The result was pretty conclusive, 75% of the 151 people who took part (thanks to all, as ever) voted "Yes" in reply to the question "Should the UK ban the construction of new minarets on mosques?". Anti-Citizen One left a link to this rather jolly article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who supports the Swiss ban (with caveats, of course...).
That settles that as far as I am concerned.
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This week's Fun Online Poll asks whether you agree with the following statement: "All money that changes hands purely because of existing laws (as distinct from free exchange) counts as 'tax'.".
Just to explain, things like income tax, National Insurance, VAT and corporation tax are clearly taxes, some people pay them and the government uses the proceeds to pay for public services (two-thirds) and the quangocracy (one-third).
But there are also privately collected taxes, for example, if the law says a company has to have its accounts audited, from the point of view of a company that wouldn't otherwise want an audit, the cost of the audit is a kind of tax - in cash terms, it goes straight from the company to the auditor, but the payment is only made because the law says so (so unlike traditional taxes, the money isn't paid to the state first and then on to the recipient). For a company that wants an audit anyway, the cost is not a tax, it is just a cost of doing business.
The same applies to HIP certificates, or landlord gas and electricity safety checks, MOTs for cars and so on (notwithstanding that the cost may be justified because tenants live in safer properties or the that MOTs make the roads safer).
Another kind of privately collected tax is where the state grants monopoly rights. With radio spectrum or North Sea drilling rights, of course these have to be local monopolies, but in those cases, the state usually charges a licence fee which collects the value of the monopoly right. But with, for example, London cab licences, the restriction in supply means that licence holders can earn slightly more than they would otherwise be able to - the value of this surplus income can be measured by the value of a cab licence on the grey market, which is the capitalised value of the difference between future income and the actual cost of running a cab (which includes a fair salary for the taxi-driver, of course).
The same applies to housing; because supply is restricted by planning regulations (which was originally a landowners' cartel, but is enthusiastically supported by Home-Owner-Ists), the purchase price of a house includes the embedded scarcity value, which appears to be about £100,000 per home on average (i.e. average selling price minus average rebuild cost).
Another kind of privately collected tax is where the state (i.e. the taxpayer generally) pays for things that enhance property values, like new train stations or roads and three-quarters of local council expenditure; or paying for bank bailouts to enable the banks to keep lending at low interest rates and to compensate them for the fact that many mortgage borrowers are in arrears or in default.
As a result of all this, tenants and purchasers have to pay a much higher price than if they were only paying for the value of things that the landlord or the vendor provided (i.e. the physical building and garden). So I'd suggest that about half of rents or mortgage payments are in fact privately collected taxes.
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar. Right, now back to 'Comment-only Sunday'.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Fun Online Poll Results: Minarets
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14 comments:
Settled as far as I'm concerned too.
Can you give an example of one that is purely because of laws instead of (as all the examples above are) partly? I mean presumably insurance companies woud require some kind of MOT, and most people would have car insurance.
M, the requirement to insure is also only there because the law says so (probably rightly), so that's a dead-end.
Off the top of my head, no I can't, but for many ostensibly private sources of income, you can always split it into "truly private" and "state sanctioned monopoly" elements. Like copyrights, for example - of course it is individuals who create the original, but without legal protection, their income would all be competed away (except for live appearances).
Or look at the income of HIP inspectors - if the govt scrapped the legal requirement for HIPs, by how much would their income fall? The residual bit is "private", the amount of income they would lose is "tax".
Woah!
Regulatory costs are not the same as taxes. They are often even worse - because they don't provide money for public services.
Also, it's not fair to say that the embedded scarcity value of a house is the value of a house minus the rebuild cost. To be fair, you would need to take off the value of the land without the artificial planning restrictions, and that value would not be zero. As agricultural land, for example, you would be talking about several thousand pounds per acre - and typical building plots, often within towns, would have higher value than that even without the planning restrictions.
By the way, what do YOU think about the minarets? Surely if it's wrong to stop someone building a house in the wrong place, then it's wrong to stop them building a minaret?
Adam: "Regulatory costs are not the same as taxes. They are often even worse - because they don't provide money for public services."
True, which is why I pointed out that a third of taxes go on quangocracy (i.e. are wasted) just to compare like-with-like.
"it's not fair to say that the embedded scarcity value of a house is the value of a house minus the rebuild cost. "
Yes it is 'fair', and not just that, it is a simple statement of fact, whether you or I like it or not.
"As agricultural land, for example, you would be talking about several thousand pounds per acre - and typical building plots, often within towns, would have higher value than that even without the planning restrictions."
Again, true. So let's compare like-with-like. Imagine there's a fence surrounding a town, and a two-hundred sq yard residential plot inside the the fence costs/is worth £100,000. On the other side of the fence, in what is technically The Hallowed Greenbelt, two hundred sq yards of agricultural land is probably worth about £200. That huge difference is down to completely artificial scarcity value.
As a separate issue, land nearer the town centre, close to the railway station, schools, shops etc might be worth considerably more than £100,000 for a two-hundred yard plot (or it might be worth less if sandwiched between a gasometer and a goods yard).
Land in central London is worth £80 million per acre. Why? Because there is a scarcity of land in central London. That's not 'artificial' scarcity, of course, so look at the other half of the equation - who is it who pays for all the stuff that makes land in central London so desirable - it's certainly not whoever happens to own the land.
Adam, as to your last question, I voted "Yes" as well, but you were free to vote "No".
Can we have a "I can't get my head around this one" option?
Ok, I get you now - the purely in the question refers to the bit of money that is related to the compulsion, not the whole activity needs to be.
I think I'll vote no, as copyright seems to me (if only slightly) different from a tax.
M, feel free to vote "no", but the element of coyright income that is a tax is quite easy to decide - imagine the relevant period were shortened by ten years.
Would you classify the income that an author (or his estate) loses from those last ten years as his/their personal income or as "income that he/they only receive by operation of law/force of the state"?
Oh I think the latter, but surely your poll is not asking that but instead whether I think "income that he/they only receive by operation of law/force of the state" is by a definition a tax.
M, that is exactly what I'm asking, but Pollcode only allows you so many words in the question, so I have to simplify. The fact that there are grey areas does not mean that there is white at one end and black at the other.
I understand its limitations, and you must know what you are asking more than I do, but I'm now thoroughly confused.
I thought (and thought it was quite clear) the poll is asking whether financial transactions that take place because the government insists on something should be counted as 'tax' or whether one thinks they can be something other than 'tax', not whatever such things exist (as the answer to the latter is obviously 'yes' as you list some yourself).
Matthew, now I'm confused as to what the confusion is. Another way of wording the poll statement (it's not actually a question) would be "financial transactions that take place because the government insists on something OR DOES SOMETHING should be counted as 'tax'"
My view in reply to the above comment is 'No' as I don't believe copyright payments are exactly the same as 'tax' even though (as you say) they are only made because of the government.
But let's leave it there.
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