Taxation without representation is tyranny. ~ James Otis (1725-1783) American lawyer
Men and boys are discriminated against in many ways in modern democracies. The institutions which are most responsible for those discriminations are state-run institutions, an extraordinary state of affairs in countries where politicians are elected by the popular vote. This begs the question, what proportion of the tax revenues which finance the state is paid by men? Leaving aside the issue of corporation tax, which is overwhelmingly paid by corporations which are the inventions of men and still largely run by men, what about income tax?
A month ago I made a Freedom of Information Act request to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (‘HMRC’):
In the latest tax year for which figures are available, what were the collective income tax liabilities of (a) men, and (b) women?
Yesterday I received the answer, in the form of a letter written by a woman at HMRC. It was sent as an email attachment, charmingly titled ‘1219 Buchanan’. The key piece of information for the purpose of this article was a link to an analysis of income and income tax in 2010/11:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/income-by-year/table3-3.xls
So, what does this table tell us? A top-level view:
|
|
Men |
Women |
Total |
| Number of individuals with an income tax liability (million) |
17.4 |
13.8 |
31.2 |
| Proportion of all individuals |
55.8% |
44.2% |
100.0% |
| Collective income before tax (£ billion) |
556 |
301 |
857 |
| Proportion of collective income before tax |
64.9% |
35.1% |
100.0% |
| Collective Income tax liability (£ billion) |
108 |
43.6 |
151.6 |
| Proportion of collective income tax liability |
71.2% |
28.8% |
100.0% |
Progressive income tax rates adversely affect far more men than women. To illustrate the point, let’s look at the incomes and income tax liabilities in the £50,000 – £70,000 band. The income and income tax figures relate only to income earned, and income tax paid, in this band. So for an individual earning, say, £55,000 p.a., £5,000 will be in this analysis:
|
|
Men |
Women |
Total |
| Individuals with incomes £50,000 – £70,000 |
1,000,000 |
373,000 |
1,373,000 |
| Proportion of individuals with incomes £50,000 – £70,000 |
72.8% |
27.2% |
100.0% |
| Collective income in this range (£ billion) |
58.1 |
21.3 |
79.4 |
| Proportion of collective income in this range |
73.2% |
26.8% |
100.0% |
| Collective income tax liability in this range (£ billion) |
11.9 |
4.3 |
16.2 |
| Proportion of collective income tax liability in this range |
73.5% |
26.5% |
100.0% |
After decades of women entering the workplace in considerable numbers, and flooding into male-typical fields of employment – particularly fields which are well-paid, low-risk, in safe surroundings, public sector, and with ‘human interest’, such as medicine – British women collectively pay just 28.8% of the government’s income tax revenues which largely finance the state which preferences women throughout their lives.
It’s often said that women’s lesser participation in the workplace is largely attributable to women staying at home to look after young children, but the impact of this factor is far lower than is commonly supposed. For one thing, few women experience more than a decade of looking after young children, in a potential working life of nearly 50 years. In The Glass Ceiling Delusion I cited official data showing that women are markedly less likely than men to engage in paid employment, and markedly more likely than men to work only part-time, throughout their potential working lives. This shouldn’t surprise us. It’s ‘real world’ support for a theory published in 2000 by the renowned sociologist Catherine Hakim, Preference Theory. A summary here:
http://c4mb.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/dr-catherine-hakims-preference-theory/
Dr Hakim’s research uncovered the startling fact that while four in seven British men of working age are ‘work-centred’, just one in seven British women is. Women might say they want equality of outcomes, but the stark fact is that – with a few notable exceptions – they’re simply not prepared to put in the hard work required to reach that goal. So the state does all in its power to give them that equality, in exchange for their votes. We shouldn’t be surprised that in the modern age women show a marked preference (compared with men) to vote for left-wing parties.
