Screw the taxpayer

[Government] belongs to its citizens, rich and poor, old and young.

To what extent does it owe obligations to non-citizens, though? That’s the real question on matters of immigration.

I agree that “taxpayer” is used to make the state vanish from the equation; if people were saying “public money” instead, then they might remember such things as “public ownership” and “public interest” which are desparately being avoided. Instead they pretend that it’s suburban middle-class respectable people paying directly for things they find odious, and encourage them to object.

In some ways this is like the modern trend of considering how a company treats its suppliers to be the height of ethics; “ethical shopping” consists of monitoring how a factory manager thousands of miles away treats his workers, and considering one’s own transactions accordingly. Likewise the “ethical” taxpayer considers whether the organisation he or she pays tax to is supporting someone’s lifestyle to which he or she objects.

Back to immigration: out of “popular”, “legal” and “workable”, it seems we can have at most one and a half of those properties.

This is very good and important, though there’s potential tension between the view of the state as a non-voluntary entity that claims authority over them and subjects them to its laws. and point 2, as immigrants present the exception to the claim that the state is non-voluntary. I try to work through these ideas in a paper from a few years ago,
Immigration, Association, and the Family

(not sure if that link will work. Can I joint the others asking for “preview”?)

Essentially every country that has both any substantial immigration and even modest social welfare programs has “public charge” provisions that would-be immigrants must meet. I’m not sure these are per se unacceptable, but, from my limited understanding, it seems that those in the UK are now set much, much too high. At the least, when fundamental rights are at issue (like the right to marry and live with one’s spouse and minor children) such burdens should be low and be able to be met in several ways.

People who pay in more than they receive – such as the mythical “taxpayer”

Is this actually the commonly-understood meaning of “taxpayer”? I always took it to mean “a person who pays taxes”. Which is all of us – at least, all of us adults. Have you got an example of someone using “taxpayers” to mean “net contributors only”?

This post is fundamentally misguided, because the language in British public debate is emphatically not net taxpayers. No-one is saying that net contributors to the public purse “own” the government. Instead, the point is that just as the government distributes resources, they have to come from somewhere – i.e. taxes – and so the government should be careful not to take resources away from others if it’s not going to put them to better use. There’s an opportunity cost to government spending.

But I’ll go further, and actually defend the “net taxpayer” viewpoint. In my view, the government should be particularly sensitive to those who it harms by its actions. The government is answerable to the electorate as a whole, true, but – you can call it “sufficient justification” or whatever other term of art you like – we must require it to be fair to everyone, or at least all citizens. Of course the government should try and minimise the burden on net taxpayers – although naturally, there are many other groups that it harms, and it needs to minimise the burdens on those other groups too.

I’m with ajay in that I’ve always assumed that “the taxpayer” is meant to stand for all of us, and if anything is a more inclusive label than, say, “the citizenry” or even “the people”. Everyone who actually lives here pays at least some tax, and there’s no real popular conception of “net taxpayers” which “the taxpayer” could be taken as shorthand for. For instance, I have no real idea if I’m a net taxpayer or not – I’m probably in the income bracket where I might be, and as a single person with no children and no current business with the NHS then I probably am a net taxpayer, but I can’t say that with any confidence. I wouldn’t feel any more or less of a “taxpayer” if I found out that I happened to fall on a particular side of the net tax payment division and I don’t get the impression that many other people care about that distinction either.

I think “the taxpayer” tends to be invoked when we want the discussion of government spending to focus on efficiency. We all have a common interest in a well-run government that can provide us with a high level of services with a minimum of taxation or borrowing, and to the extent that there is a continuum between well-run and efficient governments, and chaotically run and wasteful ones, we would prefer to have something closer to the former. If the government is wasting money in some sense (say, on those £6bn aircraft carriers with no aircraft, or Lord Adonis’ new train set) then we’re either going to have to accept lower-quality services, less redistribution, higher borrowing, or higher taxation, and it would be preferable if all of those things could be avoided by not wasting the money in the first place. You might object and say that improving efficiency is not possible, and that the claim that it is possible is merely being used by those who would prefer to pay less tax, but a similar interest in efficiency is held by those who want more services or more redistribution, and the question of efficiency is (for the most part) orthogonal to the question of what the overall level of taxation, redistribution and services should be. There’s really no reason why “the taxpayer” as someone who seeks value for money has to be seen as a proxy for the wealthy or those who pay the most tax – you could use the term in that way, and I could imagine a right-wing think tank trying to popularise that usage, but I don’t think that’s how most people in Britain today use it.

This is not really a new usage, is it? Property qualifications for the franchise are not such ancient history, and they were explicitly justified in terms like those Chris uses here. The idea that government should be accountable to those who pay for it has deep roots, it’s not something Chris just made up.

I’ve always assumed that “the taxpayer” is meant to stand for all of us, and if anything is a more inclusive label than, say, “the citizenry” or even “the people”. Everyone who actually lives here pays at least some tax

Would you say the same thing if we substituted “property owner” for “taxpayer”? After all, everyone owns some property.

ajay @6

I think it is at implied by the idea of alarm clock Britain, no?

“”Now more than ever, politicians have to be clear who they are standing up for,” [Clegg] writes. “Be in no doubt, I am clear about who that is.”

Who? Ethnic minorities? The poor? The disabled? The original lineup of Gerry and the Pacemakers? Beekeepers? Milkmen? Necrophiles? Yeomen?

No. They can all piss off. Because Cleggsy Bear has someone else in mind. But despite claiming to be “clear about who that is”, it’s a group he defines in the vaguest, most frustrating terms possible – almost as if he doesn’t really know what the hell he’s going on about.

