For the first time, the losses that accrue to Britain from the damaging affects of taxation are quantified. Every year, claims the author, the taxes favoured by the Treasury deprive each man, woman and child in Britain of £15,000: and that’s on top of the taxes collected by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Ronald Banks exposes the dangerous fallacies that underpin Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claim that taxation delivers equity and efficiency. In fact, governments destroy people’s ability to produce incomes that would enable them to finance the private and public amenities they need. The theory that taxes inflict disincentives on employees and investors is not controversial. But economists fail to quantify the losses. The author censures Parliament as derelict in its duty to protect the common good by properly auditing the tax-raising budget submitted by the Chancellor.

The author proposes the reforms that would democratise public finance. This would be achieved by removing the tax burden on people’s wages and savings, replacing them with charges on community-created rental income from land and nature’s resources. The reforms would finally make it possible to establish a new partnership of co-operation between the public and private sectors.