How tax rules our politics (and lives)
Far be it from me to argue about tax with a man who founded a think tank called Tax Policy Associates and who advises the Scottish Government (among others) on tax issues, but his first point hardly needs proving to anyone. Ever since we learnt the story of Robin Hood, we've known tax as a fifth element in our lives.
As for Einstein, well, having listened ahead to all five episodes of Untaxing, I am tempted to agree with the physicist. Neidle's series makes our tax systems seem arcane, opaque, fantastical, occasionally deranged, often frustrating and always baffling. Despite that – or perhaps because of it – it's a terrific series, filled with anecdote and insight, that will leave you with the feeling you should pay far more attention to tax beyond your payslip, the Budget and the adventures of Little John et al.
Monday's opener was all about a napkin – 'the napkin that changed the world' – and revealed both Neidle's ability to zero in on quirks of history that prove to be seismic and how ideology and politicking give tax a bad name. The napkin was on a restaurant table in Washington DC in 1974, and scribbling on it was a young economist named Arthur Laffer. Watching him doodle a graph, with ever-widening eyes, were White House officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. What the doodle 'proved' was that if you raise taxes too much, revenues will actually go down.
Though disputed, the 'Laffer Curve' is still popular today – it is regularly cited by, among others, Liz Truss, while in 2019 Donald Trump awarded Laffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom, referencing the famous napkin. The napkin is a Shroud of Turin for those who seek low taxation, but tax ideology works both ways.
Recently, the Scottish Government raised the top rate of income tax to 48 per cent, which some believe will scare off higher earners and lead to less revenue. And what did Neidle and his colleagues at the Scottish Government's Tax Advisory Group have to say about this? 'Nothing,' said Neidle. 'Because they didn't ask us. It was pure politics.' More tax theory drawn up on the back of napkins.
Yesterday delved into the murky story of the Beatles ' inventive but ultimately flawed efforts to avoid income tax (surely Eleanor Rigby would have benefited from some of their revenues?), a tale that ultimately ended in Michael Jackson selling the rights to Lennon & McCartney's songs to pay his own tax bill.
Today's episode is on Jaffa Cakes, tomorrow's on a porn-star lawyer who played a part in the downfall of Rangers Football Club. Neidle cherrypicks the minutiae expertly. The overall impression is of the British tax system as a towering, teetering, rickety old building, with extension built upon extension, and all sorts of oddities lurking in the basement. Five 15-minute episodes isn't nearly enough – I hope Radio 4 have Neidle back soon.
Also managing to be riveting on an ostensibly dry economic subject was Invisible Hands (Radio 4), which is looking at the birth of the free market. That it's so compelling is no surprise, given that the man behind it is David Dimbleby, who shares Neidle's ability to extrapolate world-changing ideas from the smallest of moments. This first episode, for instance, found the origins of the free market in the downing of a Hurricane fighter plane in August 1940, the Egg Marketing Board and a copy of the Reader's Digest.
Jo Barratt's production had the swing and sway (and the background music) of a juicy true-crime podcast, with Dimbleby gamely showing he could mix it with the young pups of podcasting. Here, it's all about storytelling. 'It turns out it's a much stranger story than you can imagine,' began Dimbleby, as the music grew more insistent. It's shameless, but I was hooked.
And when that Reader's Digest came along, Dimbleby introduced it like this: 'A magazine that would change the course of Antony Fisher's life… and the history of this country – forever.' He even gave us the little details – in that edition, alongside the all-important article The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, were pieces on 'strange animal friendships, the beard of Joseph Palmer and shepherds of the underground', a list of subjects that would fit quite pleasingly into Radio 4's schedules.
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