He’s on the side of “Alarm Clock Britain”, apparently. Yeah. You know: Alarm Clock Britain. Stop staring blankly at me. Alarm Clock Britain! It’s everywhere!”

Charlie Brooker

Is this actually the commonly-understood meaning of “taxpayer”? I always took it to mean “a person who pays taxes”. Which is all of us – at least, all of us adults. Have you got an example of someone using “taxpayers” to mean “net contributors only”?

I am blissfully unaware of public discourse on this matter in the UK, but this sort of thing isn’t at all unusual in the US- think of the Wallstreet Journal’s “lucky duckies” who “pay no taxes” but use government resources in various ways or Mitt Romney’s “47%” who are moochers. Both cases take “taxpayers” to be “federal income tax”, and ignore the many taxes paid by those who pay little or no federal income taxes (state taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, various fees, etc.) But, as Chris notes, even beyond that, those few people who might actually pay no taxes at all are typically among the very worst off, and this explains why they pay no taxes- too disabled to work, etc. So, at least this sort of rhetoric is pretty common in the US. From the sound of things, it’s spreading to the UK too.

“To what extent does it owe obligations to non-citizens, though? That’s the real question on matters of immigration”

As a resident of B.C., I have concerns about the Alturdans that pay taxes to Alturda their entire working life and then retire here and suck our healthcare system dry.

the key idea is not that the state is answerable to them because they pay for it

Well, the idea that the state is answerable to those who pay for it is pretty fundamental in US (and British) discourse. “Taxation without Representation is Tyranny”, and all that.

I agree with your analysis of the meme, Chris. It’s certainly true that the abstract ‘taxpayer’ is being used in such a way as to transform the government into nothing more than a provider of services (and when it becomes seen in this way the fact that we *have* to pay taxes starts to seem oppressive and arbitrary).

However, I think there’s more to it. There is an argument that says that paying tax is a key component of the social contract. There are those who argue that one of the best things that could happen for governance in states in Africa, for example, would be to get more people paying taxes. That’s for two reasons: first, people would start demanding things from their government; second, the more dependent the government was on the productivity of its people the more responsive it would be to their economic well being. This analysis is, I think, particularly apposite in those countries afflicted by the ‘resource curse’ where the political classes can get filthy rich with scant regard to the general population.

Okay, so we’re in a different situation here in the UK. That dialectic is well established and ‘the taxpayer’ has become something that is actually destroying the reciprocal process by transforming it into an economic rather than a political relation. However, it does make me wonder whether ‘the taxpayer’ is a pernicious thing per se. If it isn’t then perhaps the proper response might be to reclaim it rather than dismiss it. Of course the Taxpayers’ Alliance is obnoxious but then there’s also the Tax Justice Network, which is doing wonderful work on UK and international tax politics.

Is it worth pointing out that ‘tax-payers’ include (or should include) a bunch of people who the government shouldn’t (or shouldn’t obviously) be answerable to – namely resident foreigners who have no intention of taking on the burdens of citizenship (and, presumably, non-resident foreigners who own shares in profit-making companies.)

This seems fairly salient to me: I pay a fair amount of taxes to the Turkish state, but I suspect that most Turkish citizens wouldn’t feel their government should, for that reason, be answerable to me.

SamChevre @ 20: and yet, every state that I’m aware of taxes plenty of people who it doesn’t represent, and makes no claim to.

ajay @6 – it absolutely refers to net taxpayers, as we can see from both the American and British contexts. One example that I think puts a fine point on it is the way in which anti-welfare tropes have been extended to tax credits for the working poor. In the U.K, this comes with the classic language of “chiseling.” In the U.S, we’ve seen outright attempts at redefinition, such as in 2008 when John McCain’s campaign attempted to redefine the Earned Income Tax Credit, a program directed at working poor tax payers, as welfare.

What’s common about these moves is that they are essentially a dodge, meant to distract the audience from the reality that the distribution of income is so skewed that a near-majority of the population now falls below standards that the electorate has decided shouldn’t have to pay income tax, the reality that the electorate has made that decision and generally approves of it, and the reality that the people receiving benefits are working and paying taxes and thus fall into the common rubric of the deserving poor.

SamChevre @ 20 – thankfully, it’s not the only element of discourse – at least in the U.S, ever since the Civil War Amendments, we have a conception (however challenged and blocked in reality) that citizenship is universal on a jus solis basis and that the franchise is the highest right of citizenship.

The idea that you have to pay income taxes in order to be a citizenship is a bit of a funny one – after all, there wasn’t a Federal income tax in the United States until the Civil War, and then not again until 1894 when that income tax was declared unconstitutional and then not again until 1913. But even after it was re-created, the income tax was specifically designed to target the incomes of the wealthy alone as opposed to being a universal tax granting citizenship.

The income tax didn’t become universal until WWII, and it really stopped being universal starting in the early 70s with the creation of the EITC and the beginning of wage stagnation. So really, income tax paying as a duty of citizenship is the aberration rather than the rule.

Layman @21, I doubt that most British people could tell you who Mitt Romney is, much less anything about his views on tax policy. It seems to me that the American rhetoric on tax is generally more right-wing than the British, which is why I’d prefer not to import the American usage of “taxpayer”.

