Tax mother******, do you pay it?

IT appears that at last the right-wing press has found some compassion for minorities - it's just a shame that they're hurrying to help the affluent rather than the embattled. 

Consider The Daily Telegraph rushing to the defence of an elderly couple who had assembled investments in 60 buy-to-let properties, but because of Labour's tax plans now faced "selling their boat".

Call me old-fashioned, but people whose retirement plans to sail the world are built on the back of buying up half the Monopoly board are not exactly the epitome of being on the breadline. 

The same paper also splashed on the fact that the government's move to close a death duty loophole on agricultural estates had been met with disapproval from the world's richest man - Elon Musk. What to, misquote Mrs Merton, first attracted the multi-billionaire to opposition to redistributive tax policy?

I haven't yet seen reports of a "war" on those hard-pressed passengers facing a hike in the cost of private jet travel they've scrimped and saved for but I'm sure it's coming.

This sudden outpouring of empathy is rather sickening given that it comes from the politicians and press outlets who have for years given short shrift to those facing genuine hardship.

Former Home Secretary, extant arsehole Suella Braverman once branded homelessness "a lifestyle choice", while raging pundits pour scorn on those fleeing war and persecution and - so we're told - expect a free ride on the backs of hard-working Britons.

Now however people who have accumulated whole portfolios of properties and millionaires who intend to flee to a (financially) safe country are depicted as the victims of an inexcusable attack because they face paying marginally more tax. 

Having spent years insisting that even trade unions - representing almost a quarter of the country's total workforce - are effectively a special interest group, the working people label is suddenly being applied with rigour to all and sundry.

None of this is surprising however. Tax is a typically toxic subject because of the way that it has been framed for decades as a sort of state-sanctioned grand theft auto. It's the precision-guided fiscal missile set to obliterate your earnings. Tax: The Second Inevitability.

Strip back the hyperbole and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has sensibly targeted revenue streams that, by and large, the average person (should such a thing exist) will never see sight of. Fiscal policy is by its nature complex and there will inevitably be unintended impacts. The National Insurance hike will probably feed down to employees and customers but in a way this only cancels out a pre-election giveaway which lacked any shred of financial credibility. 

But broadly speaking it is hard not to argue that this has turned the dial in the interests of the overwhelming majority.

Just six per cent of Britons are private landlords and a mere 0.3 per cent of people with income under £50,000 would be stung by Capital Gains Tax in an average year. 

When it comes to the farmers meanwhile, tax expert Dan Neidle has branded coverage "over-the-top". This might imply that there is a proportionate type of frontpage on a fringe tax loophole in an age when hundreds of Spaniards have recently died in flash floods and a man widely regarded as fascist is about to return to the White House 

Nonetheless Neidle pricks the preposterous suggestion that tax changes, which will leave a clear majority of agricultural property untouched - even among the relatively limited proportion of the population who are rural landowners - are grossly unjust.

Yet of course it serves the interest of charlatans to get ordinary people convinced that it's them and theirs who will suffer. Similar tactics are not new. Ten years ago this week millionaire pop star Myleene Klass lambasted a Labour plan to levy a tax on homes worth more than £2 million - claiming that "little grannies" would pay the price.

Forgive me for my cynicism but I rather suspect that it was the singer's own substantial assets she had in mind when she opposed the policy. By a similar token, one can only imagine why Daily Mail editor-in-chief  Paul Dacre, who owns thousands of acres of land, might feel aggrieved by recent announcements. 

Inflating the actual impact of tax rises combines with an utter failure to be honest about the alternative to such measures. If you don't raise more money at a time of eye-watering shortfalls, then you continue an assault on public spending which has left us in a situation where not much anything seems to work as it should.

There is an asymmetry in the way options are presented. Tax is always painted as a clear and immediate threat, whereas spending cuts are dealt with only in the abstract. "Efficiencies", we were always told, could be found with no need for painful cuts.

"I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS", proclaimed then leader of the opposition David Cameron in 2010.

It was a disturbing assertion and not only because it came with an image of Cameron which we'd today put down to an ill-advised smartphone filter - all shining skin and empty eyes. More seriously it exemplified an obvious dishonesty about the dangers of denying money to public services.

Fourteen years of this nonsense has brought us to a point where patient satisfaction in the health service has plummeted to a record level, the rivers are full of shit and the prisons are packed to the rafters. A growing number of councils are declaring bankruptcy - a scenario that was once unheard of. Across the piece, almost everyone has paid the price for a critical lack of long-term investment and slashing day-to-day spending.

Having seen first-hand the full effects of austerity during my stint as a local government reporter, I would argue that this is something that genuinely does impact the overwhelming majority of people. When the public realm crumbles the only group who can be assured of security are the handful with the wealth to make alternative provisions. 

Neil Kinnock once launched a famous attack on the fraying of the social contract during the height of Margaret Thatcher's tenure. Growing old, falling ill or even just being ordinary put you at serious risk in a country which prioritised the winners and left the less fortunate to fend for themselves.

Forty years on it is not hard to imagine the dangers of a health service falling massively behind with treatment targets and poorly resourced police forces, when one in two people will one day get diagnosed with cancer and hundreds of thousands each year suffer a burglary.

Today the Tories attempt to turn the tables, encouraging outrage at measures which they imply could drop without warning on anyone who abruptly became the owner of a great swathe of Suffolk farmland.

"I warn you not to expect the income from your non-inventory assets that you may have budgeted for in the next 12 months" somewhat lacks the sincerity of Kinnock's own intervention.

Unfortunately the charlatans rely on a shaky grasp of Treasury policy-making among the wider public. Even the likes of income tax is little understood, never mind obscure levies which are paid by tiny minorities and often whittled away with the help of clever accountants.

Critics also work ten to the dozen to discredit the notion that tax is the price paid to deliver a decent standard of society. Polling always suggests healthy support for shoring up services like the NHS, so cynics instead warn of cash being splashed on refugees and scroungers. Hysterical headlines have left many thinking that the second greatest drain on public expenditure is the asylum system (it actually accounts for less than one per cent of spending).

The preponderance of coverage is also perhaps attributable to the fact that the commentariat is London-centric and unusually privileged itself. Capital Gains Tax paid in one especially well-heeled area of Kensington exceeds the total sum raised in Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle combined.

Similarly, around half of the country's 100 most influential journalists went to public school, compared with just seven per cent nationwide. Knowing that, it is easier to see why they see the VAT charges on fee-paying pupils as such a hot button issue, even as the roof threatens to fall in at many a local comp.

Official analysis suggests that all but the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population will be better off as a result of the recent budget, with the poorest paid gaining from a record rise in the Living Wage and reaping the dividend from improved investment in public services that only a handful have the option of opting out of. 

After years of left-wingers being accused of being out of touch with the concerns of ordinary working people, it is perhaps ironic that conservatives now conspire to convince someone on the breadline they should be inordinately angry about taxes they haven't even heard of, never mind will have to pay. 

Not so long ago all of us were being told to tighten our belts as the weekly shopping bill soared. The then Tory chairman even suggested that people who were unhappy with poverty wages would do well to find another job, while 50p Lee Anderson - the Dickensian villain of modern British politics - had no qualms about counselling struggling families on how they could feed themselves for less than the price of a Freddo bar.

The idea that now it is exceptionally cruel to expect those who have been better insulated than anyone from the financial headwinds - in part because of their wealth and in part because of carve-outs specifically designed to protect them - to contribute more is ludicrous. 

Musk - the sudden defender of rural wealth in a country he has never even lived in - only recently gave tacit approval to the "temporary hardship" that building a wall of tariffs around America may cause ordinary people.

It is always the way with these people, sacrifice only becomes a problem when it is those at the upper end who are expected to play their part. Remember that even during the worst of austerity, corporation tax continued to be slashed, the top rate of income tax was cut and the Inheritance Tax allowance went up.

They're perfectly comfortable with people becoming filthy rich just don't expect them to pay their taxes.