Danny has some General Observations on Value Added Tax
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(You were threatend with this some time ago)
"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing." (Colbert - Finance Minister to Louis XIV of France).
Did they really do this to a living goose in those times - take a regular "crop" of feathers as you shear a sheep for its wool ? (sounds painful for the goose, but then the making of
paté de fois gras wasn't much fun for the bird, either). Didn't know feathers re-grew, but I suppose they must do.
On Colbert's principle, Value Added Tax was the best idea since sliced bread. As it has such an enormous tax "base" (in my time with C&E, we said that it was levied on everything unless you could eat it, live in it, or burn it to keep warm), you could start it at a low rate without provoking too much outcry (although the
lumpenproletariat did jib at paying 2½d * for a Mars Bar which plainly had "2d" * on the wrapper). And as retail prices didn't have to specify the tax included in the bill, and inflation was really getting into its stride and masking it, the "Hard Working People of Britain" (of whom our politicians daily express themselves so fond) soon ceased to notice. It became invisible in their daily shopping bills.
Note * Ask your Dad.
It was easy from then on to screw the rates upward until now it brings in around half as much as Income Tax without the HWPOB feeling as much (or any) pain. It is the third largest contributor to the Exchequer after National Insurance. Point One to Colbert.
Then came a stroke of genius of which even a Colbert would be proud. Why not make every man his own unpaid Tax Collector ? (Or at least every person in our charmed circle, ie those "Registered for VAT"). Granted, Inland Revenue much preferred dealing with more or less honest Accountants (the devils they knew), whose mouths watered at the prospect at all the extra work (and cash) that (they thought) the new legislation would bring their way, than with individuals.
But the retail "Traders" (C&E speak: Mr.Singh on his market stall is a "Trader"; M & S is a "Trader" [and indeed started on a stall on Leeds market]; they're all the same in our eyes), felt they were paying their friendly local Accountant quite enough already for telling their black lies to the Revenue. So it was that, when we told them that VAT was simple (which was not exactly true): that it had been designed so that anyone who could count on his fingers and toes could keep a VAT Account and operate it him/herself, and that really, it wasn't costing them (as Traders) a penny, they were just the collectors of the tax on our behalf , they were on our side: it was win-win. (so who actually pays VAT - do you really need to ask ?)
All they had to do was keep a simple account book of the Input Tax that they paid for the purposes of their business, and the Output Tax charged on their sales, and every quarter tot-up and pay us the difference with a Return. Not rocket science, now, was it ? And we didn't even have to recruit (and pay) a vast army of clerks to do the sums - our Traders would DIY. Brilliant ! (Game set and match to H.M. C&E)
Accordingly, in the Year of Our Lord 1972, and in the premiership of the late Sir Edward Heath of blessed memory (though there was/is some dissent about that, particularly among fishermen), it was enacted by Parliament, in the Finance Act of that year, that this wholly admirable Tax should be enshrined in Law, to bite in 1973 (I think).
But four hundred or so years of experience since Charles II set up his "
Rightful and Honourable Customs" had convinced his noble band of Crown servants that not all his subjects were strictly honest; not all gladly paid the King his lawful dues and some actually took active steps to avoid doing so. And this reprehensible behaviour has continued to this very day. In short, we would be robbed blind if we didn't go out from time to time to see how our "Traders" were getting on. So was born (as a sub-species of the Officer of Customs and Excise, but of the same rank and pay), the new trade of Vatman.
Pre-War, "Officer of C&E" had been an enviable appointment. His salary went up to £600 (four times the average male wage then - in our money £100,000 pa). As one old one reflected: "You could then buy a new small house and a new small car, and still have change out of a year's salary". But not now: Civil Service salaries have lagged woefully behind inflation since the war; as successive Governments, pleading poverty, have hit on their own people first. Once an Executive Officer was paid as much as an M.P. - now you'd need to be an Assistant Secretary (five grades higher, and only two below Sir Humphrey) to say the same.
For some reason this profession has attracted some of a literary bent:
inter alia "Robbie" Burns, Thomas Paine and Adam Smith (thanks, Wiki). (Perhaps they had a lot of free time on their hands, and their "Parson's Freehold" # was useful, too).
So we Vatmen were on the road: Many errors came to light - the only curious thing was that for every twenty "errors" discovered, nineteen were in favour of the Trader and only one in our favour. Funny, that.
Note # detail later, this is too long already.
Happy New Year to y'all.
Danny the
Vatman