The Morality of Taxation
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2021
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The G7 group of advanced economies has reached a deal to make multinational companies pay more tax. It is a cause which has focussed minds in the wake of a costly global pandemic. For centuries, taxation has been seen as a moral, as well as an economic, principle. At a national level, some see this as a moment for the government to be bold in recouping wealth from those who have become richer during the Covid-19 crisis, and redistributing it to redress the social and economic inequalities the virus has exposed. Those who argue for high taxes on the rich believe that no one achieves their wealth on their own; rather, their wealth is a product of the society they live in, and taxation is a moral mechanism to recognise the people and infrastructures that enabled that wealth creation in the first place. While some see taxation as raising revenue for public goods, others see it as plunder and theft. Low tax enthusiasts don’t view taxation as a moral obligation at all, since there is no choice involved, and they often object to the way in which their money is spent. Moreover, they don’t believe that higher taxes are intrinsically more moral since public spending can relieve people of personal responsibility and limit their ability to spend their own money on the charitable causes that matter to them. Would a truly fair and equal society need to tax its citizens? What constitutes a fair tax system? To what extent is the contents of our pay packet ‘ours’? With Dr Eamonn Butler, Dr Philip Goff, James Quarmby and Carys Roberts. Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. You can download many more BBC Radio 4 programmes for free. |
| 0:07.7 | Find these at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4. |
| 0:12.5 | Good evening. At first sight, it seems morally straightforward. The G7 countries move against the multinational tech giants is simply a way to make the world's most successful |
| 0:21.4 | companies and some of the world's most wealthy people pay tax like the rest of us. |
| 0:26.3 | Even they seem to agree, or at least find it politic to say they do. |
| 0:30.8 | But it all raises much deeper questions that have become particularly pertinent in the wake of a pandemic |
| 0:36.0 | that pushed nearly all countries deep into debt and widened inequalities among their peoples. |
| 0:42.0 | Is tax a moral good in itself or a civic necessity? Or, as some would say, legalise robbery. |
| 0:49.4 | At one end of the argument, there are those that think it has a moral purpose above and beyond raising money to pay for |
| 0:54.9 | the services and national infrastructure that we need. They think it should redistribute money to the poor |
| 1:00.6 | who don't deserve their poverty from the rich who don't necessarily deserve their wealth, |
| 1:04.9 | or at least have made it with the help of the rest of society. At the other end, some don't |
| 1:09.8 | see tax as a moral obligation at all, |
| 1:11.9 | because it's compulsory, and they don't like much of what it's spent on. They think it |
| 1:16.2 | destroys enterprise, erodes personal responsibility, replaces charity, funds elites and an |
| 1:22.1 | overweening state. How much of our pay packets should really be ours? What's fair? What's moral when it comes to tax? |
| 1:30.2 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:31.7 | The panel, Anne McHelvoy, senior editor at The Economist, |
| 1:34.7 | the Libertarian Communist Ash Sarka from the Novara Media Group, |
| 1:38.6 | the historian Tim Stanley and the priest and polemicist, |
| 1:42.3 | Giles Fraser. |
| 1:43.5 | Giles, does your heart lift with joy when you pay your taxes, |
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