Rebellions due to fiscal oppression were frequent. People do not like excessive taxation and this truth was noticed in ancient times. However, today we will not dwell on the problem of how much can be taken from a person to remain within the limits of decency. For example, one of the most outstanding rulers of France, Philip IV of the Capetian dynasty, called the Beautiful, needed huge sums of money for his policies and to obtain them, he committed all the sins known and so popular today, led by confiscation of the property of those who, in his opinion, did not need it (the Templars, bankers, Jews) and a tax that can be imposed without a law, i.e. inflation, which was then called debasement of the coin. The real breakthrough, in the form of a popular revolt, came only after the imposition of the “mala tolta,” or vile tax, which was in fact a turnover tax, amounting to just one denarius from each livre issued—the spoiled one, because the old livres minted under the ruler’s predecessors in Tours were worth twice as much. In any case, 1 livre was worth 240 denarii (20 soldi), which seems like a ridiculous scale of taxation when we realize that the VAT alone is 23 groszy from each złoty.
Apart from the fact that probably everyone feels fiscally slimmed down today, I am certain that it would be difficult to indicate the limit of the so-called scale of plunder that would justify rebellion against the authorities. After all, the authorities deal with so many expensive things, and there are probably those, such as the youth involved in hooligan antics from the Last Generation organization, who believe that they should deal with basically all of our affairs. But as indicated, this is a topic for a separate reflection. Today’s, thoroughly philosophical, will concern more epistemology, and more specifically the human cognition of the fact of plunder by the authorities.
Since we are touching on the theory of knowledge, we probably have to assume that there is an individual, and one could even risk saying that it is also a social, problem of awareness of being robbed by the state. Considering the scale of taxation, which, in terms of direct taxes alone, was estimated in Poland at around 40 percent in 2019, it seems reasonable that the average Pole does not know how much taxes he pays, i.e. the degree of robbery is unknown to him. This philosophical problem affects the right-wing political parties the most, those that always lament the amount of taxes, or at least until they start participating in government, because then this problem miraculously evaporates like camphor from an opened bottle. A serious problem, because it makes it impossible to captivate the majority of voters with the slogan of universal plunder.
The explanation of this phenomenon is childishly simple. This is taught, even to children at school, by the Little Prince, the hero of the famous book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who says: It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.. The method is extremely effective, because as the old Polish proverb says, What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over. How to make taxation invisible to the eye? The key word is indirectness – almost a legal principle.
This method is not new. According to Wikipedia, the supposed first to introduce indirect taxes was Jean Baptiste Colbert (the famous general controller of finances of Louis XIV). This is of course untrue, because the cited turnover tax of Philip IV is a classic example of indirect taxation. But Colbert improved this method. He ordered the tax to be included in the price of goods, e.g. salt, which is why he used the mechanism described by The Little Prince. It is clearly effective, because while Philip IV’s subjects felt a loss in income due to the necessity of calculating the turnover of their business, those who bought consumer goods during the Sun King’s time quickly forgot how much tax was in the price of a kilogram of salt they bought. Democratic governments, which, as Tocqueville wrote, entered the shoes of totalitarian bureaucracy prepared by enlightened absolutism due to the revolution, to this day are fond of inventing taxes that are effectively beyond the awareness of those who pay them (not to be confused with those taxed).
And indeed. Although probably every Pole knows that there is such a tax as VAT, few are aware that it is actually a burden on their pocket, i.e. heavily taxed income, in every transaction they enter into. Because the payer of the tax does not bear the real cost of paying this tax. Incidentally, VAT is an almost ingenious tax in its total construction: it calculates itself, it pays itself, and one taxpayer watches over the other in the chain of calculation, because profit for one means problems for the others. Almost, because the construction by its nature provides for the possibility of a tax refund and by its nature the so-called VAT gap is impossible to seal.
But that’s not all. The entire socialist legal system is riddled with indirect taxes. Someone once said that the socialist system in Poland would certainly collapse if the employee were paid a gross salary and he himself had to pay all the contributions and advances on income tax directly. We can say that the pinnacle of socialist thought is not only the idea of indirect collection of contributions, but also making direct tax collection indirect.
It is no wonder that such a socialist entity as the EU has to contribute to the history of robbing citizens by means of a masterful illusion. I do not mean VAT or excise duty, which are somehow inscribed in the essence of the EU itself. The true mastery of distracting citizens from reaching into their pockets is, of course, the method of washing gold out of thin air, i.e. the ETS. It is the Emissions Trading System that is the indirect tax we pay (alongside excise duty) when we use electricity. Without going into considerations regarding climate policy, but focusing on the issue of taxation, we should ask ourselves how people would react if, in addition to the actual price of energy, the cost of purchasing CO2 emission allowances was added directly to each bill? And it is going to get even worse, because the European Parliament voted on regulations extending the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to residential buildings and transport (including aviation and maritime economy) and the mechanism for adjusting prices at emission borders, i.e. ETS-2.
The whole procedure of leeching money out of thin air could be successfully called “mala tolta” or a vile donation. And what good is it if we humbly pay it. Because The most important is invisible for eyes.
Jacek Janas
Each FPG24.PL columnist presents his/her own views and opinions.