All Your Paychecks Are Belong To Us

Dropping the pretense:

The UK government tax collection agency says…

…all your money really belongs to us anyway, so why not just skip the middleman: you!

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time, although for now the proposal is still considered “radical:”

The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.

The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.

Please read the whole article. In it, the proposal is criticized, to be sure. But the main arguments seem to be whether it would really save the government money or cost money instead, and whether errors would be likely to be made. Liberty? Never heard of it.