Tom Wilkinson @25:

the whole ‘consumerist’ approach to the common weal is very destructive of social provision generally

I’m not so sure. Most people understand that there are always limits on resources somewhere, and the idea that we should get value for our money is a sensible one. In any collective endeavour, there will be some people who can claim to have put more money in than others, but the health of the organisation as a whole is still benefited by careful use of the available resources, and there’s no particular reason why a person who pays in less than someone else should care less. In fact, to the extent that overall taxation is regressive* and falls hardest on the poorest as a percentage of their income, you could argue that the poor have just as much reason to want to see more efficiency and less tax (or greater redistribution in their favour). If you’re asking someone to give up a third of their income when they’re already quite poor, it seems hard to argue that they shouldn’t ask too many questions about how the money is being spent, no matter how small a proportion of overall government spending it happens to be.

That the poorest people still pay non-negligible (to them, if not in the grand scheme of things) amounts of tax has historically been described as a positive thing precisely because it includes them in the category of “tax payers”, and that to exclude them would be to invite disenfranchisement. I’m afraid my google-fu isn’t giving me any knockout quotes, but I recollect that Gladstone made the case for reducing rather than abolishing some indirect taxes on the basis that to exclude some people from paying any tax at all would be bad for the long-term health of society.

I suppose my point is that the perspective of the abstract “taxpayer” is an important one, in that it allows us to think about value for money, the alternative uses to which the same resources could be put to, and so on. To concede the right to call oneself a “taxpayer” to those who pay large amounts of tax is to concede a valuable rhetorical position, and I don’t understand why anyone on the left would be keen to do that. Surely it is better to reinforce the notion that taxes are universal, and nobody can claim that their particular contribution is special?

* I’ve no idea how accurate Richard Murphy’s figures are, but they don’t seem implausible to me

@20 ““Taxation without Representation is Tyranny”, and all that.”

and

@27 “Well, if your democratic ideals are based on ‘no taxation without representation’…”

“No taxation without representation” is not equivalent to “no representation without taxation”…

The hallmark of the Coalition is its eagerness to import everything that especially pernicious about the US, even as American increasingly come to realise that those things are problematic. The makers/takers distinction is especially bad, in part because it encourages responses — for instance, “what about bailouts to bankers?” — that reinforce it.

Since I’ve been an immigrant/permanent resident of the US for 50 years, I feel as though somehow my legal status is losing all meaning.

Well, it is, but not in the way you seem to think: in American popular discourse, the antonym of “citizen” is too often “illegal immigrant”.

As for the public charge question: the US threshold is 125% of the federal poverty level for family size. (Around $19,400 for a two-person household.) In contrast, a British citizen wishing to bring a spouse to the UK who can’t demonstrate six months of salaried employment at £18,600 p.a. — which affects self-employed or freelance workers — has to have £62,500 in savings. That’s an absurdity.

As a resident of the District of Columbia, I pay income taxes to both DC and the Federal Government, yet have no representation in Congress. As a Federal employee, I’m also considered a worthless drone, sucking up the taxes of Real Taxpaying People.

Hmmmm …seems a fairly big step from media shorthand that conflates taxpayers, citizens and net beneficiaries to actual disenfranchisement. Seems like maybe the same media just might call someone out on it if it really came to that.

In the U.S. – I voted today. Hope everyone else did too. I’m pretty sure I paid more in taxes than the guy in front of me – he looked retired so he was probably a “taker” anyway. I couldn’t tell about the woman behind me, her coat was much nicer than mine, and she had a really fancy watch. She looked rich, but its hard to be sure.

Funny thing is, they only asked me to state my name and address so they could check me off the roll. They never asked what I made or how much tax I had paid.

I received one ballot. Same as the guy in front of me. Same as the woman behind me.

Fortunately I’m still sure my vote was worth more since I chose the right candidate and I’m not sure they both did. He looked too conservative and she looked too rich. Probably better to not let them vote at all than go around ‘wasting’ their votes on the wrong candidates. Maybe they should have had to show ID.

@Rob

Certainly I don’t live in the UK, but it took me about 2 minutes to find this gem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2364521/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Meet-BBCs-poster-girl-welfare-cuts.html

Complaints about the largesse of welfare programs? Check. Suggestions of irresponsibility on the part of the recipient? Check. Pointing out that ‘the taxpayers’ provide these benefits? Check. Ignoring that the recipient is, herself, a ‘taxpayer’? Check. And for added measure, wondering about the recipient’s African-ness?

Seems our Romney-ness is catching on over there…

The term “the taxpayer” is playing an increasing role in British public debate…

And not just Britain. Here in Ireland, politicians and the political media are far more likely to refer to the public as taxpayers than as citizens. And I couldn’t agree more with your final line, it is indeed ‘a pernicious ideological assault on the very idea of equal citizenship.’

Vincent Browne (one of the last sane public voices in Ireland) covers this very well in a talk he gave last year (which inevitably found its way onto YouTube). Browne’s talk starts at 18:30, but he deals with the issue of “the taxpayer” from about 23:00 onwards. It’s good stuff.

The UK may not be a republic, but it’s a democracy for many practical purposes. Certainly more of one than the US, which has an upper legislative house wildly unrepresentative of population, and not a mere delaying factor like the House of Lords.

This is apposite:

FactCheck: do immigrants pay their way?

[break] down immigrants into those from the European Economic Area (EEA) and those from outside, and big differences emerge.

“Whereas EEA immigrants have made an overall positive fiscal contribution to the UK, the net fiscal balance of non-EEA immigrants is negative” the research concludes…”as it is for natives”.

What is the moral basis for taxation at all?[1] You all seem to think that it is simply that “we” have democratically “decided” that that is the tax to pay, so therefore it is moral. Which is wrong.

Good is not good because it is what God wills. God wills it because it is good. Therefore: You can tell the difference between an angel and a devil by what they ask you to do. [2]

Government power is not legitimate because of its formal source. Its formal source is legitimate because and to the extent that it leads to good government. So: As democracy is simply a civil war continued by other means – “counting heads instead of breaking them”, its legitimacy comes from its having better consequences than actual civil war, not from its conformance to any theory of how government ought to be.

Taxation, like any exercise of power, to be legitimate, requires a moral basis which is logically prior to the mere power to exact it which democracy provides. Otherwise instead of democracy justifying the exercise of power, the exercise of power condemns democracy.

So: Yes, net taxpayers are entitled to ask what the moral basis is.

If you say “because that’s what our democratically elected parliament/congress decided” you are not giving a reason – you are just saying “because we have the power to do it”. But voters like to imagine themselves as fair-minded people, and will want to know the reason, so you will have to do better than that – for if there is no moral basis, that casts doubt on the legitimacy both of the government and of the democratic system itself.

[1](I do have an answer to this, of course. And I am sure you do – you just don’t have one most voters would recognise.)

[2](I am invoking theology here by way of metaphor, just so nobody gets carried away with this paragraph in particular and starts discussing Aquinas or whatever.)

Ben @51
“Taxation, like any exercise of power, to be legitimate, requires a moral basis which is logically prior to the mere power to exact it which democracy provides. Otherwise instead of democracy justifying the exercise of power, the exercise of power condemns democracy.

So: Yes, net taxpayers are entitled to ask what the moral basis is.

If you say “because that’s what our democratically elected parliament/congress decided” you are not giving a reason – you are just saying “because we have the power to do it”. But voters like to imagine themselves as fair-minded people, and will want to know the reason, so you will have to do better than that – for if there is no moral basis, that casts doubt on the legitimacy both of the government and of the democratic system itself.”

Oh my goodness, can people please stop using the word democracy unless they specify what they actually mean by it. So far as I know there is no actual democracy in the world.

Speaking of England and its related territories, colonies and former colonies etc., perhaps tribute arose before taxation (if anyone can correct this I would be most grateful):

“Edward’s heir Athelstan (reigned 925-39) was also a distinguished and audacious soldier who pushed the boundaries of the kingdom to their furthest extent yet. In 927-8, Athelstan took York from the Danes; he forced the submission of king Constantine of Scotland and of the northern kings; all five Welsh kings agreed to pay a huge annual tribute (reportedly including 25,000 oxen), and Athelstan eliminated opposition in Cornwall. ”

“For the rest of Ethelred’s rule (reigned 978-1016), his brother became a posthumous rallying point for political unrest; a hostile Church transformed Edward into a royal martyr. Known as the Un-raed or ‘Unready’ (meaning ‘no counsel’, or that he was unwise), Ethelred failed to win or retain the allegiance of many of his subjects. In 1002, he ordered the massacre of all Danes in England to eliminate potential treachery.

Not being an able soldier, Ethelred defended the country against increasingly rapacious Viking raids from the 980s onwards by diplomatic alliance with the duke of Normandy in 991 (he later married the duke’s daughter Emma) and by buying off renewed attacks by the Danes with money levied through a tax called the Danegeld. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1006 was dismissive: ‘in spite of it all, the Danish army went about as it pleased’. By 1012, 48,000 pounds of silver was being paid in Danegeld to Danes camped in London.”

http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensofEngland/TheAnglo-Saxonkings/EthelredIItheUnready.aspx

@ZM, you skipped the point, which is that it doesn’t matter what “democracy” is. The legitimacy of government power does not depend on that, it depends on how the power is used.

Aside from that “no democracy ever existed” is an insane thing to say. Next you will say that socialism hasn’t really been tried… 100 million dead and counting… tick… tick… tick…

It is what it is. If socialism always goes wrong, just accept that it always goes wrong and that this is a flaw in socialism, just as if certain design of building always collapses it is a flaw in the design. If democracy always degenerates to oligarchy or ochlocracy then that is what it is. It doesn’t make it “not democracy”, any more than me being a hunchback cripple rather than the Moses Rauluni I imagine in my head means I am not myself.

As an American, I’ve noticed two things about the “taxpayer” thing.

First, it devalues a lot of the taxes people actually pay: withholding taxes, state and county and local taxes of all kinds, sales taxes, and so forth and on. It fetishes federal income tax, in particular.

Second, a bunch of the people valorized (by themselves and others) as “the taxpayer” aren’t actually paying a lot of federal income tax. They have income via capital gains, corporate arrangements, and so forth, and often boast of how thoroughly they escape the federal income tax. So as with the warmongers who are themselves far too cowardly to risk danger and make up for that by abusing and oppressing others to do what they choose not to, “the taxpayer” is very often “someone who would pay taxes if more of their income were taxable and they slacked off cheating and exploiting loopholes”.

“So: As democracy is simply a civil war continued by other means – “counting heads instead of breaking them”, its legitimacy comes from its having better consequences than actual civil war, not from its conformance to any theory of how government ought to be.”

Says…who exactly? You seem to be sneaking a lot of “oughts” in under the pretense of being ruthlessly objective.

Not sure why a post of mine is in moderation. Words used by spammers, I presume.

Government power is not legitimate because of its formal source. Its formal source is legitimate because and to the extent that it leads to good government.

No. Legitimacy isn’t the same as goodness. If you hold a legitimate government issued deed for a piece of land, you have the legitimate right to sell that land to whomever you decide. You don’t have to make a justification to anyone that your decision is “good”. This doesn’t mean that you decide, like a pre-Aquinas God, what good is, it means you get to decide whether or not to do good.

