“The flat tax makes sense” says The Daily Telegraph this morning, in an editorial which coincides with the release of the Adam Smith Institute report on this. In the US, President Bush has identified tax reform as one of his top three priorities – along with pension and court reform – for his second term. And many of his advisers are keen for him to tear up the thousands of pages of the federal tax code and replace it with a single tax rate of 17 per cent, and even that payable only on incomes over $36,000. Every time in the past that the US has slashed its tax rates – under Coolidge, Kennedy, and Reagan – it has enjoyed a boom, and the US Treasury has actually raked in more taxes, and with the richest taxpayers contributing a far greater proportion. So this idea seems like an all-round winner.
Bush must be cheered by what he sees in other countries, too. A number of the EU’s new members, like Slovakia and Estonia, have gone for the flat tax. So has Russia and the Ukraine. Hong Kong too. Even China is thinking about it.
There’s a good deal of interest here in Britain too. That’s partly because our clever Chancellor of the Exchequer has made the tax code so complicated that nobody understands it. Tolley’s Yellow Tax Guide, the professionals’ bible on the UK tax system, now runs to an unliftable 7000+ pages across four volumes. People are hungry for the change. And so, in both the UK and US, it’s worth pushing for.
Update: Poland is bringing in the flat tax too.
I attach my comments on what needs to be done in the EU.
EUROPEAN UNION TAXPAYERS’ CHARTER
We EU taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners in every conceivable way. Our Lords and Master in politics and the public service have granted themselves a raft of totally unjustifiable privileges over the years resulting in a situation akin to that which prevailed 150 years ago before “democracy” became a buzzword. In those days a small privileged minority governed and administered and the rest were only required to do two things – pay up and shut up. Government was unrepresentative, which is pretty much what it is now. Or do you feel genuinely represented by your local Member of (the European or national) Parliament? Participation in elections is at a record low, crime is rising and the “black” economy is now at least as large as its legitimate equivalent throughout the EU. Instead of determining the causes and curing them, both national and EU governments have decided to employ even more civil servants to try and gaol everyone involved in “economic crime” and the black economy. They have moved the goalposts of crime so that in Germany, to take but one example, the tax code is understood by no one (as the country’s top tax accountant recently admitted in public on TV) but every breach of it, however minor, is treated as a crime and not a misdemeanour as it used to be. This is a bureaucrat’s paradise – the state now always has a means of pressuring the ordinary citizen into behaving as they wish.
We taxpayers have got to stop the rot getting to the point at which some latter-day Cromwell feels impelled to send them all home and advise them to take their baubles of office with them. I append my proposals on the subject and hope you agree with them. If you have any suggestions to make – let me know.
1. Politicians and civil servants must be treated in law, particularly tax law, exactly as we are. Bodies of law such as the German “Beamtengestze”, which basically state that permanent civil servants are a better class of human being than all the other inhabitants of the country, must be forbidden at EU level.
2. It follows from this that politicians and civil servants must be made 100% liable to exactly the same confiscatory taxation and excessive social insurance contributions as all the rest of us. No more luxury free indexed pensions for which they do not even pay taxes although they definitely represent an enormous financial advantage over the rest of us. If you or I are entitled to a free pencil every week according to our contract of employment then we have to pay tax for the pecuniary advantage that this “perk” represents. Exactly the same logic must apply to the political caste and the civil service.
3. There are a whole host of examples of totally unjust and unjustifiable perks and privileges for politicians and civil servants that you and I are denied. A short list of those that occur to me spontaneously follows.
Members of the European Parliament have legitimised a travel expenses swindle for themselves that has cost us taxpayers billions to date. The excuse for it is that the lowest paid MEPs need money, which is nonsense. All EU civil servants are paid according to a single salary scale – the same should apply to MEPs. How to determine it? Simple. Add together what each member country pays its ordinary MPs, divide the result by the number of countries – and that’s the MEP’s current salary. This swindle must be stopped and those who have drawn payments under it must be required to either
a) justify that/those payment/s just as you or I must to our tax office or
b) be obliged to repay all monies received that cannot be so justified, i.e. for which no proof that would stand up in a court of law of having incurred the travel expenses involved is provided.
Some MEPs make so much out of this racket that they can afford to buy a new flat or house every year. Such properties should be treated as are the proceeds of drug smuggling if the MEP concerned cannot prove entitlement to the funds used to purchase it, i.e. sequestered by the national government of the country that MEP “represents”.
