A wave of trolling hit the blog yesterday. It was easy to work out why. My suggestion for the reform of tax relief on ISA accounts enraged those who think all tax is a 'bad thing' and they set out to make their opinions known.
So, let me deal with the issue of substance here.
Removing a tax relief is not unfair when it simply means that those from whom it has been removed will now pay tax at the same rate as most other people.
And removing a tax relief from a person with wealth is not unfair when they pay an overall lower rate of tax than someone with less income or wealth.
Nor is it unfair to redistribute the benefit of tax reliefs towards those who might actually need them.
In fact, doing such things promotes justice.
There are, on the other hand, things that are most definitely unfair that have been done by our government. For example, the bedroom tax was totally unjust, arbitrary and created real hardship.
Increasing interest rates extortionately on a random selection of mortgage account holders so that they are at risk of losing their homes has been totally unjust.
So is freezing tax allowances during a period of inflation grossly unfair.
All of those are unjust. Asking people to pay normal rates of tax on considerable income and wealth is not unjust. It's just fair and appropriate.
Unless you're a troll that is. Then you come out of the woodwork with all your usual tricks and claim otherwise.
Most of the abuse has not, of course, appeared on the blog. I do not want to waste people's time with it. I provide a moderated safe space for comments to be made precisely so that the commentary on this blog is worth reading, as many tell me it is. These trolling comments degrade that experience, and so I delete them and block those making them.
The trolls should be aware that a number of things will always identify them for what they are. Amongst the characteristics that make clear that they are not here to add to constructive debate are comments that suggest:
- They're very disappointed in me, expressed in deeply patronining terms.
- I am a failure.
- I do not know what I am talking about.
- My proposal will not work, without suggesting why not or offering an alternative.
- I am just wrong.
There are numerous variations around these themes. They will all result in deletion.
What I would also add is that such comments will not change my mind. Nor will they deflect me from my task. I have now been involved in publicly promoting issues around tax justice for twenty years. During much of that period I have been subject to comments that the proposals that I have made are wrong, bizarre, poorly designed, inappropriate, absurd, and much else. The comments have come from tax haven governments, other governments, the Big Four firms of accountants, tax specialists who claim that they know what they're talking about, commentators of a right-wing persuasion, and many others. One blogger, I am told, has written about 5,000 comment posts on what I've had to say without ever once adding any value to debate, except to his band of right-wing followers.
Experience has taught me to ignore those who comment in this way.
I was right on tax havens and won the argument.
I was right on country-by-country reporting and its technical feasibility, and I won the argument.
I was right about the possibility of automatic information exchange from tax havens, and it has happened.
I was, with others, right about the need for a Green New Deal, and still am.
There are many other issues where I am totally confident that the arguments that I have presented are also right, even if the proposals made have yet to come to fruition. Experience tells me that it takes at least ten, and sometimes quite a lot more years for ideas of the sort that I am engaged in promoting to turn from a blog post to reality. Meanwhile, I am always told that I am wrong.
The old saying was first they ignore you. Then they mock you. Then they get very angry. Finally, they adopt your idea and claim it was theirs all along. It looks like that on tax reform we have jumped straight to stage three.
My point is that I am used to being told that I am wrong. I do not automatically assume that it is a badge of honour. It is obviously possible that I can be mistaken. But in general, when I make a proposal of the sort I have with regard to ISAs, and it raises right-wing and troll hackles then I am entirely confident that the suggestion is both on target and probably appropriate. In that case, and only to that limited extent, those posting trolling comments on the subject do provide me with a very limited public service. That, though, will not stop them being blocked.
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Richard, I am very disspointed with you – cos you tend to take a very moderate line.
You failed to day cos you burned the toast.
You do not know what you are talking about ref quantum mechanics.
Your tax proposal will not work……cos HMRC does not have enough people
Have to go now cos my knuckles need some bandages (after dragging them on the ground).
One always knows when one is heading in the right direction – all the imbeciles start shouting and waving their arms. Agree 100% re ISAs, needs reform and from the point of view of investments, makes not a blind bit of difference. When I make investments (real ones) the tax aspects are the very last I consider (if at all).
I so agree with your last point
It’s one of those old truisms that no real business makes investment decisions based on tax advantages. The ones that do are just into financial engineering and tax dodging rather than genuine wealth creation.
Agreed
In fairness I oince took parrt in a Hiuse of Lords committee discussion on this issue and EY said tax was about fifth in any decision criteria ranking.
But for those with the least, who manage to save £20 per month, knowing the interest is tax free matters. That, I thought, was at whom ISAs were aimed. Before they became a tax avoidance scheme for the wealthy. Please don’t lose sight of those with the least.
Perhaps just reminding them that savings interest is tax free to a certain level may help.
It will be interest free for them anyway – £1,000 of income from savings is tax free a year for basic rate earners.
All I know is this.
Reducing taxes is a lie, based on other lies – such as public sector service funding. It’s become a political football used to win elections, but also degrading the lives of the people who vote for it as the ‘money cannot be found’ to improve or even sustain those ‘world class’ services.
As far as I can see, reducing taxation just helps the rich and capital accumulation on the backs of working people who benefit less from it.
And it is not the accumulation itself that is the problem – it’s what they do with the capital and how it distorts markets and also our political economy.
The other issue is the the function of tax in a world awash with money. Tax is an anti-inflationary device and this function has been retarded with a false narrative of wage controls and anti-regulation to control inflation instead.
The whole thing is a beedin’ mess of self-contradictory ‘factors’ that has got people tied up in knots.
So, please Richard do not stop.
I won’t
After twenty years of this stuff I am pretty thick skinned. You havfe to be to run a blog for as long as I have.
In your penultimate paragraph you remind us of the old saying that first they ignore you, then they mock you, next they get angry and then they steal all your ideas and claim they were theirs all along.
Where abouts do you think we are in this process?
Although depending on their audience the Tories frequently exhibit each of those behaviours I think they are going to make their election pitch at the mock/angry stage.
Possibly meaning that we might get a Spring Election as trying to vilify Global warming campaigners after a 2024 Summer of 40 degree plus temperatures with devasting droughts and wildfires, would be a very hard sell.
It seems we are at anger
And you are right in suggesting this will not work for them
Don’t let the b****** grind you down!
They have never succeeded as yet. And they have tried.
I cannot stand trolls. It is not just what it does to any given debate, but the threat it creates to free speech. It is intended to be purely destructive and the destruction it carries out is to rational discussion.
What exercises me most however, is the thought that more that furtive, anonymous individual trollers (simply unprepared to stand behind their opinions), there are well organised ‘troll farms’ or troll ‘boiler rooms’ that systemise attacks against specified targets, according to a programme of attacks, especially around controversial issues.
My questions are: do organised troll boiler rooms exist in Britain (I suspect they do, but can’t evidence the intuition)? Who is organising boiler rooms (this would need money and organisation to set up, plan and execute)? Do you believe the trolling against you includes organised trolling, Richard? And if so, what is to be done about it (generally, if not specifically)?
I don’t know the answers John.
What I do know is that significant troll farm traffic arrives here but that software I have installed locates and deletes it without any intervention required from me.n that’s one of the costs of running a blog.