Open letter to Caroline Lucas, my Green MP

Dear Caroline Lucas,

I was disturbed to see that Richard Murphy mentioned your name in connection with his economic proposals for growth, which he outlined in an article in the Guardian yesterday.

In the first place, as you must know, the continuous expansion model of the economy is unsustainable.

In the second place, he refers to your support for a crackdown on tax avoidance. Murphy is well aware, though he refuses to acknowledge this obvious fact, that tax avoidance is an unavoidable consequence of the tax system. If the person or corporation is the unit of taxation, then people and companies will move, hide or arrange their affairs, legally or otherwise so as to avoid paying.

If the burden of taxation shifted on to property, this simply can not happen. With no fundamental reform to the tax system, the government would lose no revenue if corporate was phased out altogether and the revenue raised instead from the UBR. So all Murphy’s talk about cracking down on transfer pricing is nonsense. He knows perfectly well what has to be done but refuses to say so. It is best to have nothing to do with anyone like that.

As I have said before, the Crown Jewel in the Green Party’s policy agenda is land value taxation, a policy which cuts tax havens out of the loop altogether. If you have spoken for this policy, then it has been kept well out of the news.

Aside of the issue of avoidance and evasion, there is a need for tax reform for technical and efficiency reasons. I have complained before about the problems of implementing modern IT systems for the tax system, such as the online tax returns. The present system is simply outmoded. Have a look at HMRC’s web site for yourself and try to work out how to navigate through its complexities. These complexities are the product of the system itself. They must go. The Green Party has a policy that could achieve this desirable aim. Please talk about it often and loudly enough that the point gets through to the public.

This is an open letter which I have put on the website of the Land Value Taxation Campaign.

Yours sincerely,

Henry Law