Recently large numbers have been thrown around for the amount of tax that is lost from tax avoidance. The figure which I have most often seen quoted is £130 billion form the PCS. This turns out to be the historic cumulative total for tax which is uncollected, evaded (illegal) and avoided (legal (sic)).

The danger is that this number becomes a panacea for dealing with the cuts. In my opinion it diverts attention from the real wealth redistribution measures which are required to solve the crisis in the interests of the working class and poor. The point is that this £130 bn is a running cumulative total which will be very difficult to recover in a retrospective tax. It would be a one off recovery and not solve our total debt and annual deficits.

Dealing with annual tax avoidance would only be a small part of the redistribution of wealth that is required. The best estimate of the annual amount that is avoided by individuals is £13bn and for companies this number is between £9bn and £12bn. These are the numbers that HMRC, the Guardian, TUC and the Treasury gave estimated. So anti tax avoidance measures would bring in about £20bn a year. Our total debt is approaching £900bn and the annual deficit is mounting up at about £160bn per year. We have also a shortfall of a trillion pounds in public sector pensions.

As we have pointed out before £375 bn of the debt has come from bailing out the banks through buying stakes in them and quantitative easing. Taking over the banks would secure £560 bin in capital and £5 trillion in assets which would help wipe out a large part of the debt and be used as a fund for a massive programme of job creation based on socially useful projects such as public transport, house regeneration and conversion, house insulation, hospitals, schools, sports and culture facilities and renewable energy.

A redistribution tax on individuals which hits the wealthiest 20% of society (who earn 16 times the income of the bottom 20%) would bring in £75 billion per year. Under Thatcher the top rate of tax was 83% and this has now fallen to 40%.

We would double corporation tax which has been halved under successive Tory and Labour governments. This would bring in another £50 billion a year in revenues.
We would also drastically cut defence spending to the level of a citizen’s army able to defend the UK/Scotland from attack. This would generate another £50 billion a year in savings.

Scarping Trident would not help the current debt or annual deficit levels but would save about £80 billion on future expenditure which if it went ahead would have to be found from further cuts in the annual budget.

These are the measures which should act as basis for an alternative programme to resolve the crisis in our interest and build a just society based on meeting human needs and not capitalist profits.