Grief & Misery, Pains & Woes, Debt & Taxes And So It Goes*

For the second time today I am reminded of the song "Life Gets Tedious, Don't It?", some words of which form the heading to this post.

Burning Our Money has a post on the national debt and whether it will ever be paid off and in which he mentions spending cuts and taxation. Well, BOM, it would appear that it may, in the future, no longer be a problem for George Osborne in view of the latest taxation paper issued by the European Commission, who after all are our real and only 'Government'. Courtesy of The Albion Alliance Presents and their rolling 'raw data' news from the European Union you can read the latest paper (click on Go to source). From the Summary & Conclusions we read:

"There is wide consensus that the crisis was primarily triggered by factors that are outside the domain of taxation. Nevertheless, specific elements of the tax systems could have contributed to the crisis in some countries"

Note the last sentence and the use of the word 'could'. In respect of the first sentence it is indeed true that the UK's problem was that we had a one-eyed cyclops who had no grasp of the basic elements of finance - but I digress as the important sentence is the second.

Discussing the introduction of a Financial Activities Tax and a Financial Transaction Tax, the Commission paper continues:

"The shift in the tax structure has been rather modest in recent years in most Member States. This might partly be due to the distributional effects of potential tax shifts and political economy reasons....The analysis also shows that tax incentives may have played a role in the development of the housing bubble.......Coordination of tax reforms could also be instrumental in reducing compliance costs for citizens and enterprises and reducing the occurrence of double taxation"

The use of the words 'could'; 'might partly be due to' and 'could also be' are but the Commission's attempt to lay the foundations for assuming yet another competence - and it won't stop there. One only has to look at the title of this paper to know that it will become 'all-encompassing' in due course.

Now surely even David Cameron must accept that when a state's right of which areas to tax and how are usurped, then a power has been lost. Or will he?


* For those that need reminding, or are feeling a tad depressed about the state of our country, here is the youtube vid: