Are Members of the Working Class Taxpayers?

[Anonymous]

This was discussed on our Facebook after non-member posted   “NO TAXPAYER FUNDING FOR 'MARGARET THATCHER MEMORIAL MUSEUM & LIBRARY'.

 

Although I have a great deal of sympathy for this view, I am of the opinion that tax is basically a levy on surplus value.   It is used by the executive committee of the ruling class to administer capitalist exploitation and is therefore not a working class issue?

               

How the government uses tax is of no concern to the working class, but  it is difficult to argue this as a worker’s payslip will say “Tax paid”.

 

 

[Young Master Smeet]

Not quite, we do physically "pay" the taxes in so much as many workers do hand over tax (especially VAT); we don't bear the burden, is the point, our incomes adjust so that someone else has to have a smaller share of the total wealth.  We do bear the burden of taxes/duties on non-essentials, like beer and wine duty or tobacco.  The point is, though, that it all comes down to the class struggle, and the strength of the various sides in the wages market.

[alanjjohnstone]

i think we don't often emphasise that there is an important time factor. If tomorrow tax taken from your pay was raised to a third then we would suffer a pay-cut and have less spending power. But as YMS says it all comes down to class struggle for higher pay for any increased income tax be recuperated.If the unions or unofficial action is weak then people do feel the pinch and the pain of tax and the burden of taxation falls proportionately heavier upon them. Compensating for the tax taken from your wages is not done automatically and may take a while and at a cost of lost of earnings through strike actions and overtime bans etc.This caveat also applies to the effects of inflation. Wages are prices and so with a general rise in prices it too loses value but wages are a special type of price…it is ultimately determined by the active input of working class, it is why it cannot ever be a passive class but at times it does act so for various reasons. It is one reason why we must always emphasis and stress the importance of class struggle and call for more power to the unions…as long as they exercise that power and don't as sometimes happen get co-opted into what are called pay and price deals with governments.    

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

i think we don't often emphasise that there is an important time factor. If tomorrow tax taken from your pay was raised to a third then we would suffer a pay-cut and have less spending power.

True, but it works both ways. Workers benefit, albeit temporarily, from a tax cut, as a LibDem leaflet that came through my door yesterday claims:

Quote:

£800 tax cut. 53, 100 people in Richmond Park and North Kingston have benefited from the Lib Dems raising of the income tax threshold. Nobody will pay any income tax on the first £10, 500 they earn.

This is true too, though of course it will eventually be eaten away by inflation (and was in fact compensation for past inflation). But if we go down this road we can't have it both ways.

[Author]

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