Taxing regime

IN his interesting article on business rates (Business, 12 February), Tim Bunker only touches on the fundamental issue, and Ian Shearer and David Lonsdale do not mention it (Letters, 13 February), which is whether businesses should be taxed at all in this way. Businesses have no vote in council elections and are not represented on councils. The principle of "no taxation without representation" should apply to businesses as much as to individuals.

We voters enjoy power without responsibility in that our own contribution to local council costs is only a fraction of the total expense, with the rest coming from business rates via central government or from government grants. A mature, educated democracy, such as the UK purports to be, should raise all its taxation from the general population.

Businesses should, of course, continue to pay fair costs for whatever local services they use. But the taxation element of business rates should be abolished over, say, a six-year period and the equivalent sums paid in higher wages, enabling individual taxpayers to bear their increased contributions towards local government expenditure. During the transition some fine-tuning would be necessary of income and corporation tax rates, and to avoid inequities to non-wage earners and for employees of public bodies and other organisations not subject to business rates.

A similar procedure should then be implemented for corporation tax and employers' national insurance contributions, which also violate the above principle.

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park,

St Andrews, Fife