Morally Taxing

Robots come in all shapes and sizes.  

From small shiny bins with a round, swivelly, antenna loaded, heads right through to large muscular and heavily accented Austrians. They have been imagined in every conceivable way. Sexy ones, ugly ones and ones which look like large buildings with spindly legs. Robots which go bleep, bloop in such a way you want to cuddle them and robots which are as murderous as they come. Male, female, dogs, cats, horses, knives, forks. Regardless of their shape or their intentions to you, me, mankind or a woman called Sarah Connor they all have one thing in common.

They are not real. They are all made up. They don’t actually, properly, in the real world, really exist.

Hard to believe I know but trust me on this one. They don’t.

The depressing reality is real world robots which do actually exist are rubbish and are a million miles away from what I would consider a proper robot. The oxford dictionary defines a robot as a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer. Real world robots barely scrape into this definition. 

Basically they come in two forms, they can either mow your lawn or hoover your carpet. Or both and that is it. Oh and they resemble a crap brown plastic plate on castors to boot. They can’t kill you, you can’t have sex with one, or at least I would strongly advise against it, they can’t break the code of a locked down force field/tractor beam and are bloody useless when it comes to telling jokes.

Why is this?

One of the core principles of physics is the universality of computation. Now I don’t profess to know much about physics, or anything much for that matter however even my simple brain understands this principle. Basically it states that if it is possible within the laws of physics then it is possible, given enough time & memory for a computer to replicate it in very fine detail. This law was postulated in the 19^th Century and was proved in the 1980s.

One of the implications of this is if the human body can do it then it is possible to build a computer to replicate it. Fact.

Why then, if it is proved to be possible, can’t we do it?

Let’s just assume for the sake of argument we can build one and assuming we can devise cogs and motors sensitive enough to move with appropriate fluidity would that be enough? Probably not.

A thought process is also required and herein lies the problem. The human brain is an ugly, spongy, grey, waterlogged bag of tricks so complex it would require one the size of mars to actually figure out how one actually works. The human brain is probably the smartest object in the world, not every brain but certainly a good proportion of them. It is the only object which actually knows there even is an Earth or understands the concept of self and existence, life, death and morality. The brain understands this and understands that replicating one must be possible following the universality of computation but still we can’t even build something simple enough to help me put together an IKEA flat pack shelving unit.

I don’t get it but then I don’t get a lot of things so this shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone.

We could build a robot to do our tax returns though.

This would be simple. In fact we have, they just don’t look like robots but the principles are fairly straightforward. If you earn this you pay that, if you do this then this happens. Taxation like a lot of rules and laws are fairly black and white, to the extent even a robot brain would get it. They are of course bourn out of societal judgements on what’s fair and what’s equitable but the rules are fairly binary in their nature.

With such a clear cut set of rules, people will invariably have issues with them, its natural. The richer folks among us complain that they pay too much and the less well off complain that the rich don’t pay enough. That’s understandable but if you are a good citizen, corporate or private, follow the rules and pay the tax you should be ok, right?

Not necessarily.

The phrase, it might be legal but isn’t morally right has surfaced a few times in recent months in relation to taxation and a bit like robots its something which is baffling me. Does this mean the existing tax laws are not moral? What exactly is a moral tax?

David Cameron described Jimmy Carr as morally wrong for using the infamous K2 scheme where he ended up paying a lot less tax than he otherwise would had he just declared his income like a normal, morally robust, citizen. Starbucks UK have come under the moral microscope recently as well for paying no corporation tax on its UK businesses even though it achieved £398M worth of sales.

The headlines are damning; £398M sales! No tax! Starbucks are making a mocha-ry of the exchequer (I made that up btw). In this age of austerity I can almost feel the seething rage and hear the grinding of teeth as the Sun or Mail’s headlines are read out on building sites, in housing benefit offices and teachers well used rest rooms across the country.

Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is smart. It’s a controversial statement I accept but if every person in the country could pay 1% less tax than they do at the moment legally do you think they wouldn’t?

If it is morally wrong to pay money into a K2 scheme in the channel islands or structure a company in such a way that it pays tax in Lichtenstein then the answer is very simple. Change the laws to make it tax avoidance and I can guarantee Starbucks, Jimmy Carr and every other so called ‘fat cat’ would stop doing it immediately. Its not difficult really.

Also following this logic if the legal schemes used by such people are morally wrong does this mean ISA’s or tax free pension scheme payments are also morally wrong? Are they not also legal mechanisms for individuals to reduce their overall tax liability?

The only way to make tax 100% morally equitable is to make everyone pay the same percentage. And by that I mean really everyone, whether you are a billionaire or a pauper you will pay the same % of your earnings. Another way to look at this, is it morally right to penalize someone more for working hard and being successful?

David Cameron making statements like he did are only there to pander to the restless natives reading the headlines. He knows there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. If he really felt that strongly about it he would task the Inland Revenue to jump all over it, close down the loophole and have them burn the participants at the stake.

Along with Klingons, warp speed and light sabers, R2D2 is not real and I can say with reasonable certainty he/she/it will never be real. I too am blessed with having one of those wonderfully amazing grey watery things sandwiched between my ears. And like most people I have my opinions and think these are correct. I do also recognise that I am probably not right, I have biases the same as everyone else and this is why just because I have an opinion it doesn’t make it right. It also probably means I shouldn’t be judging the moral rights and wrongs of a particular persons tax affairs.

Make the law then leave it to the lawn cutting, carpet hoovering robots and their bleep, bloop brains to police it free from bias.

Trust me, they will do a far better job than you or I ever will.