The legitimacy of government comes from the consent of the governed. The governed might consent to something good or bad, but that is their decision to make. Of course, the governed will likely disagree among themselves as to which government is best. In that case, the most legitimate government is the one that most of the people consent to.

(And note that the absence of government–allowing other people to do whatever they want to me–demands as much consent as the presence of government. I absolutely do not consent to the absence of government, and the only way anyone would be able to impose that on me is by initiating a civil war.)

You can try to convince the governed on the basis of what is “good” which kind of government they should consent to, and many of them might listen because, as you say, “voters like to imagine themselves as fair-minded people”. But it’s their consent that makes it legitimate, not goodness or fair-mindedness. A benign robot overlord that maximized our utility with supreme wisdom but without out consent would not be legitimate. Consequences are not good enough, consent is required.

So: Yes, net taxpayers are entitled to ask what the moral basis is.

Everyone is entitled to ask what the moral basis of the state is. In the U.S., a simple answer is given. Check our founding document: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. Not from good outcomes. Not from the consent of the taxpayers. From the consent of the governed.

[1](I do have an answer to this, of course. And I am sure you do – you just don’t have one most voters would recognise.)

On the contrary, most voters believe in majority rule. It’s a much more popular doctrine than utilitarianism (see the other recent thread). That doesn’t make it right. It does mean that you’re the one who has to do the work of convincing people that a popular doctrine is incorrect. You’ll have to do a lot better than the argument-by-assertion of 51.

The legitimacy of the U.S. government doesn’t come from its founding document. On the contrary, by the standards set forth in that document, the U.S. government fell short for most of its history (when it denied various peoples the right to vote.) The U.S. declaration just happens to correctly state where the legitimacy for all governments, in so far as they are legitimate, comes from.

Consumatopia – I know this is the thing you’re “not meant to do on the Internet” – but it’s the easiest sort of example of its kind – was Nazi Germany legitimate in this sense, since there was probably more (???? With notable exceptions) consent from the government than dissent by those within its legal jurisdiction?

Nazi Germany could not have been, by liberal standards, a legitimate government because the state was not run according to law. Hitler became Prime Minister legally but ultimately suspended all civil rights.

Not that it ultimately matters. By what sense is the United States now ruling “with the consent of the governed”? Is there some way for the citizens to collectively disband the state?

Is North Korea governed with the tacit consent of the people then? Was Hungary after 1956?

Consumatopia @71
Well, I think then we come back to what is that set, where is it located, if you have located the legitimacy of government in the “consent of the governed”, and the set “of things that governments may legitimately do” as somewhere outside of that?

So, if death camps are out of that set, is the US Civil War in or out of that set? on both sides (I’m not sure about the civil war, but i think i’ve read in later wars the mennonites, for instance and perhaps among others, refused to fight on conscientious grounds – I think some of them perhaps did forestry duties during the war, although i’ve an idea they faced some harsh treatment)? or just on one side?

“It is, though, equivalent to something like ‘if taxation then representation”. And if that is the basis for your democratic ideals…”

But that is not the same as “if and only if taxation…” Point being I don’t think the slogan was meant to imply taxation was in fact the basis of their democratic ideals. as it stands, in any case, with sales taxes, taxation as a standard for representation would be functionally more inclusive than any of the franchises out there – not to say that it is a good principled standard

Once upon a time in California, ‘taxpayer’ used to be understood to mean someone who paid property taxes, those being the primary source of revenue for local government, including the school system. The state supreme court found this arrangement inequitable, but nothing was done about it until an initiative constitutional amendment, Proposition 13, tied the state’s taxation system in knots.

Property taxes were cut for most and the state took over responsibility for funding schools, but the result was that the state, and the schools, were chronically starved of money. This is slowly being rectified, but property taxation remains wildly unfair, with businesses and older people paying far less than most. (I keep our tax bill handy to enrage newcomers; worth more than a million, our house is officially appraised at $85k).

Since this was done, though, the word ‘taxpayer’ is no longer used to distinguish between different citizens in questions of municipal finance.

To the OP and supporting comments, yes, and thank you for bringing it up! This “the taxpayers” business is very common in the US as well (note that it’s plural; we have identified multiple taxpayers in the US whereas I guess Osborne has winnowed it down to just one person, probably JK Rowling). It drives me nuts. “The taxpayers” should be “the British/American/etc. people” or “the citizens” and “taxpayer dollars” (Do you guys have “taxpayer pounds”? Doesn’t have the same ring to it.) should be “public money”.

In the US of A if you focus on a particular program you really can identify a lot of people who don’t pay any taxes for that program: sales and property taxes are state and local only, corporate taxes are supposedly paid by shareholders, people forget customs duties exist, and payroll taxes are ostensibly specifically for Social Security and Medicare. So if you’re talking about national park ranger’s salaries or stealth bombers, someone who’s too poor to pay income taxes can be said to have not paid for them. This of course overlooks the fact that our laws structure our society and decide who has how much money, and poor people have thus been massively and unfairly burdened–indirectly taxed–by government arranging for them to be poor in the first place.

The nation, acting through government, has first claim on all resources within its territory, and then decides which resources it will allow people to receive to dispose of personally. Arrogant or misguided people like to tell themselves that the government decides which resources it will “take” and which it will allow them to “keep”, but of course they have it backward. With this statement I sabotage my earlier support for the term “public money” because really it’s all public money, but maybe we can take that to mean money which the government has reserved for government-directed expenditure.

