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LabourList readers back Income tax transparency idea

January 12, 2012 8:30 pm

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Recently we’ve been running a number of posts based around the theme “What’s Labour about when there’s no money left?“. That’s a debate that will continue at the Fabian New Year conference on Saturday, when a “Dragon’s Den” will be hearing a range of ideas that Labour could adopt without spending any money.

Yesterday we put four of the best ideas to a vote of LabourList readers. The most popular idea was “opening up the income tax system” – proposed by (Lord) Alf Dubbs. Alf will be presenting his idea to the Dragons on Saturday.

The winner of two free tickets for the conference was Ellie Robinson. Thanks to everyone who voted, sent in suggestions and left comments.

See some of you on Saturday…

Related posts:

  1. WTNML: Open up the income tax system
  2. LabourList readers need to buck their ideas up
  3. What do LabourList readers think?
  4. An idea whose time has come back
  5. Ed Miliband asks LabourList readers for support
  • http://twitter.com/Old_Holborn Old Holborn

    HA HA HA HA HA. Same old Labour

  • Dazed

    Can someone explain why you have any business seeing how much I earn or how much I pay? 

    Is this meant to be a vote winner? Yet more state interventionism designed for the net curtain twitchers.

  • http://www.fcablog.org.uk Christie Malry

    Where’s the beef? If you – yes, YOU – voted in favour, then let’s see your tax return. There’s nothing stopping you. Upload it to Google Docs and post a link.

    If you’re not prepared to get this idea rolling, then how can you realistically expect millions of other taxpayers to do it?

    What’s that… cat got your tongue?

    • jaime taurosangastre candelas

      @ Christie, I didn’t vote at all, if I had this would have been choice 4 of 4, but I’m quite happy to reveal my public sector salary in the last year of £75,438, plus 2 single fees of £500 for publications in professional journals.  I claimed the cost of professional insurance and indemnity fees of £2,621, and £62.50 for the telephone.  Taxes paid were exactly as the Revenue would expect, and deducted at source less the 2 fees for publication.

      You may ask my wife for her details, but she is spitting with rage at the thought of it all.  Quite an interesting – and animated – conversation over supper tonight.  I do believe she’s with the tories on this issue – she’s not even prepared to think about it, whereas I’ll give it brain room until the synapses say “does not compute”.

      I’m fairly sure there won’t be any other positive responses to your very leading question!

      • Dave Postles

        Christie Malry – I’m incensed by your presumption, so I shall break my silence for this time only.  Monthly income: £1401.28p after tax at source (PAYE at the standard rate).  Personal allowance for a married man.  No allowances for dependants (NB anyone who claims allowances for dependants or tax credits is in receipt of benefits – benefit-dependent).  No other allowances – of any kind, EXCEPT: through gift aid for my monthly direct debits for Marie Curie (£10), FSNBF (£10), British Red Cross (£15), Centrepoint (£25) and last month, for example (since I make one-offs in all months) Centrepoint (£250) and Crisis (£125).  Last month I bought Xmas presents from The Hunger Site for £46.99 and £32.86.  Now please consider returning under the stone from which you crawled.  BTW I didn’t vote either, since I gave up on this site ages ago, but you really are pushing on the door.

  • jaime taurosangastre candelas

    I’m genuinely surprised at this result, apart from the fact that I don’t think it is going to achieve anything of any lasting importance (so people can look at the financial details of about 40 million individuals – so what?), I also think that it is going to cost a lot of money to implement, which is the opposite to the point of “when there’s no money left”.

    Likely costs:

    Lots of fire and rage on personal data protection issues, leading to lawyers and consultants and all of their charges even during the consultation stages.

    A massive Government IT procurement scheme, which do not have a record of coming in on time or budget.

    Ongoing maintenance charges for the database.

    Someone’s details are going to get leaked, even if just a screen shot, and the Revenue are going to be taken to court and end up paying a lot of money.

    Someone called John Smith or another common name will be libelled when someone else calls up a different John Smith’s details online and publishes information on that different John Smith but says it is the original John Smith  The police and court costs in sorting all of that out will fall on the government.

    Mrs Jones who fled her abusive husband will be tracked down by address and post code by Mr Jones, and end up having an unwelcome visit if Mr Jones discovers that Mrs Jones has a new partner, but he is still paying CSA and maintenance because she didn’t tell him.  There’ll be all sorts of costs on the government with that situation, including possibly hospital costs.

    Some richer people will be so outraged they will take further steps to minimise tax, to the loss of the country.

    And all for – what purpose?  

    Data protection (I’m not an expert) would as I understand it require an enormous amount of anonymisation for this idea even begin to be possible, and when the data is so anonymised, it is useless as far as Lord Dubs wishes the prime purpose of embarrassing rich people.

    Still, the LL voters have spoken.

