Tell him, Martin
TODAY's Chancellor readily accepts that competition is good, except in that large sec- tor of the economy for which his colleagues are responsible. Only a modest leap of argu- ment would be needed to persuade him that tax competition is helpful, not hurtful. In many ways we are well placed to compete, and as for the vans and their traffic, an effi- cient solution presents itself. I have repeat- edly urged him to classify all distilleries north of the Highland line as freeports or tax havens. Then we shall be spared the absurdi- ty of importing cheap (well, cheaper) Scotch from France. It will be harder to persuade him that the odds are now shifting away from tax-gatherers and towards taxpayers. They have been shifting the other way for a century. More and more people have been drawn into the tax net, more and more devices have been found for extracting money from us, and the proportion of our income that the Chancellor pre-empts has gone up from less than 10 per cent to some- thing like 40 per cent. That process may now have reached its natural limit. The tax-gath- erers must expect diminishing returns, gov- ernments must learn to do less, and wealth will once again be allowed to fructify (as Gladstone said) in the pockets of the people. Go on, Martin, tell him.
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