DO we assume last week's analyst of income tax is being anonymous because they have dodged their rates/ council tax; do not pay excise on petrol, alcohol and tobacco and evades NICs (It won't be worth saving, Opinion, October 4)?

Taxes are more than income tax and they are the price of government enforcing security ­— of all sorts ­— so guaranteeing property rights that not only Tories are tight about.

Otherwise, like the Pastons buying crossbows in the Wars of the Roses, we would all have to defend ourselves directly and you can see what gun-happy chaos is like in any news clip from the Arab world.

There was a gloriously odd assertion that without savings, tax revenue falls. How? Why? Except for tax on dividends.

All the above taxes are not levied on savings, but current income or expenditure.

When Atlee's government nationalised swathes of utilities, health and transport it paid with scrip, otherwise interest paying government bonds ­— gilts or "consols" ­— so extending the repayment period.

Much of the railways and mines sector were not paying dividends so nationalisation was an income.

If rail and utilities now pay dividends, it is largely out of the money paid in subsidies to contractors and as such near the knuckle of the fraud of paying interest out of capital.

Anyone proposing putting the NHS out to "health providers" should be cross examined as arms firms directors who are retired generals or politicians in their time responsible for the contracts.

Remember the USAF C5 Galaxy replacement wings or the French Chauchat LMG of the First World War or the DMS cheapskate boots in the Falklands?

Reagan PR that lowering the rate increases the yield overflows with devils in detail. The Reagan income tax reform paid for rate reduction by scrapping lots of "allowances". In UK reduction of the rate from 30 per cent plus to 20 per cent actual was partly paid for by scrapping child and marriage allowances and mortgage interest relief.

These effectively spend tax by exempting payment, on those who already have money by the fact of being in the tax bracket. It does nothing for the poorest who need child and housing benefit and free school meals.

When Atlee, Wilson and Blair's governments transferred 1 per cent of GDP from the top 10th to the bottom 10th it multiplied the economy at the bottom of the pyramid ­— and in UK, not on foreign holidays, so actually paid by tax yields on increased turnover.

First lesson in GCSE economics: draw a diagram of the circulation of money.

Admittedly, keeping a tax rate modest torpedoes the expense of avoidance and yield erosion. So why the objection to 1/4 per cent Tobin tax on each stock exchange transaction ­— less than the old 2d stamp on cheques and receipts; or cutting the expensive bureaucratic costs about what is profit by scrapping corporation tax and VAT for a straight 2 per cent on turnover in the UK ­— or any other state so clipping the transnationals' fiddling evasions by internal prices and losses?

Finally, if the Brown and Darling Labour Government put up the national debt, it was to save the banks from collapse which would have been a lot worse than 1929.

The last Darling budgets cut the resulting £158 billion deficit at £22 billion a year.

Osborne and Co barely pegged the deficit­— and doubled the debt (and interest) with nothing to show except resentments at austerity taking demand and so production out of the economy besides cutting service.

Frank Adam

Hartley Avenue

Prestwich