Letters: Indirect taxes hit the poorest

These letters appear in the December 6 edition of The Independent

By far the biggest tax hike of recent times for most people was the increase of VAT, by one-seventh, imposed in 2010. This has had a much bigger effect on most people’s standard of living than minor tinkering with tax thresholds.

Tax avoidance by multi-nationals has increased as the result of a number of other Coalition measures, in particular the 2012 Controlled Foreign Company rules which massively widens opportunities to gain from tax exemptions and which the Government shows no sign of repealing

Corporation tax has now been cut from 28 to 21 and soon to 20 per cent under this Government, and exemptions expanded.

The result of all this is that the UK Government now raises substantially more from indirect tax than from tax on income and capital. Hence the current discussion of income tax is really beside the point.

Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby
University of Kent, Canterbury

Fears have been expressed that stamp duty could become a “stealth tax” (5 December). It has long been a stealth tax. When first introduced in its modern form in the 1950s the threshold was set so that only the most expensive houses would attract the duty. At a time when a three-bedroom house in London cost in the region of £5,000, the threshold for stamp-duty liability was £30,000 – the equivalent of a £3m house now. As house prices rose, successive governments left the threshold as it was, so that virtually all house sales attracted the duty.

The introduction of banding goes some way to redress the balance but stamp duty is now seen as a revenue stream rather than a redistributive mechanism to transfer wealth from the mega-wealthy to society as a whole.

Patrick Cleary
Honiton, Devon

A projected £55bn or more of cuts in government expenditure is likely to hit “welfare” hardest (the disabled, unemployed, and those unable to pay rising rents). Either that or there will be a huge increase in personal debt, leading to another disastrous financial collapse, like that of 2008.

Meanwhile, a totally useless project sails on, immune and protected – the £50-£100bn Trident missile project. No political party has the guts to confront this obscenity.

Instead they are all quite happy to ruin people’s lives, the economy and the very future of the United Kingdom in attempts to pay off the government debt mountain. We are insane to stand for this.

Allan Williams
London E8

One realises that we remain a deeply socially divided society when even a writer in The Independent (Andy McSmith, 5 December) can say of Jeremy Thorpe, vis à vis Harold Wilson and Edward Heath: “Intellectually he was their equal, while socially he was a cut above them”.

This is a sorry attitude in this day and age. Socially he may have been very different, but to imply that this difference means better goes a long way to explaining the problems with this country.

Witness an Autumn Statement that essentially takes from the poorer sections of society and gives to the better-off as a solution to our mainly banker-created debt.

Tom Simpson
Bristol

With his insistence on off-balance-sheet PFI (private finance initiative), Gordon Brown loaded what is effectively the nation’s credit card. Now George Osborne hopes that we will emulate the ex-chancellor’s imprudence in our personal finances and thus make him appear competent.

S Lawton
Kirtlington, Oxfordshire

pupils suffering over a-level uncertainty MP Graham Stuart’s contribution to the debate surrounding A-level reform has added further confusion to the educational landscape (“Senior Tory’s U-turn on proposal to scrap AS-levels, 4 December).

The situation we find ourselves in is somewhere between Pythonesque and Kafkaesque; during the course of one night next May, the entire educational landscape will be shaped. As of now, a Labour government will retain A-levels in their current form, whereas a Conservative government will implement reform for some subjects but not others, against the advice of teachers, universities and now, it seems, their own party.

Right now, we have pupils and parents in the position of choosing A-levels without knowing what they will look like; teachers choosing between syllabuses that may not come into existence, and careers staff who are unable to give proper guidance on how universities will go about admitting youngsters in less than two years’ time.

Next year’s election is unlikely to be won or lost on A-level reform. But – though it sounds melodramatic to say it – we are playing politics with pupils’ futures. It is in the national interest to remove the chaos and uncertainty of the current position.

Can both parties and Ofqual not come to a sensible arrangement and agree on a common timetable for A-level reform so that pupils and teachers can plan for the future properly?

Kieran McLaughlin
Headmaster, Durham School, Durham

Graham Stuart’s revised view of the value of AS- levels was fascinating if only for his reported statement: “My instinct originally was the same as [Gove’s] until I talked to headteachers in my constituency”. Well, that would have been a good place to start, wouldn’t it, rather than relying on instinct or, worse, on the hectoring Gove rhetoric?

Beryl Wall
London W4

Paracetamol prescriptions

Rosie Millard’s call for a halt to the prescription of paracetamol (29 November) initially seems attractive. But things are not so simple.

As a former GP, I sometimes prescribed paracetamol, most often in liquid form for children with distressing conditions such as earache. Done with clear explanation that the child required pain relief rather than antibiotics, this has several benefits. Avoidance of unnecessary use of antibiotics both saves money and decreases the risk of the worrying spread of antibiotic resistance.

Prescription validates rather than dismisses the symptoms and the concerns they engender, but gives an opportunity to demonstrate that in the future similar illness can be safely managed at home with identical medicine (with the usual warnings to seek help if the pattern of illness is unusual or prolonged).

The prescription can only be dispensed by a pharmacy, where advice on the management of minor illness is readily available and from where the identical medication can be purchased for similar episodes in the future. Prescription is an endorsement of paracetamol as a real and effective medicine used by professionals. These are all steps that encourage people’s self-reliance and help limit demand on overstretched primary care services in the future.

Charles Campion-Smith
Dorchester

Why the fuss about arms sales to Israel?

Such a show of heart-searching that the UK should be selling arms to Israel (report, 24 November). And to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Iran, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe and countless other paragons of human rights – 45 repressive states in all.

The bottom line is: we sell arms! So why single out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East with a free press and universal suffrage and under an existential threat for the past 70 years? Benjamin Netanyahu said that if the Arabs were to lay down their arms, peace would break out, but if Israel were to lay down hers, she would be obliterated. It certainly looks that way.

Gillian Cook
Brighton, East Sussex

I am angry and ashamed that a luxury dinner for arms dealers was held at the Tower of London, just days after the ending of the poppy display (report, 28 November). It will be followed by an arms fair in London next September, promoting sales of arms, bombs and torture equipment. How many exhibitors would be willing to show us how “good” their products are by giving a personal demonstration, as a victim?

Joy Watson
Carlisle

Short-sighted policy

You report (5 December) that the Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical commissioning group will be providing only one hearing aid to people with hearing difficulties. I have worn two hearing aids for 20 years and I also wear spectacles. How would most people manage if their optician prescribed a monocle?

Janette Ward
Tarrington, Herefordshire

Women get a dressing down

Men do have dress-code challenges, but are they really equivalent to women’s? (Letters, 5 December.) Are men told to take responsibility for their own sexual assaults, sometimes by the police, because of their choice of clothing? Or that their female colleagues’ poor behaviour towards them is caused by their choice of trousers?

Samantha Chung
Cambridge