So Toby Young thinks that taxing companies properly would lead to customers paying more as the cost of the tax bills would be passed on in higher prices. Now let us think about things the way that Alan Sugar or Philip Green or Stuart Rose would as opposed to the way Karl Marx would. The market will stand a certain price for let us say a jacket. You can bring a jacket to the market for a certain cost. As you have a well run business that does not waste money on staff pensions or on making sure the jacket will last the cost is less than the price you can get the customer to pay. The difference is your profit. If you do not hide your profit away, in for example Monaco, the tax office will take 30% to pay for things that do not benefit you, as a rich person, like the NHS or education for people who cannot afford public school. We can assume that you cannot increase this profit margin by charging a higher price because if you thought you could you would have already…why would you not charge as much as you think that you can even if the tax rate for rich people was zero (which of course it is if you have non-dom status)?
Even if Young’s account had some internal logic most of the shoppers spoken to by protesters have agreed that the tax position of the super rich and their corporations is a scandal. The protesters have succeeded in putting corporate governance, taxation and the role of the super-rich right in the middle of political debate: they have therefore been successful by definition in terms of their immediate aims…no one is saying that to get corporations under proper control is going to be anything other than a long struggle. The high street protests though have been an excellent start.
This is the bloke who wants to run his own school? I take it that maths and ethics won’t be high on the agenda.
Absolutely right, as if prices are determined by individual firms, anyone whose thought about it for more than five seconds can see thats nonsense.