The Horrors Of Tax Addiction

Do you like horror stories?

Well it's bad news for you if you don't, because you're living in one.

We have a massive substance abuse problem and addiction in the island. And no one is talking about the worst type of addiction. True, the number who suffer from it are small, but the social impact it has ruins all of our lives.

I am, of course, talking about tax addiction. Now it is only suffered by a group who call themselves "politicians" and there's only a small number of them although this year there 91 confirmed cases. But it does hurt everyone and we need to deal with it because it's getting worse.

Politicians need their fix of taxes - and there's never enough.. So in the last 10 years, we've had GST twice, LTC twice, VED, extra impots duty on fuel to supposedly "replace" road tax and more stealth taxes than I can keep track of, including the minimum wage. Here's why that is a stealth tax. The governemt says to itself "There's too many people with Small Income Excemption relief who aren't paying their full taxes. I know. We'll demand businesses pay low earners more so that they no longer qualify for Small Income Excemption. We can take more money from them and they'll be worse off than when they started". Has any of the Reform Party sat down and worked out the financial implications to the people who will get the wage increase? Of course not, they're politicians. All they care about is the tax. You see, it doesn't matter how much you get paid. What matters is how much you get to keep. So, the only people who are going to really benefit from a minimum wage are the government

The problem with tax addiction, as with every addiction, is that there is a massive social cost. These are:

.1 This is why the politicians are throwing money at massive construction projects - it's just an excuse to charge you more tax.After all, can we really afford to pay back £800 million for a new hospital without new taxes?

2. Increased immigration and all the problems that causes - high rents, unaffordable homes, the impact on the environment. That's because getting people to pay more tax is just soft drugs. Getting more people to pay more tax, that's the really hard drugs that really get them high. That's the reason we had GST, why there were no exceptions to it as with VAT and why GST will go up again at least once if not multiple times in the near future.

"But Phil we need more people because we have a skills gap"

Utter Bulllocks

There's no skill gap.

I have a business project that I'm working on at the moment and I'm currently interviewing for an extra 500 skilled staff to be involved by the end of the year. Not one of them will be in Jersey. I have this wonderful gizmo called a "Lip-top" or something and it is connected to this thing called an "UltraWeb" and I can use it to contact any number of skilled professionals anywhere in the world for any project I wish - when I'm not looking at cat videos, of course.

3. Increased civil service - the bigger the civil service, the more excuse they have for charging more taxes.

As further proof that there is no skills shortage, look at where the majority of immigrants are working. From 2006-2016, the island population increased by 11,900. Where did they go? Into finance? No that's shrinking. In fact, the only two employers that are expanding are the Civil Service - in order to improve our infrastructure to take account of the increased numbers - and the Building Industry - to build that infrastrutre and the houses those people need. So they're only here to solve a problem that only exists because they came here in the first place. Isn't that a bit like paying one person to dig a hole and paying another to fill it in? So, here's an idea: just don't employ any more civil servants anad builders. Problem solved.

None of these "excuses" are real, they're just to hide the tragic truth of tax addiction.

How do we cure it?

I don't know if there is a cure.

The only thing I know is that these people need to be kept as far away from government as possible so they can't cause more damage.

Preferably, they should be locked away in a quiet, padded room - so their environment isn't too taxing on them!