It's difficult to see how any society could manage without a tax system of some sort. There will always be public services to pay for, and the apparatus of government. Few of us would object to paying for roads, hospitals, schools and the like. However, in Great Britain as in many other countries round the world, it might be said that things have got a little out of hand.
 
There is nothing we do in this life that isn't taxed, often many times over. Let's see ….. a simple trip to the supermarket, for instance ….
 
• ... you travel there by car. You paid tax when you bought it, you pay tax to use the road, you pay a tax element when you insure it, and you pay a massive tax on every litre of petrol it uses ...
• ... while you shop you are taxed directly on each item you buy, through the VAT added to the price. But you also have to bear the cost of layer upon hidden layer of tax, on the wages of the people who made the product, on the diesel fuel for the lorry that brought it to the shop and so on - it's all passed on to you ...
• ... and when you go home to your heavily council-taxed house, unpack the shopping and settle into an armchair to relax, don't forget as you turn on the television that you've paid tax on that as well, not just when you bought it but in your Television Licence.
 
If all this seems a bit much, I suggest you soldier on anyway, because the alternative - giving up and dying - is even more expensive. If your house is worth more than about £260,000 - as many are these days - your estate may be liable for Death Duties when you snuff it, and if you were prudent enough to put some savings aside too, well, it's only fair that the government should take its slice. This was a tax brought in deliberately to hit the wealthy, and as inflation has brought us all closer and closer to being semi-demi-millionaires or even semi-millionaires, no government has thought to adjust the threshold to stop it hitting ordinary folks like us. Funny thing, that.
 
And as for the tax forms they want us to fill in …..
 
And it's now an offence not to have kept written records. What's that all about? Why should we keep written records, if we have an ordinary salaried or waged job? If one were running a multinational business I could understand it, but teachers? ... office workers? ... nurses? ... vicars, for God's sake? Our employers tell the taxman how much we earn. Why the hell should we do their jobs for them?
 
Any sensible person would assume that the logical thing was one single, simple tax - an income tax, presumably. The rate would be high, of course, because it would have to collect all the revenue needed in one go. But at least we'd understand it.
 
Wait a minute, though ….. how would that work? A system where every citizen understood his tax? Where any Tom, Dick or Harry could tell instantly if he'd been ripped off by the taxman? A system that was simple, clear and transparently honest?
 
No, it'd never work.
 

 
We're not alone. Have a look at Tax Payers' Alliance and FuelProtest.