And “No taxation without representation!” is awful too. I attacked that one in a thread a few weeks ago, no recollection on what the original topic was. Back then people defended it, saying as here that it’s only meant to go one way. Fine, but it implies the other way as well to people not trained in strict, formal logic (most people). And in fact you can see people embracing that interpretation. In the lovely Telegraph piece Chris linked to, where the OP argues that the franchise should be restricted in Britain based on income tax payments, one of the equally lovely commentators claims that “No representation without taxation” is a well-established principle. The other thing someone argued when I brought it up in the previous thread was that “No representation without taxation” was just one of several positive arguments for democratic representation and served to back up arguments about inherent rights of citizens. No, I don’t think so. I think it’s a replacement for a proper concept of citizenship which portrays government as an entity separate from the people: either a service provider they enter into contracts with or a thief who steals their money for its own ends. And of course the other key element is the obvious: people were pissed off at new taxes and just didn’t want to pay them. A legitimate founding slogan would be, “No laws without representation”; but of course we want laws so it should just be, “Give us representation” full stop.

A minor nitpick: the Declaration of Independence is no more a founding document than the resolution (presumably from the Naval Committee) defining the flag. The various acts of the Continental Congresses were superseded by the Constitution and subsequent legislation.

The thread’s long enough that I’m surprised no one’s brought up alternative criteria for citizenship, like military service (Starship Troopers, anyone?) which was nearly universal in living memory, but is now so rare as to be given merely lip service, however obsequious, and is not restricted to citizens.

In the U.S. it’s far from clear that illegal immigrants don’t pay their freight; it’s widely suspected that they pay more in taxes (including a tithe to social security) than they’re able to collect. Cultural panic notwithstanding (salsa more popular than ketchup) it’s not clear who’s exploiting whom.

“it’s not clear who’s exploiting whom”

I think it’s quite obvious that the undocumented workers are exploited. And if you choose to frame it as ‘the citizens and legal residents exploit the undocumented workers’, that might be true on average, but there could be a portion of the citizens/residents who suffer (wage suppression).

2 points: first, the word “welfare” still reads a bit strange in the British media — to this Brit, at least — “benefits” used to be customary (& a lot sweeter-sounding IMO). Evidence of transatlantic political-consultant industriousness? Second, I always thought that the phrase “no taxation without representation” draws an important distinction — the first abstract noun doesn’t just rhyme, it emphasises the fact that it’s the same *rules* for everybody (as opposed to the *burden*, absolute or percentagewise, which is in fact a function of individual circumstances). Which a lot of folk on both sides of the aisle seem to elide, possibly for different reasons.

“MPAV @54: True enough. On the other hand, “the US is a plutocracy, not a democracy” is the plain, unvarnished truth.”

Eh, how about a plutocratic democracy?

“The UK’s legal status is as a constitutional monarchy.”

Yes, a democratic constitutional monarchy. Just like Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

“Do you mean, like, “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the plutocrats and exercised by them directly or indirectly…”?”

Ha! Something like that.

95: I’m not sure that it is; I’m really looking for an example of “taxpayer” being used to mean “only people who pay in more than they receive”. In that (pretty horrible) article, “taxpayer” is just really being used as a synonym for “the public purse”. As I say, I’ve never come across an example of someone in the UK actually saying that someone who pays taxes doesn’t count as a taxpayer because they get back slightly more than they pay, and without that the entire post falls apart.

The irony is that this sort of “taxpayer as an elevated cultural category” discourse was aided and abetted by left-leaning parties in both the UK and the US. Think about the push to grant benefits to poor families as taxpayers via the WFTC (and subsequently WTC and CTC) in the UK and the EITC and CTC in the US. They actively pushed for increased benefits using the same taxpayer justification.

Chris Bertram : if you don’t entirely endorse the article, is there at least a work of yours we can go to, to find your opinions as to the articles’ truth claims? Or, um, you could say here?

“The whole process is a striking example of the normal functioning of the modern British constitution. This is in essence plutocratic: a joint-stock or business corporation of British taxpayers in proportion to their wealth, with special arrangements for the state’s creditors.
…
The British constitution is not (as the media claim it is) ‘democratic’. Nor is it ‘bourgeois democratic’ – meaning democratic, but parliamentary, not based on workers’ councils (as according to common far-left views).

Nor, yet again is the British constitution actually monarchical in any very strong sense (as in views commonplace on a section of the left in the 1980s and still held by comrade Steve Freeman and his co-thinkers): the oath of allegiance to the queen taken by soldiers, the police, etc gives her a reserve power in the constitution, not a major role in routine state and political management.”

The constitution is unwritten, and isn’t a function but a structure I would imagine (isn’t that distinction something communists are meant to make? Or is this a misunderstanding?) – does this person really want to argue that the constitution itself plutocratic? He would have a case I think, that the plutocratic elements he doesn’t like are unconstitutional. This would be a more true and also more public spirited argument to make in my opinion.

No, it is not a “strong” monarchy, if by strong one were to mean absolutist, as such. Prince Charles is named, presumably, after male relatives some of who came to bad ends at the hands of various people. I think if he is crowned, he means to take the name George, hopefully this might be a little more auspicious.

The UK constitution is somewhat like its judiciary so far as I can tell from here:
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/introduction-to-justice-system/history-of-the-judiciary

“It’s doubtful that anyone asked to design a justice system would choose to copy the English and Welsh model. It’s contradictory in places, and rather confusing.”

““The UK’s legal status is as a constitutional monarchy.”

Yes, a democratic constitutional monarchy. Just like Canada, New Zealand and Australia.”

