A Cure For Tax Addiction

Just a quick update on the health warning I raised earlier about tax addiction

Initial reports stated that the number of people who were suffering from tax addiction was only 91 and restricted to the group calling themselves politicians. Well there have now been reports of major outbreaks amongst the general population as well

A nasty symptom of tax addiction is that you want everyone else to pay more tax than you by suggesting a new tax that doesn't include you. So we have a suggestion of a tax on the rich, or a tax on businesses or politicians who don't care who they tax because they can always vote themselves a pay increase that more than compensates for any extra amount of tax they might have to pay - at your expense of course.

Is there a cure for tax addiction where we don't have tax anybody any more than we do now? Well there is hope

In 2008 and 2010, I suggested an alternative to tax in the form of the Sovereign Wealth Fund and the government listened and created one - although they called it a Combined Investment Fund so they didn't have to give me any credit. In those intervening 8 years, it has generated at £220 million or £27.5 million a year. Without it, every taxpayer would've had to stump up £500 a year of £4,000 over the 8 years.

So, it proves that you can make money as a government in ways other than taxation.

Are there others?

Yes there are:

1. A smaller Sovereign Wealth Fund dedicated to offering venture capital support to local businesses for a piece of the equity. There are plenty more industries on this island than just finance, farming and tourism. There's online gaming, for example. That's not online gambling. These are games like "Farmville" which generates £600 million a year. Wouldn't it be nice to have a slice of that pie? Or how about "World Of Warcraft" that makes £110 million per month, every month. Wouldn't a chunk of that help with our economy. Are our kids up to it? Yes they are, they just need a little guidance.
2. A bank of Jersey. When I raised this idea to Mr Cook in an email, his reply was that he couldn't see a need for one. Well, if you're reading this, Mr Cook: Because banks make money. I would've thought someone who is head of Jersey Finance would've known that. We could loan money for housing and even student loans at much lower and more sensible rate rather than leave them fending for themselves and at the mercy of less compassionate banking
3. Lose the Club of Quality. Having our own bank would open us to more flexibility with banks which are not part of the top 500 - banks like Tesco Bank and Aldi Bank.
4. Bonds. What is wrong with letting islanders fund capital projects like the airport?
5. University Hospital. What about setting up our hospital as a centre of excellence and learning? That would attract better staff than a new hospital building
6. Keep the money in the local economy. The worst offender is the government. Every chance they get, they give the money away to some other country. They grow richer and we grow poorer.
7. Use the civil service. The same problems that we're facing over here are faced by everyone everywhere in the world. If we fix them here, we can sell the solution anywhere. We could send our people out as consultants. Imagine that
8. Use the ageing population. Just because some is retired doesn't mean that they are useless. There are tons of ways for them to still be useful that they would love to do. They're not a burden, they're a wealth of knowledge and expertise that we're failing to tap

How much would they have to earn? Well first off, they would target the £100 million deficit left by Zero/Ten that no tax has been able to fill. After that, if they earn even more then we could even think of tax cuts.

Gosh! What an idea!