An update a year or so later. My youngest continues to battle leukemia. She's in maintenance therapy for the next year or so following 10 months of intensive and harrowing chemo with many complications and a great deal of time in hospital. Although we had a blip last week with a further hospitalisation, the trend is in the right direction & she's slowly returning to normal life. She & the rest of our family will be forever changed by cancer - fear or remission, side effects of chemo, emotional and physical scars and above all the knowlegde that life can change so completely in an instant.

Unrelated to cancer but also a life-changing moment, my wife and I separated three months ago. I moved here because of her and here I will stay because of the kids. That's not all bad & life hopefully will continue to be good, cancer notwithstanding. It's an amicable split, we remain friends. Onwards, ever onwards.

Well, AX, firstly I'm really happy to hear that your daughter is responding well to her treatment, and let's hope that continues. Secondly, very sorry to hear about your separation but glad that you and your wife are able to manage things amicably. I wish all of you the very best of health and happiness.

Sorry, AC: I left you hanging here without addressing your second point, about taxing dead people instead of live ones, in some circumstances... I was thinking of a 100% tax on deceased estates, maybe above a modest threshold. Remember that half the people in England (and maybe some other countries too) have never owned their own houses - for generations going back to 1066, and probably before that. Remember, too, that abolishing income-tax would allow live people to live more comfortably. And thirdly, remember that I'm just addressing the big picture, so it's not really my job to write the new tax law. Whatever that law said, the legislators would no doubt leave plenty of room for tax-dodging - including via offshore tax-havens, of course...

OK

You do release how much tax has to be paid to run most economies? If less than half of the people own their homes, are you assuming that the ones that do, and the assets of the citizens, will be enough to fund the system? I appreciate that you may wish to argue that government is too large and that services have been extended far too much (I am not going to disagree with you on that point) but I fail to see how, once the first generation has had all of its assets removed upon death, future spending could be covered by taxing estates.

By way of example, I paid more than $80,000 in income tax last year. I doubt very much that taxing my estate at 100% would raise more than $2,000,000 in tax, assuming that none was left for my wife. She paid over $20,000 in tax last year. One can see that it doesn't take too many years of not paying income tax before taxing the estate raises far less than taxing my income. There is also the fact that there may be big delays before it is paid.

Let's assume that the average estate would be worth $250,000 (high for those without property) I would suggest that most will pay more than that, over their lifetime, in income tax.

Me thinks your calculations don't add up.

I also don't buy the fact that not taxing people would allow them to live more comfortably. Yes, in theory, they would have more disposable income but, just as people spend all their money when they earn X, they also spend all of their money when they are promoted and earn X + 20%

Until they need some sort of medical attention and die.

I didn't say "not taxing people". That would be utterly stupid. What I said was "abolish INCOME TAX" Income-tax is not the only tax, you know! There are several British colonies that don't tax incomes, or profits either. Their governments' main sources of revenue are various forms of sales-tax. Nobody dies for lack of medical attention. Sheesh!

1066 !! King Harold had his own place and look what happened to him.
GB love reading your life experiences, makes me realize what an utterly boring life i have had, although i didn't think it boring at the time, horses for courses i suppose.

Which country, whose citizens pay income tax, provides their defence and other emergencies?

No paramedics in Bermuda?

Sorry to hear of this, amicable or not.

Ahhh, what goes around comes around, BC. I'm a boring old coot now!

What level of sales tax have you calculated will be needed to cover the loss of revenue encountered if you scrapped income tax? If a marginal rate of tax of around 35% is required when using income tax, I imagine that the sales tax would need to be around 1000%, accepting I can't be bothered to look into it at all. I have no idea how low income citizens are expected to be able to afford that when purchasing their day to day essentials.

As a Type I diabetic, I am relatively confident that I would be dead had I not received medical attention when I collapsed while on a military training exercise.

Genuine question - are these British colonies really self-sufficient from sales tax, i.e. all the citizens' needs in terms of infrastructure, education, healthcare, policing, judiciary, local services etc. etc. etc. are all fully met from local sales taxes alone? Or are there other financial benefits to the colony from simply being a tax-haven and attracting huge sums of money from non-locals who want to hide their money there?

I beg your pardon... I made a mistake typing my answer. I should have said "sales tax and import duties" Import duties are of course added to retailers' prices and paid by the customers; hence my confusion. Here in Cayman the duty is 22% on most things, 27% on vehicles. There is a direct sales tax on properties. I don't want to compare this (my) tiny island with countries a thousand times bigger. Britain's population is a thousand times Cayman's, and our government's budget this year is one billion pounds, which I guess would be about a thousand times smaller than Britain's. (Is it?) I haven't calculated anything; and you haven't either. We both have better things to do! But I will say that the prospect of low-income residents not being taxed on their miserable wages must surely be quite attractive.

Most low income residents don't pay huge amounts of income tax anyway, do they? In most jurisdictions, most receive more from the jurisdiction than they pay into it in income tax and the vast majority of things are paid for by companies and higher income earners (despite what politicians like to state).

Having been lucky enough to be in higher income group for some time, I am quite looking forward to my retirement when I can become a net withdrawer, rather than a net contributor (sarcasm intended).

There are many nations, in all of the world's continents, that hang on like grim death to places they invaded and populated in times past. Some of those places have been allowed to have a degree of self-governance; some are legally incorporated into the invader-nations. Most are happy with the arrangement, a few aren't.

Some of the occupied territories (let's call them that) may require defending from their enemies; some don't seem to have enemies. One one hand we have the Donbass, currently being defended by Russia from their bloodthirsty neighbours; on the other hand we have St Pierre & Miquelon, apparently safe from any Canadian aggression. Hong Kong, Hawaii, New Caledonia, Christmas Island, Sardinia, Ulster, Palau, Falklands/Malvinas... dozens of them; too many to list!

We live in a complex world; it takes some knowledge of history to make sense of it.