I’d have to go to the trouble of looking it up, and I’m not going to right now, but I guess you could – the constitutional monarchy part is – as you would guess- constitutional. The voting part (I can only assume this is what you mean by democratic) is probably I think in an act called something like the voting rights act. But I’m not going to look it up right now. Feel free to.

I think we can safely conclude from all of this that the meaning of “taxpayer” in Britain is more complicated than is presented in the OP. There’s obviously a division of opinion between people (like me) who think that “taxpayer” is a useful concept and those who think it is pernicious. If I may summarise the case in favour of “taxpayer”:

a) It encourages us all to think that, however much or little we pay, the money that the government spends is our money (and to the extent that the government is borrowing money, it’s doing so on the basis that it’s counting on us to continue paying taxes, or paying increased amounts in the future).
b) It links the taxes you pay at the supermarket checkout or on your monthly payslip or in your council tax bill with stuff the government is actually doing; yes, you have a right to examine those things as a voter and not just as a taxpayer, but I think it makes for a more visceral connection in people’s minds.
c) To the extent that it’s a label that excludes people, it is actually more likely to exclude, say, Lord Ashcroft (who has opted out of paying certain taxes despite having the means to do so) than it is an unemployed immigrant, who at least pays the taxes that they’re required to even if that’s not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

The arguments against seem to be that:

a) “Taxpayer” competes with “public money” as a way of understanding whose money it is, and “public money” is preferable.
b) “Taxpayer” actually only refers to net taxpayers anyway.
c) If b) isn’t currently true, the right (TPA, think tanks, Richard Littlejohn) are trying to make it that way, so we should pre-emptively de-legitimise the word.

For my part, I’m persuaded by counter-argument A, in that “public money” would be a preferable term for that money which the government has at its disposal. I’d like to see more about how to bring that concept back into use. I find counter-argument B totally unpersuasive as it runs contrary to how I think most people use the term. I appreciate that everyone has their own anecdotes here, but I’m basically in agreement with ajay. Counter-argument C works if you think we can safely jettison “taxpayer” as part of our political vocabulary; I can see the case for doing so, but I think “taxpayer” gives us a bigger stick to beat tax-dodging oligarchs and purely extractive corporate tax-avoidance schemes than it gives to the right to beat up on the poor. Romney’s “47%” concept is thankfully not yet upon is in Britain and I’m not sure that ceding “taxpayer” as a rhetorical device to the right will do us any good in keeping it at bay.

One final point is that I really can’t imagine getting anywhere in British public discourse if your starting position is “screw the taxpayer”. A lot of people, even (especially?) poor people are proud to pay the full whack of tax, because it’s what separates them from the self-interest of the elite who are characterised by the increasing lengths they go to to avoid paying their fair share. Tax is generally harder to dodge if you’re poor, and even if you can dodge a bit here and there (payment in cash for odd jobs, overdoing it on the duty free fags and booze), the amount you can dodge is going to be proportionally small compared to those who have full-time professionals helping them to do it. And let’s not forget, who are the taxpayers who’ve stepped up to reduce the deficit lately? Not the high earners, who’ve seen the top rate of tax cut to 45%, but the ordinary people who has seen their VAT go from 15% to 20% with no sign of it coming back down. In proportion to the sacrifice made, the real taxpayers in Britain are actually the poorest and “taxpayer” should be their badge of pride.

When “The Job Creator” gets there. . . THEN it’s time to start slitting throats.

…and choose the throats carefully. No need to waste effort.

Apologies for the spelling errors

I always took it to mean “a person who pays taxes”. Which is all of us – at least, all of us adults.

In which case, why not just say “people”. It’s like the use of “Americans” instead of “people”; it sounds on the face of it as if you’re talking about everyone, but it’s subtely exclusionary. It sets up an In Group – those who pay tax – and by implication, an Out Group – those who don’t.

Since it also sets up a financial criterion by which to measure citizenship and contribution, it also implies greater contribution = greater citizenship = greater influence.

It’s insidious and disenfranchising to those of us who, for whatever reason, don’t contribute much via taxation.

The media address the question of accountability. That’s good. The government is supposed to be accountable to the citizens. But they make it sound like the government is accountable to the taxpayers. Sounds like the more you pay the more important you are, to the government. Well, I’d say: they’re giving away the game, that’s all. And maybe that’s a good thing too.

It doesn’t matter if it refers to the net taxpayers or gross taxpayers. If I pay 0 gbp in taxes then I shouldn’t question the government. Okay. But if I pay 1 gbp then suddenly I have as much right to question the government as someone who pays 1,000,000 gbp? That wouldn’t make sense. Clearly my value to the government has to correlate positively with the amount I pay.

That would make, say, Mother Theresa valueless. (A point I’d be willing to argue, but on other grounds.)

Josh McCabe @100 –

You’re misreading history a bit. The shift to redistribution via tax credits for the working poor was a defensive reaction to an already existing politics of the taxpayer as an elevated cultural category. It was meant to rehabilitate the image of the poor by emphasizing the working poor as opposed to the stigmatized non-working poor, and to distribute benefits through the tax code in order to make them more difficult for the right to attack as welfare.

Not that different from the creation of social insurance systems during the New Deal and the Attlee government, really.

I haven’t read the whole thread closely, but what I don’t get about people defending the “taxpayer” usage is this:

What’s good about it? The “accountability” thing is strange, because the govt. should be accountable to the people anyway. I mean, that’s just who it should be accountable to. What mileage are we supposed to get out of making it accountable to some notionally different class of entities, viz., “the taxpayers”?

