From: Kharin (kharin@kharin.com)
Date: Tue Oct 28 2003 - 13:10:58 MST
"Question: is taxation not a quintessentially socialist concept - the
redistribution of wealth?"
Am I correct in assuming that you are referring to progressive taxation i.e. income taxation rather than flat rate taxation (or other taxes) such as that used by Hong Kong and Russia? If so, the answer is 'not quite.' You are of course quite correct that progressive taxation has been favoured by socialist administrations, but the concept predates socialism.
Income taxation was first introduced between 1799 to 1816 by the Tory Prime Minister William Pitt in order to raise funds for the Napoleonic Wars. It was abolished after the war and reintroduced by another Tory faced with a defecit; Sir Robert Peel. Later the Whig Gladstone and the Tory Disraeli failed to repeal income taxation and it became permanent. The US followed a similar course in 1864 and for similar reasons; the civil war. In both of these cases we are speaking of measures that were originally temporary; the reason they eventually became permanent tended to owe as much to the fact that they were highly efficient means of funding the state during a period when the modern centralised state we know today came into being.
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