England's Despicable Political Class Pushes Soviet-Style Tax Tactics

I wrote last week about David Gauke, a simpering and unctuous statist who said it was “morally wrong” for people to pay cash for services because that made it harder for the state to seize a share of the proceeds.

And last month I condemned the country’s CINO (Conservative in Name Only) Prime Minister for saying that legal tax avoidance is “morally wrong.”

These nauseating examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The U.K. government also has proposed a scheme that would require employers to send employee’s paychecks to the tax police, giving the folks at Inland Revenue the authority to then decide how much can be sent to hapless workers.

Equally disturbing, the government even uses the tax authority and the education system to propagandize kids – even to the point of asking information about people they know who aren’t fully obedient to the state.

Here are excerpts from a report in the Telegraph.

HMRC has set up teaching modules to guide children through the hazards of pay as you earn and National Insurance contributions. Some of the modules – which can be downloaded from HMRC’s website – teach school children as young as 11 about paying their fair share of tax. …One lesson plan – targeted at 14 to 16 year olds – requires students to “discuss whether it is good to pay the tax we do, considering the benefits we receive. If it is good, then why do people try not to pay?” It continues: “Show class the remaining factfile slides on tax evasion. What do students think of those who refuse to pay tax…? “Can they think of any example they may have heard of in their local area?” …The modules were criticised by thinktank Civitas. David Green, its director, said: “This sounds a bit too ‘Big Brotherish’. People ‘in their local area’ are most likely to be parents or close relatives. Turning children into state spies is un-British.”

The government denies that it collects and uses the information as part of its tax enforcement activities.

An HMRC spokesman said…”We certainly don’t use this to collect information on tax evaders from children. These materials are solely designed to help children to learn about how tax works in Britain.”

I’m willing to assume that the government is being honest about its actions today, but that doesn’t mean the statists won’t decide to expand the system in the future. After all, that is the history of government.

But even in the unlikely event that the tax police never utilize the system to encourage snitching, it is still disgusting and reprehensible that the government is brainwashing children into being compliant serfs.

P.S. The statists in the U.K. say money is needed to fund important social services, but these examples (here and here) show that dysfunctional and destructive impact of the welfare system, and this post (as well as all the examples linked at the end of the post) show that the government-run healthcare system leaves a lot to be desired.

P.P.S. But the U.K. government needs more money. After all, how else can it have taxpayer-financed sex trips to Amsterdam?

P.P.P.S. Thuggish and Orwellian tax enforcement also exists in the United States. You won’t be surprised to learn that Chicago encourages snitches by paying bounties. Yup, the murder capital of the world can’t keep its people safe, but it has resources to implement Soviet-style revenue tactics (and don’t forget the city is against free speech as well).