GODFREY BLOOM is wrong to say that: “Taxation is simply a system for the Government to take money from one sector of the population and apportion it arbitrarily to others.”

This sort of stuff may go down well with the US Tea Party, but most British people can see the point of taxation as the source of funding a public sphere from which we all benefit.

Most of us want publicly funded and accountable police, education and health services and transport infrastructure.

In the public realm we can argue about their size and function and we can demand transparency, effectiveness and honesty.

If these services disappear into private hands, they are not necessarily more efficient; we lose the right to examine the terms of their contracts and performance and may well become more expensive, like the railways, because we can find ourselves expected to fund profits for non risk-taking share holders at the expense of effective services for the rest of us.

Taxation can be more fairly collected. Because of the present extent of indirect taxation, such as VAT, the poorest pay proportionally the most.

Property taxes, such as the so-called “mansion taxes” ruled out by the present Chancellor, are fairer; they are less of a “taxation on effort”, because they include unearned wealth and they are harder to avoid.

Chris Walker-Lyne, Millfield Road, York.

 

• LIKE many others I tire of interference from Brussels, by which I mean those Brussels-based EU-funded UKIP MEPs with their off-shore tax haven view of the world.

Last week Godfrey Bloom, Yorkshire’s UKIP MEP, said that he saw nothing wrong in multinational corporations such as Amazon, Google, Starbucks and others avoiding paying tax, even though these activities disadvantage UK businesses and are costing thousands of jobs.

This week he tells us tax is designed “to take money from one section of the population and apportion it arbitrarily to others”.

There is nothing arbitrary about the NHS, or state education, or road maintenance, or environmental protection, or the provision of pensions, swimming pools, child benefit, libraries and waste collections.

Most people see tax as the way in which civilised and developed societies look after the common good.

You only have to visit countries where the tax system has collapsed to see the impact on ordinary people’s lives.

On the one hand UKIP is saying foreigners out and quit the EU; on the other, foreign multinationals who undermine our tax system and destroy British jobs are welcome, on the basis that only ordinary people and suckers pay tax.

Christian Vassie, Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.