A Recipe for Cold Turkey

Have you noticed? Of course you have. Everything is getting more expensive and that pound in your wallet is being stretched further than ever before. People are cutting back, the roads are full of second cars with "for sale“ signs, charity shops are booming along with Poundland franchises and buy one get one free offers are everywhere. Thrift is the new black.

But why? Ah, "it’s the deficit“, I hear you say. We are in an age of austerity and must live within our means. I have no problem with that, we certainly could not continue spending as if we would never have to pay it back, but wait.....that’s exactly what we are doing. The deficit isn’t getting smaller, it’s getting bigger, along with the national debt. Politicians may appear to be pruning the huge forest of Government spending but in the real world, they are just itching to grab more of our money.

Councils are inventing ever more inventive ways to extract what little the private citizen still has in his wallet, via Sunday parking charges, monopoly recycling enforcement, über zealous fines for anything and everything. Government is still increasing taxes on fuel, income, VAT, duties. Where’s it all going, because reducing the deficit it certainly isn’t?

It’s one thing to demand an end to the profligate handouts to all and sundry (yes, including the bankers) and I welcome it, but it’s another if all this lovely lucre extracted from us by force isn’t actually being spent reducing debt. It isn’t. It’s being used to maintain the Leviathan of Government. We may have shed 700,000 non jobs in the public sector but the money saved hasn’t been handed back to us, has it?

What is the point of me living within my means if I am still fleeced to pay for a state that refuses to do the same? Icelanders, when informed by their politicians that they would be forced to pay back a debt that wasn’t theirs marched on their Parliament and threw out those who would enslave them. They now borrow money at cheaper rates than most of Europe and don’t have council inspectors fining them hard cash for putting their bins out on the wrong day.

As a firm believer in minimal Government, I simply refuse to fund these charlatans any more. Tax avoidance is my motto, starve the beast my mantra. The only thing we can do is put the State on a diet before it devours us and what little we manage to keep for ourselves after the endless raids by HMRC.

So here’s my list of how to keep a little of what you earn for yourself.

Avoid the State. Really. Government has NO money other than yours. Take a good long hard look at your daily activities and try and spot where the State has decided it has the right to cream off just that little bit more from you. Whether it be the "duty“ on a plane ticket or a permit to park your car, find a way to avoid it. I book long haul flights leaving from Schiphol airport in Holland and save thousands in tax. Stop consuming rubbish that just gives the State an extra 20% in VAT on the money you have already paid income tax on. Avoid anything that is subsidised by a state grant, whether it be not using a hydrogen cell bus or not visiting an art gallery that features some untalented but politically correct exhibition staged at the expense of the taxpayer. Vow never to drive alone in a car, pool your resources and minimise the fuel duty you pay. Go self-employed, it infuriates them as they have to wait for the money you just earned. March down to your council offices to question your council tax bill and demand to know why the bureaucrats are spending millions on "democracy facilitation“ whilst threatening you with jail if you refuse to pay.

I could go on all day, but as an exercise for the week, try keeping all your receipts, bills and invoices and total up what extra taxes you are paying. Then do it over a month, or a year and you’ll soon see that the very lifeblood is being drained from you. You are feeding the most voracious parasite that will never release you as long as it continues to be fed. From birth until after your death, all the State is interested in is your money and how it can get more of it.

Exercise 1: Take your total of the indirect taxes you are paying and imagine what you could do with that money, if only it wasn’t being spent on not reducing the deficit or freeing your children from National debt. Write it on a piece of paper and pin it to the wall – it is your goal, to be achieved by starving the beast that is biting the hand that feeds it.

Quite simply, we have to force the State to stop spending and that starts with you denying it whatever you can, whenever you can. It is your duty to avoid tax, you owe it to yourself and your family to refuse to give the addict any more of what it craves. Yes, there will be tantrums, there will be demands, begging, pleading and threats but we expect a period of cold turkey when the supply is cut off – it will pass and you and the patient will emerge healthier, happier and with a realistic new vision of a relationship that has gone from polite requested service we were happy to pay for to threatening demands we aren’t in just one generation.