£25 billion is lost each year in unpaid taxes
Make the corporations pay what they should. Make the rich pay taxes!
PRESS RELEASE – BRIDGWATER & DISTRICT TRADES UNION COUNCIL, 22ND JUNE

TAX DODGERS – YOUR TIME IS UP!

Whatever the effects of the Con-Dem “Austerity Budget”, one thing is certain – its main aim will not be to solve economic problems, but to prop up an inefficient and unfair economic system, at the expense of the majority of working people.

For some months now we have been fed a lie by politicians of all colours; that the only cure for what is wrong with the economy is to severely cut public services and jobs, as if these were the causes of the economic mess we’re in.

In fact, to avoid returning into even deeper recession, we need to spend in the public sector, to promote jobs, training and economic confidence and growth.

Meanwhile, in 2009, the wealth of Britain’s richest 1000 people increased by one third – the recession isn’t bad news for everyone! Cameron’s Cabinet contains18 millionaires, give or take a few £million – and these are the people, who will tell us to tighten our belts!

So here are a few suggestions from Bridgwater & District Trades Union Council for saving the British economy:
• Tax Research UK says £25 billion is lost each year in unpaid taxes – much of it on unearned income. Let’s employ more public sector workers & open more tax offices and make rich scroungers pay their share. Let’s have a national poster campaign with “Filthy rich tax dodgers – your time is up”
• The Queen wants an increase of £6 million this year, to add to the £7.9 million the tax payer already forks out to the Royal Household each year. Just say no! As the Government says: “Britain’s hand-out culture must be stopped”!
• Privatised railways cost the tax-payer three times as much as did British Rail, because of the subsidies we pay to private companies who then pay profits to their shareholders, and the costs of regulation and franchising. Re-nationalise the railways and save the taxpayer a fortune!
• Compel Britain’s top 50 companies to cancel all dividends to shareholders
(BP are showing the way!) and pay them instead into a ring-fenced windfall fund to provide jobs for unemployed young people. We’ve all got to make sacrifices in this “Big Society”!
• Cancel renewal of the unnecessary and unusable Trident nuclear weapons system – thus saving £4 billion a year, and making the world a safer place
• Cancel bankers’ bonuses and put bankers to work on voluntary community schemes to repay some of their debt to the economy they’ve ruined.

There are billions to be saved in ways like this if the political will were there. Instead, the government attacks the poorest, neediest and most disadvantaged in our society, while propping up a failing economic system which promotes the rich and greedy. It’s not just time for electoral reform, but a drastic overhaul of the whole economic system: people before profit!