Paying Tax As "Giving"

There is nothing quite as jarring as Peter Mandelson – a man who has a proven track record of resigning in disgrace – criticising another wealthy man for the heinous crime of trying not to pay huge sums in tax.

But there is no shortage of people attacking Mandelson and the members of all parties who appear happy to wade through a massive mire of hypocrisy in order to have a pop at a Tory benefactor. And I’ll leave them all to it. Instead, I wanted to look at an example of how this has been portrayed in the media – in this case, by The Guardian. Take a look at this paragraph, and see if you can work out what I find most troubling:

Ashcroft and the Tories have refused to answer questions about when Ashcroft fulfilled the less onerous task of declaring himself a long-term resident, which allowed him to continue to be a non-dom paying tax only on his UK earnings and avoiding giving tens of millions of pounds to the tax office on his substantial international estate.

Have you spotted the most troubling phrase? It is the idea that Ashcroft is avoiding “giving” his money to the tax office. Now, who actually “gives” their tax money to the Inland Revenue? Who “gives” their taxes up? Anyone? Anyone? Oh, no, at best – at fucking best – we pay taxes. Taxes actually tend to disappear without the majority of people in this country actually actively giving up the money. It goes before your pay hits your account. You pay tax whenever you buy a commodity that includes VAT. You pay tax all the time – however, people don’t tend to give tax money to the tax office.

Does this sort of distinction matter? I mean, it’s The Guardian we’re talking about here. They are never going to describe taxation as state sponsored theft. But the very fact that the use of the concept of giving taxes is so subtle is what makes it so troubling and pernicious. It is arguably far more damaging than any statist fuck banging on about tax avoidance like it is a financial equivalent of the fucking Holocaust. Because it is so subtle, and so easy to miss. Yet the more it is repeated, the more it feeds into the dominant discourse in this country that giving money to the state is a good thing. In fact, the use of the word give is very interesting – after all, we give to charity, so we can extend that to the state. Yes, giving to the state is like giving to charity. That’s the agenda that this sort of subtle framing wishes to perpetuate. Except the government charity is just as likely to spend it on war or banking bailouts than on something those who perpetuate this myth actually think deserves funding.

So the next time someone tells you that you give money to the tax office, please feel free to tell them to fuck off, and grow a brain cell while they do so.