Filed under: Tax
A slew of direct and indirect taxes on the poor is creating an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in Britain.A study by Engage Mutual recently revealed a sad truth about the state of the nation's financial affairs. One in four of us regularly dips into our overdraft and one in five have borrowed money from family and friends to meet housing costs or unexpected bills.
Britain is pretty broke and so are its inhabitants and it seems the pain isn't over yet.
Over the past few weeks we've seen the pain of the bedroom tax played out in the courts. The plan still seems decidedly ill judged particularly when it penalises disabled people who live in houses which are specially adapted for them. Why would the government penalise people who are already trying to get by on disability benefits with an extra bedroom tax.
In fact why would the government penalise anyone with this tax for having an extra room in their home when it can't provide enough smaller homes for them to downshift to. The bedroom tax is the government penalising the poor for its own inability to provide enough social housing with an adequate number of rooms.
And now another 'poor tax' looks like it is going to rear its head courtesy of Europe. It has been called for in Westminster and the City already and now eurocrats have added their voice in the call to end free banking.
The idea is that by charging everyone for a current account it would prevent banks from adding on nasty charges on to overdrafts, for admin and any other slip up it can sucker you for. Free banking has been called a 'myth' by the regulator thanks to the fact that we end up paying for it one way or the other.
Personally I don't think it would prevent the banks from charging us for falling into our overdraft or writing a bounced cheque, it's just too easy for them to make money from it especially since the regulator is pushing them to hold more capital.
These changes being made by the government and potentially being made within the banking sector are nothing better than a tax for being poor who are disproportionately affected.
It is no wonder that so many people are struggling from pay cheque to pay cheque when the government is intent on hindering instead of helping the people in our society that most need it.