Taxing questions

The row which is bubbling up about Gordon Brown's decision to scrap the tax credit for dividends in pension funds back in 1997 portrays him as a sly, underhand character stealing people's money by deception. He may well be such a character, but surely no-one believes he stuck this money in his back pocket and snuck off with it? The point is of course, that this money went into the general tax pot, and was spent on things which otherwise would have had to do without it. You can argue about the way Government spends its money, but the brutal fact is that it only has a finite amount at its disposal, and what is spent (or given away through credits) on one thing cannot be spent on another. It would certainly have been better if the argument had been thrashed out in the open, rather than introduced by subterfuge, but one of the things we elect governments to do is to decide priorities in spending the money raised by taxation, which inevitably means that there will be losers as well as winners. Whether this was a good or bad decision is up to individuals to judge, but it was certainly one Gordon Brown was entitled to make.