MEPs habitually claim “attendance money” for conferences etc. that they only spent 10 minutes at to register their names on the attendance list. There is no reason in the first place why they should be paid extra for condescending to do the job they’re paid for. If such events involve travel expenses then those should be recompensed only against proof of their having been incurred. Any allowance merely for attending events that are part of their duties should be scrapped altogether. Attending events that are no part of their official duties should be their private problem. That’s the way the tax authorities treat us, isn’t it? MEPs should be fully liable for the same taxation in their respective home countries as their fellow citizens. They should also be entitled to any allowances tax-deductible for ordinary citizens – but nothing more.
4. The principle of personal responsibility that has always prevailed in private industry must also apply to politics and the public service. Politicians and civil servants who waste our hard-earned money must be forced to repay it. A prime example here is the subsidy that was payable for transhipping grain. It used to be a popular public entertainment to watch ships come into Hamburg harbour, offload grain, reload the same grain and then sail on. Each time they did so entitled the owners to a thumping subsidy. It took the EU/EC over 18 years to even notice something was wrong! In future, anyone responsible for such idiot legislation should be liable for the damage done to the taxpayer. This would have the added benefit of stopping the EU passing laws on such earth-shakingly important things as the curvature bananas are allowed to have and the like.
5. Unequal treatment and inequitable laws have unfortunately become the norm. In Germany, all payments from pension insurance policies taken out from 01 January 2005 on will be liable to full taxation. Note that politicians and civil servants will continue to enjoy their luxury free indexed pensions with no deductions at all. No liability to any tax for the pecuniary advantage this unjustifiable privilege represents, either! Similar legislation exists in virtually all EU nations. All legislation must in future apply to ALL equally with no special treatment for anyone. Any law that results in unreasonable hardship/s for anyone if applied to everyone equally should simply not be passed. Wouldn’t you say that’s fair?
6. The EU/EC are currently trying to make all interest on all bank accounts in so-called tax havens liable to what they call withholding tax. This sounds superficially fair and just. It isn’t. If I represented the Channel Islands at these negotiations I’d refuse to negotiate anything with the EU/EC “fat cats” opposite me at the negotiating table until and unless those “fat cats” became liable to exactly the same taxation and social welfare payments as their fellow citizens in their respective home countries. They currently draw outrageous salaries and pay no tax on them at all, so what they are indulging in here is actually hypocrisy of a very high order. In reality the “tax havens” are the last small niches of lean, mean and efficient government left in the developed world. Channel Island politicians do not enjoy a raft of privileges at their taxpayers’ expense plus fat salaries and allowances. What the EU is trying to do is to deprive these “tax havens” of their sole national income and make them dependent at some future date on EU subsidies for financial survival. Guess who will foot the bill for that. The social welfare argument, by the way, doesn’t apply. The Channel Islands have arguably the best social welfare system in the world, and the other tax havens are a lot better than the average EU member nation on average.
7. EU governments grab about 70% of their respective nation’s GNP and try to kid us all that it’s for our own good. This is rubbish. The money is needed above all to maintain farcically bloated government machines. A lot of governments are already unable to foot the bill for the thumping indexed pensions their former politicians and civil servants are entitled to. The reason is that these people don’t pay for them. Stop and think about it. We’re giving preferential treatment to professions that are purely parasitic in the sense that they produce no direct economic good whatsoever. Those who do produce direct economic good are treated as second-class citizens and required only to subsidise their “betters” and not make trouble. The only other example of this behaviour in history is the old Chinese empire, which ossified in about the 13th century and was unable to defend itself against anyone by the 19th. That is what our Lords and Masters are letting us in for!
8. What we taxpayers urgently need is legislation at EU level limiting taxation to 30% of GNP at most plus social welfare payments. These latter would have to be used 100% by law for that purpose only and no other. The cost of administering social welfare would have to come from the capped 30%. This provision is essential to prevent wily politicians misusing the money for purposes that have nothing whatever to do with social welfare. That’s what Kohl’s German government did – they used the money for “reunification expenses” and plunged the country’s social welfare system into difficulties that still seem insoluble. The government of the country is desperately trying to solve those difficulties without doing any damage to the interests of the political caste or those of the public service. As there is no law in Germany, as there is in the UK, forbidding persons in the public service from putting themselves up for election to political office without first resigning from the public service the interests of the political and public service castes are identical (about 75% of all elected German politicians are serving civil servants!). The result of the absence of such legislation is a form of creeping and all-pervasive corruption that virtually makes democratic government impossible. Government in many EU nations is currently “government of the people by the civil service and for the civil service”. This is absolutely unacceptable in so-called democracies.
9. Politicians voted out of office should be entitled to the same unemployment benefits as the rest of us and nothing more. The major difference, let’s remember, is that they are at least partially responsible for losing their jobs whereas we ordinary mortals very rarely are. This would force them to ensure those benefits are better administered and more appropriate than they are now, as well as scrapping unjustified privileges. Currently, politicians booted out by us electors are entitled to enormous “golden handshake” payouts and generous pensions, often indexed. Both at the taxpayers’ expense, of course, and after a ridiculously brief qualifying period of service. In many countries they continue to enjoy various benefits of office after being kicked out. There are lots of former politicians at various levels throughout the EU still entitled to an office, a secretary, a car, a chauffeur, free petrol and a host of other perks at our expense years after leaving political office. This must be scrapped. Once you’re out, that’s it. All the benefits of office are granted only to the person currently exercising that office and all former holders lose them entirely. All the arguments put up about this measure and others like it making it difficult to find people of adequate calibre willing to enter politics, by the way, can safely be ignored. People are queuing up to join the vast subsidised ego trip that is politics throughout the EU. Why else are e.g. the EU’s conditions of employment known as “the gravy train”?
10. Democratic accountability is another major issue. Who votes the EU’s commissioners into office? The answer is that they get their jobs on a purely nepotistic basis. No ordinary taxpayer/s is/are consulted. So whom do they actually represent? Not you or I, that’s for certain. Take Patton. He doesn’t represent the UK – no UK elector was ever consulted on his appointment. He doesn’t represent the current governing party – he’s Conservative, they’re Labour. Some cynics think he may represent sinister Hong Kong tongs, but that’s really off the wall. What can be stated with confidence is that he is entitled to a thumping pension, very probably indexed, as former HK governor plus another, equally thumping and also probably indexed, from the EU when he leaves office. He has paid for neither, and pays/paid no tax for the pecuniary advantage such enormous pensions represent. The very least we should demand is that he and others like him have their EU pension set off against all other income, i.e. only one pension per person in public service, the amount being set off against their total income from other sources. EU retirees who happen to be stinking rich in private life – lots of them are, after profiting for years at our expense – should get no EU pension at all if their income equals or exceeds any such EU pension.
The obvious answer to the EU/EC total lack of democratic accountability is to hold referenda on the Swiss model. Disregard the screams about the expense – it’s much cheaper than the current costs of maintaining the European Parliament, which is basically nothing more than a hot-air chamber. It has very little legislative or administrative responsibility despite costing us billions.
10. At least one EU head of state would now be in prison were he not a politician. Parliamentary privilege should not cover criminal offences at all – any politician involved in any such case/s must be treated just as we would be. Where private litigation is concerned that does not involve any breach of the criminal law, politicians should be subject to such litigation just as we ordinary mortals are, the only difference being that they would not be required to take any action in any such litigation whilst the parliament of which they are a member is actually in session. The moment that body takes one of its frequent long recesses the politician/s involved in any such legal proceedings would be in exactly the same position as we ordinary citizens.
But what about those poor souls in the IRS? What’ll happen to them? /sarcasm
The only thing I fear is that this idea makes too much sense for it to ever to be made into law in the US.
I’d like to see this done. Any party that really belive in reducing the state’s share of the economy show do its upmost to make the tax system transparent and thus leave their successors fewer tools to use if they want in increase their take.
In the UK, if the conservatives had abolished stamp duty and then merged income tax and NI then Gordon would have trouble playing his ‘steath’ games.
It’s be worth it just to trim away a few thousand tax adjusters.
As for Dave’s post, the day any of that happens is the day Satan skates to work. There is no incentive on those who make these decisions to change it. It’s not like anybody – aside from politics junkies like those reading this blog, who are very much a minority – even know.
>Hong Kong and Australia have versions of it.
Australia does not have anything like a flat tax system. The current Australian rates are:
First $6000: no tax
$6,001 – $21,600: 17%
$21,601 – $58,000: 30%
$58,001 – $70,000:42%
Over $70,000: 47%
There is also a Medicare tax of 1.5%, although there are examptions on this for people with low incomes.
Australia also has a bewildering variety of exemptions and rebates and all sorts of other crap. It isn’t flat, it isn’t low, and it isn’t simple. (Plus there’s a VAT-type thing as well called the Goods and Services Tax, which was 10% on most goods last time I lived there, and fringe benefits tax and capital gains tax, etc.).
A flat tax is unlikely any time soon, however economically efficient and desirable it may be, because progressive taxation is perceived as being somehow more fair in that “the rich” bear a proportionately greater share of the burden on society.
Politics is all about perception, not theory. Few libertarians seem to understand this, but there it is.
EG
One of your arguments for a flat tax is that it actually allows the state to collect more money. More the revenue that is collected from such tax, the more there is to be spend by the state at various redistribution schemes, and so on.
I fail to see how this could be a good thing.
The state collects a larger amount of money, but only because of increased economic activity – the government takes a smaller slice of a larger pie.
A flat tax would be great. While you’re at it, how about a flat auto registration fee! Why should I have to pay 6 times as much as my neighbor to register my car just because my car is nice and new (and theirfore worth more) than his. Both our vehichles use up the same amount of space on the highway!
tanstafl@gmail.com
Flat tax, meaning a single rate, though a nice sounding solution is not really a big simplification in itself, as opposed to getting whatever bands may be politically necessary onto a clear fair basis.
You can still have a postcard sized tax return with half a dozen “progressive” (or degressive, even) rates, provided the back-end of the taxation system is sorted out. Simplifying the basis of taxation and making tax rules fair and clear would be popular with all but accountants, lawyers, revenue officials, local government officers, social security administrators, politicians, the recipients of current breaks, insurance companies and the financial services industry.
In other words, the non-progressive bit, though obviously a difficult sell, might be politically the easy bit to achieve given the weight of vested interest in the complexity.
It is noticeable that those countries with a simple flat system got it as a result of a revolution, and the decision to start a captalist economy again from scratch. Given that Blair has blasted away most of the constitution, maybe we can get our own counterrevolution in later, but that’s probably the only way to flat tax past the institutional blocks.
Scott: you’re quite right. I’ve shot my ghostwriter.
There’s another reason the state collects more money under a flat tax. Not sure if this was mentioned in the linked articles or the first reply, didn’t read them.
In any case, with a simplified tax code, there’s less reason to “cheat” the system. I would think that there are as many people not paying taxes due to the convoluted tax code as there are people not paying taxes because of legal loopholes.
A simple, easy-to-understand tax code encourages compliance. And, as one of those “poor schleps” making less than 36k/year, I’m all for it (though there are some weeks that overtime creates a seeming equivalence of over 36k/year).
Wooaaaahh
Can we remove our Klepto-Chancellor first? With Gordon the Grab any flat rate tax would likely be at 80%.
Time for a Flat Tax?
Nope. All who love and appreciate the free market should vehemently resist any such idea. See:
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/flattax.pdf
Anything which lowers or reduces the burden of tax should be encouraged by free market advocates even if this means more ‘loopholes’ and more complexity. Advocating a flat tax is yet another statist distraction to obscure the point that taxation, in whatever form, is always destructive of liberty and welfare.
Amen Brother!
Well the problem with the complexity is that it’s hard to know how much we’re paying. A simpler tax system is better because it shows more clearly what we’re actually paying.
However true that may be, taxes are a reality and they’re not likely to disappear any time soon. The question before us is this: how can we make the tax system as fair as possible?
By ‘fairness’ I do not mean redistribution to those more ‘deserving’, I simply mean that those who are the most productive should be able to profit most. The current tax system arbitrarily rewards and punishes various industries and individuals, purely at the whim of elected politicians and what they think people ‘deserve’. A flat tax would have an equal effect on everyone, restoring the direct link between productivity and profit, removing the distorting effect of either excessive taxes or arbitrary tax breaks.
The problem with tax breaks is that they allow otherwise inferior companies to survive, whilst (presumably) the money required to pay for these breaks is extracted from other businesses and individuals, unfairly holding them back. It is a form of redistribution, something the flat tax would put a stop to.
A flat rate of zero percent will work for me.
Taxation is theft.
The trouble with complex tax systems is that they create fees for tax collectors and accountants while leeching time and money from the productive members of society. A simplified tax code (ie flat tax) would allow money wasted on paying for accountants, tax havens and
professional leechesto be used to do more useful things.Paul’s points, while valid and interesting, are good in theory but not very good in practice. Surely reducing the complexity of the tax burden thus reducing the number of bureaucrats to enforce tax is a good thing all around.
