Something not being subject to a tax isn’t a “subsidy” - words mean things. We don’t subsidise Waterstones by not taxing books. Entirely legitimate to simply argue that we should tax education if you so wish - dishonest to pretend not doing so is a subsidy. - ThreadSky

wallaceme.bsky.social • 20 days ago

Something not being subject to a tax isn’t a “subsidy” - words mean things. We don’t subsidise Waterstones by not taxing books.

Entirely legitimate to simply argue that we should tax education if you so wish - dishonest to pretend not doing so is a subsidy.

Comments

yusufkarmali.bsky.social•20 days ago

Sorry if a business needs a special tax break to exist, it’s not a very good business.

wallaceme.bsky.social•20 days ago

You haven’t addressed my point. We don’t tax posts on Bluesky, and if we did it wouldn’t be viable - is it an unviable businesses because of this “subsidy”?

yusufkarmali.bsky.social•20 days ago

Taxing posts on Bluesky is of course nonsense as there is no financial transaction of a good/service. Fair enough it’s not a “subsidy” in the conventional sense. You haven’t answered my point: if a company needs a special carve out to exist it’s not a good company.

wallaceme.bsky.social•20 days ago

We tax plenty of stuff for being activities not inherently for being financial transactions (and there’ve been proposals to tax emails for eg). Your argument springs from a presumption that the natural state of all things is to be taxed, so not being taxed is special treatment/subsidy. It’s mistaken

yusufkarmali.bsky.social•20 days ago

But we’re talking about VAT which is a tax on financial transactions. My starting point is that if we are going to impose VAT on the clothes that I wear then a luxury good like private education (which pricing has markedly outstripped inflation) should be taxed too.

wallaceme.bsky.social•20 days ago

VAT is a tax on the supply of a specified list of goods and services. Not a tax on all financial transactions. The above just means your view is that you think education should be taxed - that’s already evident, and legitimate to argue for - but the argument it’s some breach of a natural law isn’t.

yusufkarmali.bsky.social•20 days ago

For what it’s worth I’d want to overhaul the whole VAT regimen but you don’t know my personal political views because you made a judgement based on a post.

yusufkarmali.bsky.social•20 days ago

This is particularly given that private education is a high end/luxury good. Unlike books or food.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply