But, what is the Adam Smith Institute for?
This is also rather what we do. Madsen Pirie has described our job here as to be the voices howling nonsense out in the wilderness. Give it a decade and it’s the received wisdom and it all gets enacted.
A little example.
Taxpayer gifts to the Treasury have plummeted in the last five years as the general public has become disillusioned with high taxes and excessive Government spending.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by The Telegraph revealed the Treasury received £16,122 in donations from members of the public between January and December 2021. A single taxpayer contribution of £10,100 accounted for over 60pc of the funds received.
Taxpayer donations, which are classed as “patriotic gifts” by the Treasury, have fallen significantly in the last five years. In 2017 a total of £180,393 was donated.
We started this analysis of such gifts back in 2006 - applying for the numbers for the 2005 fiscal year.
LAST YEAR there were five people in Britain who thought that their taxes were too low. No, this isn’t the number of people who have called for higher taxes. Rather, it is those who were so convinced of the righteousness of state spending that they voluntarily sent extra money to the Treasury.
A number of people have repeated the analysis over the years and we’re fine with that. It’s actually become something of an easy win for a newspaper to follow it up each year and we’re just fine with having created that story template. No royalties are charged and you’re welcome, folks.
Which does give us one of the answers to that headline question. We’re for making the little societal earworms that advance those causes of freedom and liberty. Here just the absolute proof of how many people really believe that taxes are currently too low in this country. It’s a very, very, marginal belief. Certainly a very much smaller portion of the populace than the number who do what they can to reduce their tax bills - so we must conclude therefore that taxation is too high, right?