This is all about a single taxation rate. Calling it a flat tax is disingenuous. A flat tax is where we all pay the same amount, not the same percentage.
That being said it is still more desirable than a banded taxation system, but not for the reasons given as these seem to focus on the fact that flatter taxes produce a higher income for government, in other words they support big government.
Big government is to be avoided, so the only desirable philosophy for deployment of a flat tax is one where the implementors intend to return an ever increasing share of money back to the wealth creators, by progressively reducing taxation rates as additional income is generated so that no growth in government occurs. This can then be spent on the open market, providing benefit to all rather than just those groups that those of a socialist tendency wish to nurture.
I like the idea (in the sense of a lesser evil) of a tax that doesn’t go out of it’s way to penalise the most productive but penalises everyone equally. The thing is that “flat tax” does not achieve that unless it is applied as a flat fee rather than a flat percentage. A flat fee of £10k is one thing but a flat rate of 25% is quite another.
As hateful and suppresive as taxes are they would not be my first target. That has to be the communication and dissemination of the ideas of liberty in ways that can be understood simply and easily. With more of that going on there would be less and less support for the use of force by the state on it’s own people.
The Mises “Chicago economists are worse than communists” Institute might not like flat tax, but selective tax credits are a form of planning and surely redistributive when the creditee uses publicly funded infrastructure.
The single fee system as at least anti-Hayekian, as it will massively curtail some, or perhaps many, individuals’ economic liberty, which sounds pretty destructive to me.
If every individual is entitled to legal protection of their protections, them a functionally progressive flat tax seems like the best way to provide this under minarchy or moderate c.liberal government.
I think the main advantage of any “simplified” tax, and especially a flat tax, is that it makes people feel the pain. Then maybe people will decide they can spend their own money better.
It’s simple:
1. Any tax reform is good if it will reduce the total level of tax paid.
2. Any tax reform is marginally preferable if it is keeps the total level of tax the same with less effort for taxpayers.
3. Otherwise it is bad.
As to which of these would be true of a “flat” tax in the UK, I have no idea but for the reasons given by Rothbard in the piece quoted by Paul Coulam, I have a hunch that it would turn out to be 3.
Julius
A flat tax paercentage has the advantages of:
1) having a snowball’s chance in hell. Its all well and good to talk about the ideal, but unless you are going to start a civil war, massively radical changes are unlikely, particularly since most truly ideal changes affect so many other aspects of life that you end up chaning the whole system all at once. That may sound great, but in addition to being nearly impossible to accomplish, there is the added danger of inertia. It would be sort of like reversin a bullet train instantaneously, you go in the right direction, but the train and most people on board would be damaged or dead.
2) It may not be as “fair” as a flat rate tax, but it is far better than the current graduated “punish the rich” system we have now.
3) People will understand it, which means they will have more chance of recognizing that its their money, and they will be more likely to hold the government accountable for its use.
4) People will no longer find that certain increases in income are actually negative. Currently, the graduated system that makes jumps at certain levels means that many people dont wish to work harder and make more unless they can make a lot more. This creates a graduated system, rather than a fluid system where more work and production that is rewarded by wages is always a net increase for the producer.
5) Tax shelters and other non-productive use of resources will no longer be necessary, and may be less possible. Again, this allows production to carry on in spite of taxation, rather than being diverted to avoid taxation. The funds that would otherwise be productive are currently being funneled into various less productive shelters, mostly only benefiting those that facilitate the funneling. Also, those who in the past got massive tax shelters and hid their income will find that they can no longer do this, thereby forcing them to come to grips with the reality of the tax burden (see point 3).
6) Lifestyles will be less affected, as people will pursue their lives and make choices without basing those choices on tax reprocutions. It is ridiculous for the government to be able to influence behaviour through tax policy. Of course, the flat tax does not necessarily remove things like cigarette taxes, but it is a step in the right direction.
Baby steps people, Rome was neither built nor destroyed in a day.
I think the main advantage of any “simplified” tax, and especially a flat tax, is that it makes people feel the pain. Then maybe people will decide they can spend their own money better.
The problem isn’t that most people don’t think they can spend their own money well, it’s that they don’t think other people can spend their money well.
– Josh
While the flat tax sounds good to begin with, what is to stop it from growing with time and successive fiscal crises to become bigger than the present tax, with far fewer boltholes.
