We spend our working lives paying taxes, not just income tax, but National Insurance – which is all but another tax in name.
We also pay tax on certain goods and services, and if you are female you will even pay tax on sanitary products. You will also pay tax when visiting other countries, and certain other income streams attract tax too – capital gains tax, for example. I could go on...
“There are only two things certain in this life – death and taxes.” This is an abridged version of the comment made by the US president Benjamin Franklin when presenting the US constitution in November 1789.
But it’s true. However, dying does not mean you escape paying tax. In fact, shuffling off your mortal coil is an excuse for the government to come in and tax another chunk of our hard-earned cash.
There are ways of mitigating the tax bill your family and or beneficiaries will inherit, but they are complex; they are also costly, and make a lot of accountants incredibly wealthy. But I digress.
Once, inheritance tax was niche, and which only affected the incredibly wealthy. And often only really affected those who had inherited a great number of assets.
But now it affects almost anyone who has been lucky enough to buy their own home.
Large swathes of our public services remain incredibly inefficient. Only last week it was alleged that chief constables of several UK police forces were able to claim their lunch on the taxpayer.
I happened to work for the NHS as an acting communications manager and saw advertising campaigns costing hundreds of thousands of pounds signed off without even a by your leave; unthinkable in a publicly listed company.
Okay, this was some seven years ago, but I have no doubt it still goes on.
The government needs to take a good look at where it can legitimately cut costs, a nitty gritty wholescale investigation into the huge amount of waste – often in the upper echelons of public service.
And use those savings to scrap inheritance tax.
