First edition on 28/10/2013 - Updated 01/02/2017
When tax kills...
Income tax, vat, family allowance, family allowances, deductions for high school and university students, local taxes, ... everything is increasing, everything is good to drain. "The French must make effortsThis refrain, repeated over and over again by politicians (who the public is convinced are not making any effort themselves) is unbearable, as if life up until now had been made up of luxury, voluptuousness and thoughtlessness. "We need to reduce the deficit" ... but the deficit is not only budgetary, it is also and above all a political credit deficit90% of mistrust, 10% of unemployment, 0% of growth, 100% of deficit: a chronic deficit of solutions to respond to social and economic issues that no public policy seems to stop. It is not the debt ratio that is the problem but the appropriateness of the collection and use of public money.
The usefulness of the public levy should be questioned.
For several years now, anger has been growing. From the 'pigeons' of small businesses to the antics of tax exiles, from the administrative and tax phobias of our exemplary rulers to the outcry of small businessmen (who make more noise than the big bosses), from the Breton revolutionaries to the angry red bonnets, tax issues have spilled a lot of ink and created a lot of bitterness and mistrust. Of course, the alleged fictitious employment of current political leaders (several of them are involved) does nothing to help matters and is just another signal sent to an already convinced public. So convinced that it has become disillusioned and ready for anything. The point of no return to fiscal understanding has been passed. And yet... everything seems to be continuing 'as usual', with France now running up a public debt of 2,000 billion and a deficit of 100% of its GDP. Like the student who claims, as if to get rid of the conversation, that he has understood everything, and who tirelessly repeats the same mistakes. Our only teacher is reality, and some believe themselves superior to the master.
The political lines and dogmas are not moving, unlike the head offices, investments, tax residences and young people who are free to move about. In the silence, "small" employers despair and run out of steam, and "small" employees (i.e. the tax base) see their purchasing power squeezed between the inexorable inflation of public taxes and spending constraints on the one hand, and the stagnation, or even decline, of their incomes on the other. It's the fiscal vice.
The pressure on purchasing power increases as the political depression sets in. The national sport becomes that of escape, like the hunted game, we flee, we defiscalise, we avoid, we dodge, we pay and we cash in under the table (those who can), while waiting to be in the doldrums, the hallali, and finally the slaughter. The problem for the State is that game is becoming rare and thin!
Behind these movements, these outcries, these cries of alarm, there is a lot of commentary and judgement on the lack of patriotism and selfishness of some, or on the other hand, the confiscatory nature of the tax burden. Whatever the case, we can no longer stand this gap between effort on the one hand and irresponsible waste on the other.
For companies and individuals alike, frail boats cannot be transformed into tax container ships.
Beyond the "fed up", we must also hear "what's the point". The deeper and more disturbing issue is not who we think it is - the people who are subject to it, but also the people who manage it. We too often forget that the acceptance of deprivation, or let's say the effort of solidarity, is directly linked to the perceived effectiveness of the use, the good use, of what is given and paid for. It's the use value that counts. A good is not expensive or cheap in itself, but in terms of the service it provides. The questioning of the various charges, taxes and levies that make up the totality of compulsory deductions is not to be sought solely in terms of their rate, their threshold of acceptance, or a desire to withdraw into oneself to "keep to oneself", but also and above all in terms of their perceived effectiveness. Faced with this chronic shortage of solutions, it is 'normal' to question the usefulness of public levies. In the end, we arrive at a seemingly inextricable situation: growing social needs due to the severity of the crisis, requiring ever more public money to be deducted from increasingly constrained contributors, without in any way curing the initial social ills. For years, public spending has been more of a band-aid than a cure, with the only recourse being to extend the prescription. Today, the State is not only bankrupt in accounting terms, it is also bankrupt in terms of confidence and viable, sustainable and efficient solutions, which is also why we are reluctant to "give" it our money and respond to its diktat. The state suffers from the discredit of the doctor without a remedyThis is the reason why the health care system is so important, multiplying tests, lengthening prescriptions, charging for backward diagnoses rather than cures.
This Republic of the taxman maintains a bourgeois and obese state that looks like a cardinal from another time.
From then on, the question is no longer only that of reducing public spending or increasing revenue, which seems to be futile, but that of the efficiency of the public euro, its capacity to create social added value. Increasing the efficiency of public spending is the only way to reduce it, and therefore to loosen the reins. This question will become all the more imperative as public revenue and expenditure are reduced. It is the additional marginal efficiency that must imperatively progress, this is pure arithmetic. This perceived, legitimate and ethical public efficiency is central to making taxes acceptable.
What justifies solidarity, beyond its moral virtue, is the service rendered by solidarity, the betterment produced.
When you donate to an association, you are sensitive to its cause, you trust it, you are convinced of the good use of the money, you know more or less the results obtained and judge them satisfactory. When you buy as a consumer, you expect to "get your money's worth". When you entrust your children to the national education system, you expect it to train and educate them, and a school to prepare them for a job. The same goes for taxes, they are not blank cheques, they also, and above all, involve those who receive them, who must ensure maximum usefulness.
If the French must make efforts to pay more, the State must make the same effort to deserve more.
Tax is not a due payable without compensation by public authorities who are often zealous judges of morality and good conscience. It is certainly a duty of solidarity for the contributor, certainly a duty of result for the beneficiary manager.
Increasing public utility is the only issue, and the only issue of solidarity on which everyone will agree, and win. Earn our taxes!