Beyond that, I think Katherine @114 is exactly right: the trope is rather more insidious than lots of people seem willing to acknowledge.

What I take this is:
1. Yes the use of the word “taxpayer” subtly and importantly distorts the discussion.
2. If we want to point this discussion in the correct direction we need to change the language in two ways
a. We need to use the terms “efficiency of resource use” more.
b. We need to be more explicit about “opportunity cost” (what the opportunity cost of what we are proposing really is) – rather than it being a vague hand wave. That will make it clear that shifting an employer from public employment to unemployment isn’t a saving at all.

Doesn’t this UK usage of “taxpayer” just leave out a step?

Its undoubtedly true that a guy who pays 1 pound and a guy that pays 100,000 pounds are both tax payers. But its not the amount of tax he pays that gives him more influence. Its the other 100,000 pounds he pays to lobbyists, campaign coffers and other vectors of influence that makes his greater “net contribution” to the coffers more valuable. Where exactly that sort of “net taxpayer” becomes influential is open to interpretation.

If taxes were only used for education, fire engines and the like we sure wouldn’t have a real problem here. It’s another story if the government blows a couple of trillions on cruel and useless wars and generally feeds the military-industrial-security complex with taxpayer’s money.

We already have that problem with education, legal aid, and lots of other things, including the emergency services. If less were spent on the mil-ind-sec complex, there would indeed be more left for other things cet par, but that wouldn’t be the end of the matter for the implacable anti-public sector crowd responsible for this line of propaganda.obust (Though this may not be a very robust instance of cet. par. since we’d be presupposing quite a shift in political power away from the mil-int-sec types, and thus possibly also from other conservative causes like slashing public services.)

My point is not, though, that no-one should dare to question the way public funds are spent, obvs.

@133
Lets be clear Mao – defense doesn’t account for 50% of the US budget. It accounts for about 50% of the discretionary portion of the budget. As a percentage of the entire budget it has generally been between 20-25% which makes it approximately equal weight with each of SS and Healthcare/medicaid which also each run 20-25%.

I’m not advocating these relationships, just trying to be factual in what they’ve been.

Well, it’s a another day, so I hope CB won’t mind if I make just the one comment.

No idea how accurate/reputable this is, but, Mao might be thinking of this maybe??

“On April 17, 2010, Independent Institute analyst Robert Higgs said annual “defense-related spending greatly exceeds the amounts budgeted by the Department of Defense,” presenting FY 2009 data, the most recent figures available.

The official $636.5 billion spent way understated a growing annual total even Higgs can’t fully identify, given enormous black budgets and hidden add-ons, likely totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. What’s known for FY 2009, however, in billions of dollars includes the following:
….
Total: $1,027.5 trillion
….
In fact, with supplemental and hidden add-ons, as well as Pentagon, intelligence, and other unknown amounts, the grand total likely exceeds $1.5 trillion, a figure rising most years while popular needs go begging.

Higgs also cites the unreliability of official numbers. ”

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/business-of-america-is-war_29.html

Well, a big chunk of the debt was incurred during the arms race of the 1980s, and the Iraq war recently, so there you go.

@138
Actually $11T of the $17T outstanding has been accumulated in the last 10 years. About half during Bush’s term and half during Obamas.

After not much more reflection, I’d guess I’d go for “the people”. “The people’s money” has a decent ring to it.

dax@141: According to my passport I’m a “British Citizen”. See wikipedia for the history, but in short “citizen” has been correct legally for 65 years.

Hope this is ok.

Wikipedia: “On 1 January 1983, upon the coming into force of the British Nationality Act 1981, every Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies became either a British Citizen, British Dependent Territories Citizen or British Overseas Citizen.
Use of the term British subject was discontinued for all persons who fell into these categories, or who had a national citizenship of any other part of the Commonwealth. The category of British subjects now includes only those people formerly known as British subjects without citizenship and people born in Ireland before 1949. In statutes passed before 1 January 1983, however, references to British subjects are interpreted as if they referred to Commonwealth citizens.”

I read the British Nationality Act 1981, to see if it was explicit about the difference between subjects and citizens, and why politicians would choose to cast people as citizens rather than subjects.

I read it start to finish ,until the schedule, and it didn’t spell this choice out at all.

Another Wikipedia article :”Though the term British subject now has a very restrictive statutory definition in the United Kingdom—and it would be incorrect to describe a British citizen as a British subject—the concept of a subject remains in the law, and the terms the Queen’s subjects, Her Majesty’s subjects, etc., remain in use in British legal discourse.[7]”

So in legal discourse people are subjects as well as citizens.

I think it better to identify as a subject with rights to vote, rather than a citizen, because I donot think the law has duties to citizens particularly (it is more a majority rules sort if thing, plus perhaps some inalienable rights, depending on your jurisdiction) – whereas subject implies the Crown and thus the law has duties towards you, that you may seek to fortify through petitions and such. This is my understanding.

A Price Payer’s Alliance—now that would be a fine thing.

Manta, yes it would in many cases. “Public purse” is collective and implies that the money should be put to public use and we’re just deciding which public use is best, while taxpayer is individual and implies that the money’s natural use is for tax cuts.

In case anyone was still looking for examples in the spirit of the OP, from today’s Guardian: “There are some people who seem to think that the way you reduce the cost of living in this country is for the state to spend more and more taxpayers’ money. It’s as if somehow you measure the compassion of the government by the amount of other people’s money it can spend. At a time when family budgets are tight, it is really worth remembering that this spending comes out of the pockets of the same taxpayers whose living standards we want to see improve.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/david-cameron-policy-shift-leaner-efficient-state