Future taxation

Economist John Consiglio (‘Just think of it’, August 25) returns to the local taboo subject of an annual property tax which, if I’m not mistaken, every EU country has implemented in one form or other.

Why have most mature countries adopted some form of annual property tax? They argued it wasn’t fair to tax only effort (income tax) without also taxing accumulated wealth, and immovable property is substantial accumulated wealth that cannot be hidden away.

I understand some US states have a property tax but no income tax, possibly because it is fairer and easier to collect. Also, one can argue that an absence of a property wealth tax accentuates the deep divisions between the rich and the poor. Capitalism needs to be controlled because it can become too much of getting richer at the expense of the suffering of others.

An annual property tax would provide the treasury with much needed funds. PHOTO: CHRIS SANT FOURNIER

Maltese politicians have regarded a property wealth tax as a blasphemous thought not to be expressed in polite company and amounting to nothing less disastrous than electoral suicide.

Be that as it may, as Consiglio points out, an annual property tax would provide the treasury with the required funds to improve social housing, the health service, the minimum wage and the state pension, besides attempting to start paying off our huge national debt. The Nationalist Party has, and is doing, a good job of chasing the unbelievable number of alleged scandals and corruption manoeuvres of the present administration. However, its claims to be the government-in-waiting needs to be substantiated with a fiscal road map of how all their solutions to our problems are going to be financed.

They also need to be reminded of their skeletons in cupboards. One of these, of particular interest to us service pensioners, is the scandalous legislation that a PN administration enacted, permitting future service pensioners (the judiciary and EU institution workers), and future owners of private pensions, to enjoy two pensions they worked for, while current service pensioners and current owners of private pensions cannot enjoy two pensions they paid for because of the scandalous Mintoff legislation of 1979 and which ‘national saviour’ Eddie Fenech Adami conveniently never sorted out in spite of promises that injustices would be seen to.

If Bernard Grech and his band of hopefuls pretend to be a government in waiting, they need to inform us whether their administration would follow Lawrence Gonzi’s conclusion that this longstanding service pensioners’ “open sore needs to be closed” with fair compensation for this scandalous post-colonial institutional defrauding of retired workers. This is an important criterion on which to judge the credibility of PN promises.

ALBERT CILIA-VINCENTI – Attard

Dressed to impress

Could anyone enlighten me as to the advantage of swimming in the flimsiest of tangas and thin ribbon-clad breasts as opposed to decent swimwear?

What baffles me more is why do men opt for swimming trunks and women for the minutest of ribbon tangas? What makes one smart and beautiful?

Walking along our promenades or streets in a totally transparent dress revealing the minutest of underwear or opting for a well-groomed, nicely dressed outfit?

JOSIE MUSCAT – Sliema