The current system is probably close to a maximum tax take from the productive part of society. A higher rate results in more tax evasion or avoidance or just more productive people saying “To hell with it” and loafing.
The state’s problem is to raise the optimum extraction level and the only way to do this is to limit ways of avoiding taxes. A flat tax is a great way for them to do this. After all, the original tax rate of a few percent on higher incomes was lower and flatter than any of the recent proposals that I have seen. Why didn’t that just stay the same? If we got into this fix once, why won’t it happen again?
A much better idea is the national sales tax as a REPLACEMENT for and not an addition to existing taxes. Its supporters have all sorts of nice reasons for adopting it, from capturing revenue from drug dealers who don’t pay income taxes but who do buy expensive, taxable autos to eliminating several billion dollars of IRS expense every year. (Google ‘Fair Tax’ to see their stuff) But its most significant advantage, in my opinion, is one that for obvious political reasons they do not mention. It would cause massive changes in people’s economic behavior. Saving would become attractive and spending would become unattractive.
In an economy like the US, where we breathlessly watch the reports on the retail sales of Christmas gewgaws as the most important augury of our coming years employment or unemployment, a change of emphasis from spending to saving would cause a huge amount of short term economic dislocation and, quite possibly the longer term salvation of our economy and our culture.
We in the US are headed for a huge deficit problem. My impression of the situation in Britain and Europe is that their deficits are even worse than our terrifying one. The only realistic way out is a major increase in saving and productivity. This will only come about if people stop spending every loose penny and then start to think about what to do with the money that they are not spending. The Japanese have been saving a large part of their incomes for decades. Their problem is a cultural aversion to small businesses. Working for oneself is not an admirable thing to do there. Instead they have let the banks invest their savings for them. Awash with money, the banks have not done very well.
I would hope that Westerners would, in many cases, realize that they could do as well on their own, start exercising their ingenuity and, as a consequence, productivity would take off thereby saving our sorry indebted butts from the collapse we will otherwise face.
Unfortunately, I’m cynical enough to expect that the best chance of a national sales tax will be after the collapse, not before in enough time to avert it.
Oh well.
Doug, the so-called “Fair Tax” has a number of regulatory and tracking requirements that are very worrisome to those of us who believe in our privacy. Last I heard, for instance, they were proposing to rebate to us the amount of tax we pay on “necessities.” How exactly are those “necessities” determined, and how do they find out how much we spent on them?
When I ask the local group about it (e-mail and/or phone), they promise to “get back to me about that” and they never do. If you know what’s really going on here, I’d appreciate you telling me. 🙂
By coincidence, Tom Di Lorenzo has just written a good piece on this issue, over at Mises. See:
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1672
He’s not in favour!
Speedwell-
As I understand the rebate idea, there would be a certain sum of money each year that would be rebated to everyone, from Bill Gates to the wino on the corner (assuming he has a mailing address). This would cover some sort of basic living expenses. Everybody gets the same sum and everything else is taxed. The objective is to have minimum government interference.
I suppose it would be necessary for the government to have your address to send you the check, but this seems to be a minimal invasion of your privacy. If that is important enough to you, you could just forgo the rebate.
I agree with those who say that it makes too much sense to get passed in the US and that it will fail because it lacks a “soak the rich” component.
Remember, telling the truth is the easiest way to get beat in an election.
As an aside, that reminds me that someone once said that honest politicans are those who lie only when they have to.
Back to flat tax, I dont agree with a plan that lets those below $36,000 to pay no tax. The lower limit should be MUCH lower, so that everyone has a vested interest in lower spending by the government.
I left my Taxpayers Charter for a long time without looking at it/revising it. Matters have worsened from the taxpayers standpoint since. The latest thing here in Germany is to screw everyone posessing any device that could possibly download the content the public service broadcasters (a ginormous organisation in Germany) placed on the Internet without anyone asking them to do so for broadcasting fees. If you have e.g. an old cell phone unable to download anything from the Internet you’ll still get screwed – you could modify it to do so. Good comment on this: apply immediately for child allowance when you hit your majority (18 in most places). Even if you have no kids as yet – the equipment’s there, so apply.
Matters are going from very bad to worse. The attitude of those in power in politics and the public service is typified by the higher court here that didn’t want to have anything to do with an appeal against this swindle – until the judges realised they were going to get screwed too. No privileges for civil servants on this one – yet. You can bet there soon will be.