What benefits do men get for collectively paying £2.48 in income tax for every £1.00 paid collectively by women? I’m not aware of a single area in which the state – when it demonstrates favourable treatment for one gender over the other – favours men over women. In return for paying 71.2% of the total income tax bill, men (and boys) get the following in return:
1. Boys are made ashamed of their natures by a highly feminised education system which plays to girls’ relative strengths. For every two male undergraduates in British universities today, there are three female undergraduates;
2. Anti-male legislation, and poorer state provision of services compared with that enjoyed by women;
3. Men are increasingly being denied access to political office through all-women prospective parliamentary candidate shortlists;
4. There’s no ‘Minister for Men’, while there’s a ‘Minister for Women;
5. Men hold little more than one-third of public sector jobs, yet the Equality Act (2010) permits public sector bodies to favour women in their recruitment and promotion processes. For every three women registered as unemployed, four men are;
6. Men are being passed over for promotion in the private sector due to the government’s bullying of companies to increase the proportion of women in senior positions, despite the overwhelming evidence that corporate financial performance will decline as a result1
7. Men are obliged – through their taxes – to finance women’s ‘choice’ to have children when those women otherwise wouldn’t have the financial means to support them;
8. Men are obliged to financially support children when women cause contraceptive methods to fail, primarily by ‘forgetting’ to take their contraceptive pills;
9. Men are economic impoverished by sometimes savage divorce settlements, regardless of the proportion of the couple’s joint wealth which was inherited or earned by the men;
10. Men are denied access to their children following relationship breakdowns, because the justice system won’t enforce contact orders;
11. Men are assumed by the police and justice system to be solely responsible for domestic abuse/violence, if their partners claim they are;
12. Men receive virtually no support when they suffer domestic abuse/violence;
13. Paternity fraud. It’s believed that up to 30% of children in the UK are being supported financially by men who’ve been misled to believe they’re the children’s biological fathers. Paternity fraud is a criminal offence in the UK, yet not one woman has ever been convicted of the crime;
14. Men receive poorer provision of services aimed at early diagnosis of gender-specific life-threatening conditions;
15. Men face higher incarceration rates, and more onerous sentences, when convicted of the same crimes as women;
16. Men face ruin at the hands of spiteful women making false rape allegations, even if they’re cleared of the charges, due to the lack of anonymity for rape suspects;
17. Men represent the vast majority of former military personnel who suffer from physical and mental health problems, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They often find the provision of support services to be poor;
18. Homeless men experience poor provision of support. The vast majority of homeless people are men, especially ‘rough sleepers’;
19. There’s negligible state funding of initiatives to discourage men from committing suicide. The suicide rate among British men is around three and a half times higher than the suicide rate among women;
20. Men typically live 4-5 years less than women, but they must wait longer for their state pensions.
Let’s remind ourselves that British men collectively pay 71.2% of the government’s income tax revenues. How much more income tax do they pay, compared with women?
£64,400,000,000
For American readers, this equates to approximately
$100,000,000,000
It would be intriguing to learn the equivalent figure for other democracies.
You’d expect governments to treat men and boys better than they do, wouldn’t you? The prime objective of our new party Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them) will be to persuade British governments to start doing exactly that.
I’m finding the mass media ever more willing to give exposure to well-reasoned arguments. I’ve just contributed to a phone-in debate on a BBC Radio 4 programme, You and Yours, devoted to the topic of increasing the representation of women in the senior levels of business. I was given plenty of time to put my points across. On Thursday 14 March I’ll be appearing on Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show, which regularly has audiences of more than six million listeners.
- Ieuan Morgan, we salute you - October 11, 2014
- J4MB publicly challenges Mark Carney, governor, Bank of England - September 21, 2014
- J4MB publicly challenges Theresa May MP, Home Secretary - September 16, 2014
- Good news. Laurie Penny is leaving the UK. Bad news. She’s returning in May. - September 4, 2014
- J4MB publicly challenges Roz Hardie, chief executive officer of OBJECT, a feminist campaigning organisation - August 29, 2014