Pay Day
Taxation is perhaps the most necessary of all evil. Or the most evil necessity?
Well, that and my friend ALG's homemade chocolate cake which is absolutely necessary and absolutely evil. Oh, and I guess child birth which is supposedly not always fun.
But other than that, paying taxes is something I do gladly and resentfully. Due to our somewhat convoluted situation, The Husband and I require the help of a good accountant. We have had remarkably bad luck with some of our previous accountants and even our search for accountants has been less than fun.
Like yesterday morning when we awoke "early" to meet with someone we were hoping could help us, dressed up nicely (meaning showered and did not wear sweat pants as usual) and -braving sideways flying sleet- got into a cab. Only to find out that the accountant had left to pick up his sick daughter at school. Which is totally fine.
But he did not remember that he was supposed to meet with us.
At all.
There was no message, no nothing. Made us feel sort of like we did not want to put our entire economy in his hands.
Then, this morning, I read a little article in the news paper about the"sugar tax", a tax which would be put upon sweets and soda etc. This tax follows rapidly a hike in taxation on alcohol and tobacco. According to the writer this sort of taxation is highly patronizing as the taxes are supposedly meant to defer people from buying those items, as if we are incapable of making decision concerning our health.
But I usually think about it the other way around, those items do create health problems. Health problems, which in a country with public health care, are paid for by the tax payers any way.
So whether the taxes are patronizing or not, they do help pay for the treatment of the problems the products create.
The interesting question is perhaps could we implement this sort of taxation more?
Lower the taxes for low income wage earners and hike taxes on things that are clearly luxury items? Like gas guzzling cars that destroy our environment.
I am sure any economist on auto pilot would tell me that encouraging spending is ABC in a healthy economy, but the fact is that the low income earners wouldn't buy luxury items anyway. They cannot afford to. The high income earners don't care.
Well, that and my friend ALG's homemade chocolate cake which is absolutely necessary and absolutely evil. Oh, and I guess child birth which is supposedly not always fun.
But other than that, paying taxes is something I do gladly and resentfully. Due to our somewhat convoluted situation, The Husband and I require the help of a good accountant. We have had remarkably bad luck with some of our previous accountants and even our search for accountants has been less than fun.
Like yesterday morning when we awoke "early" to meet with someone we were hoping could help us, dressed up nicely (meaning showered and did not wear sweat pants as usual) and -braving sideways flying sleet- got into a cab. Only to find out that the accountant had left to pick up his sick daughter at school. Which is totally fine.
But he did not remember that he was supposed to meet with us.
At all.
There was no message, no nothing. Made us feel sort of like we did not want to put our entire economy in his hands.
Then, this morning, I read a little article in the news paper about the"sugar tax", a tax which would be put upon sweets and soda etc. This tax follows rapidly a hike in taxation on alcohol and tobacco. According to the writer this sort of taxation is highly patronizing as the taxes are supposedly meant to defer people from buying those items, as if we are incapable of making decision concerning our health.
But I usually think about it the other way around, those items do create health problems. Health problems, which in a country with public health care, are paid for by the tax payers any way.
So whether the taxes are patronizing or not, they do help pay for the treatment of the problems the products create.
The interesting question is perhaps could we implement this sort of taxation more?
Lower the taxes for low income wage earners and hike taxes on things that are clearly luxury items? Like gas guzzling cars that destroy our environment.
I am sure any economist on auto pilot would tell me that encouraging spending is ABC in a healthy economy, but the fact is that the low income earners wouldn't buy luxury items anyway. They cannot afford to. The high income earners don't care.
posted by disinterpreter at 8:21 PM
1 Comments:
I would be in deep trouble if a sugar tax were to be introduced...I think that my habits have been formed and entrenched over such a long period of time that overcoming the addiction would cause more misery than benefit (that's my excuse) ;)))
On a completely irrelevant note, I know that you will enjoy the post Three Cheers on Overworked and Under-You-Know-What'ed. If I had an e-mail address for you I would have sent the link yesterday, as it is, enjoy!
Post a Comment
<< Home