We need fair taxes

There has been much discussion about "austerity" lately, or to describe it properly, unwarranted cuts in support for the people who most need it. It is too easy to blame the shortage of public funds on the move to leave the European Union, though the fact that we are not benefiting from a rise in global trading activity as much as fellow-Europeans must be a factor. No, the real reason is deliberate government policy to reduce the tax contributions from those most able to make them.

William Wallace is not a name well-known to the general public (except for those who saw a historically dubious biopic starring Mel Gibson), but he is a distinguished and respected academic in the field of international affairs. He wrote on Liberal Democrat Voice over the Christmas period:

The IMF’s annual report on the UK economy recommends that taxes should be raised, in order to reduce the deficit further without cutting public investment and services.

and

Britain has one of the lowest tax rates of any developed democracy, after the USA and Canada. It is also one of the most unequal, after the USA. Other democratic states tax wealth and income more progressively, and provide higher-quality public services from that revenue. Germany, on Eurostat figures, raised 40% of GDP in tax in 2016, against the UK’s 35%, without ruining its economy or losing its business elite. 

Lib Dems achieved their largest parliamentary gains in 1997 with a manifesto which included putting a penny on the standard rate of income tax for the sake of education, so we should not be afraid of doing so again. Indeed, current policy is to rescue the NHS via a hypothecated tax. I would like to go further and say that we must also provide for our underfunded social services.