conscience-money, and money paid for admission to the National Gallery, the Tower, South Kensington Museums, &c.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

The four canons of a rational and equitable system of taxation laid down by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations," although never fully applied, have been accepted in theory by all economists and Chancellors of the Exchequer since his day as the fundamental principles of an ideal system; and attempts have been made from time to time to make our budgets more nearly conform to this ideal.

Adam Smith asserted that (1) "The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. (2) The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor and to every other person. (3) Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it. (4) Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state."

Moreover, in an advanced and densely populated industrial community, taxation of unearned incomes is the only effective way of reclaiming for the benefit of the whole community "the unearned increment," or advantages derived from natural monopolies.

Taxation as it Now is.

Under our present system of taxation, every one of these rules is set at naught. Not only is there no serious attempt made to secure the unearned increment, but more than two-thirds of the revenue is raised by means of taxes which flagrantly infringe the fundamental principles of equality of sacrifice, certainty and simplicity, convenience, and economy.

In the first place, the revenue from indirect enormously exceeds that from direct taxes. Out of every twenty shillings we raise in taxes, 14s. 5d. is collected in the form of Customs and Excise duties. These taxes, though they are spent for the benefit of the whole nation, have to be paid wholly by the consumers of the particular commodities on which they are levied. This system of taxation is condemned in theory by all economists, and indeed by all statesmen when they are in opposition to the Government. Even by statesmen in office it is being gradually abandoned.

In 1842 there were 1200 articles in the English Tariff of Import Duties. Now there are less than fifty. The principal articles which

« السابقةمتابعة »