Edifice of Trust

​The key principles to ethically utilize the government’s ability to tax its citizens are:

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1. Taxes should be used to pay for the operations of government.

2. Incomprehensible tax rules undermine the people’s trust in government so tax policy should be made understandable to citizens

3. It is not possible to create a tax system that will deemed to be “fair”.

4. Payment of taxes is an obligation of citizenship so all citizens should pay some tax.

5. Tax policy should not be used to manipulate people or organizations.

6. Cutting taxes is not an effective means of generating long-term economic growth.

7. Corporate taxes should be competitive with the tax systems of our major trade partners.

8. Economic growth is stunted by uncertainty so tax policy should not change every year.