  • Lldon

    Income tax transparency is an empty populist idea that will not threaten the rich but only erode privacy / liberty for the rest of us – better to close loopholes and generally revise the legal machine so its jaws bite and more importantly drag the right rate of corporation tax from bullying companies 

  • GuyM

    Absolutely amazed at this.

    One of the biggest criticisms of the last Labour government was that it was too fast and loose with personal freedom and individual rights.

    So what do you think you should do……. build a whopping big database, website and administration function to dump every single persons income details into the public domain.

    And what will you actually achieve? Anyone working for themselves will not release anything like a full income breakdown, as their tax details will include all offset business expenses (which can’t possibly be made public).

    The whole thing reeks of a wikipedia type inanity that all information is “public” and privacy is to be distrusted.

    It would result in court cases galore, challenges, errors and data losses.

    That Labour members would vote for it once again shows how idiotic your party can be at times.

    • Anonymous

      I’ve had three letters  under labour, they had lost my tax details which were lost on a train with  2 million others, they have lost my medical details, and they lost my families child allowance details. Then I had a letter saying that in 2000 a blood transfusion I  had in 1998 was suspected of being tainted by American blood supplied  which did not go through the heat treatment.

      I think Labour and it plans for tax would be seriously open to question, but the real question of course who would be exempted I can see MP who where breathing flames when they had to open up about expenses  four tried to say they were exempted because of being an MP

  • M Cannon

    It remains an utterly daft and unworkable idea.  But it will appeal to the ignorant.

  • http://twitter.com/robertsjonathan Jonathan Roberts

    Sometimes I simply cannot understand the sheer number of barking, bonkers nutjobs that operate in the darker, authoritarian corners of our party.  They’ll be putting Orwell’s 1984 forward as a sensible manifesto next.

    I really hope the papers do not find out about this idea being backed by the party membership.  But perhaps it’s what we deserve. 

    If the public knew the minds of some in the Labour Party….

    • https://about.me/polleetickle Polleetickle

      ha haa haahaah.

  • Anonymous

    There is more than one way to skin a cat.
    I would be against publishing individual tax returns but limited company accounts should provide more information about directors pay, dividends, shareholders, taxes paid and the full corporation tax return should be made public.
    Sole trader returns with a turnover of less than £1 million should remain private.

    If you choose to trade as a Limited company much greater disclosure is appropriate than the current one page balance sheet.

    Paul Hillyard

    • Alex

      Sounds reasonable.

  • Anonymous

    You have to believe that this is some sort of joke.  My elderly mother, after a lifetime of scrimping and saving has her pot of shares and building society money, and everybody in the world would be able to work out exactly how much she had, via interest declared.  She would be avalanched with telephone calls and letters from the unscrupulous trying to take advantage of her.  

    Imagine the opportunists, from all around the world, who would give their eye teeth for this information.   

  • GuyM

    The effects this would have on ordinary people through credit agencies and the like scouring records to justify banking or loan activities.

    All the information would become standard additions to marketing databases for any and all products, so get ready for yet more cold calling and junk mail as targetting went a notch up.

    Suddenly income maps detailed down to household level would be available to commercial organisations. So imagine the impact as certain areas got “reputations” one way of another. I should imagine the net effect on seeing what social housing does to an area  in terms of income would be lovely.

    Neighbour would be able to snoop on neighbour, councils would no doubt use the data to justifty service provision.

    And on top of it all the mass junket of politics of envy that would permeate every part of life would just be like heaven to certain people in the Labour party.

    Truly and absolutely bonkers

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715486331 Alex Otley

      I’m impressed that you managed to incorporate an attack on social housing into that. Well done.

      But you do raise a good point about marketing.

  • Anonymous

    HaaaaaaaaaaaaHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHaaaaaaaaaaaaHAaahaaaaaaaaaahaahaha

    The Conservatives are laughing all the way to the Election.  Labour, stop trying to play to the middle-class, that you have continuously eroded every time you’ve made it in to power, and start playing to your supporters.  There is no point in a three party system if you’re all going to talk nonsense.  We want leadership on core issues, not pandering to fads.  Policy not Politics.  Policy not Populism.

  • Pingback: LabourList readers: scrap personal privacy over your income

  • Anonymous

    Mark, I’m sorry but will have to post on here as can’t acess the other thread.
    Twice today I have posted comments, and both times got “system error”
    followed by the comments remaining on screen, even after I had logged out of system.
    Then if I press “post” more than once, comments appear repeated later on.
    Could you let me know what is happening please and if there is a problem,
    as I need to know for future comments.

    Thankyou, Jo.

    • Anonymous

      Could you edit out above please Mark- I’ve tried, but apparently subject to moderator approval!!

      Is there a new problem with the system- only the same thing has happened to me today on 2 separate PC’s.

      I did notice something about “additional plug in’s required to display content”
      at top of LL page, which hasn’t happened before?

      Hello! Is anyone there??

      Cheers, Jo.

  • Anonymous

    I wonder how many MPs will get behind this idea to make it a reality?

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