[domwood]

It's fascinating how subtly our environment reflects our livelihoods. For example, I look out of my window and see two, make that three trees. I advance fifteen minutes up to a much more affluent district, lo and behold, many trees and well manicured verges. These same areas are maintained by the same council and the same taxes. I also had never noticed those differences before.

[gaius]

The more affluent area will be paying much more council tax, the rates are calculated on property prices. It's the same "pool" of tax, sure, but it's in no way the "same tax".

[domwood]

Not where I live. I live in a largish town called Ipswich, in the UK. Now, we have a wildly diverging GDP demographic, we have people from the poorest 5% and people from the richest 5% of the population and the council tax rate only goes up to £3,200 from just over £1,000. When you're earning £70,000, £3,000 isn't a lot of money. When you're earning £16,000, £1,000 is.

[gaius]

Are the people paying 3x the tax getting their bins emptied 3x as often? I'm guessing not... Not to mention that the poorest won't be paying any tax anyway (since their income is in the form of benefits). Yet they get their bins emptied same as everyone else. There's no correlation between the tax you pay and the services you're entitled to.

[domwood]

Actually, most benefits count as taxable income in the UK, it's just the tax is taken before payment. And no there isn't a correlation, I'm not saying there is. I'm pointing out that, considering the tax band isn't proportionally that much higher for the more affluent, there's significant divergence in the level of maintenance in these areas, when all these areas should be maintained without discrimination.

[gaius]

Where do benefits come from? The taxpayer. Taxing them is just shuffling money between two govt budgets.

[domwood]

Indeed. So there's no small degree of irony in taxing people on their tax funded benefits.