Tax the Charities

 Times of TW 4 Dec 2015

Why not Tax the Charities?

By Kent Barker

We don’t get too many rough sleepers or Big Issue sellers in my village.  Rural poverty is generally hidden from view.  But that doesn’t mean homelessness is not an issue here.  It’s difficult to get accurate statistics because they are recorded differently across the UK, and many homeless people don’t show up in official records at all.  Nevertheless government figures show that 2,744 people slept rough in England on any one night last year – and that was a 55% increase on four years before.

Poverty generally is also rising among all age groups - but particularly the young - according to a survey by the New Policy Institute earlier this year.  It showed median weekly income fell from £425 in 2009-10 to £392 in 2012-13. And the weekly income of the poorest 10%, fell from £174 to £160.

Just take a moment to consider that figure. £160 to pay for everything in life – housing, food, clothing, electricity and heat. Let alone transport, entertainment or any tiny luxuries.  I know people who will spend that sort of sum on a single meal out and a taxi home.

While they are patronizing expensive restaurants, the poor are increasingly turning to food banks to be able to eat. A record number, 1,084 604 people were given 3 days emergency food in 2014-2015 - usually because of benefit delays or general low income.  That means that across the country one in every 59 people had to turn to a food bank.  And the situation is likely to get worse as the latest welfare cuts begin to bite.

So what’s to be done? Well around this time of year we are bombarded with appeals from different charities.  Now you might think a thriving charitable sector is a good thing: those that can afford to help others do so.  But I take a rather different view. 

On any individual basis, a charity might be doing excellent work and genuinely helping those in need. But it’s where it targets that help that’s more problematic.  A homeless person turns up at a charity and may get help.  But that assumes they know about the charity and the charity has funds. And that they meet the criteria - which is determined by its trustees rather than any democratic system.  And is the charity really offering the type of help that is most needed? 

Take our village.  There are about a dozen separate charities operating here.  Some distribute small bequests – bibles to school leavers or small sums towards university living costs.  Others run almshouses or the recreation ground or a community orchard.  But there is certainly no coordinated system of working out what’s most needed and ensuring that limited funds go there first.

The same is true nationally.  Charities for donkeys regularly get bigger bequests than those for people. Animals not children get a royal charter when it comes to preventing cruelty. Huge sums are spent on fund raising and advertising and administration. Organisations like the BBC single out certain organisations  (Children in Need, St Martins in the Fields) at the expense of others. Who chooses Radio 4’s Week’s Good Cause?  And what about all the other good causes that didn’t get chosen.  It strikes me as hopelessly random.

Take ‘Chugging’ – charity mugging where young people accost you in the street to sign a direct debit. A national newspaper carried out an undercover investigation concluding they were breaking ‘every rule’ after being specially trained to ‘spin and confuse’ their target.  And what about poor old poppy seller Olive Cook who in one month alone received 267 letters from charities importuning her for money - which may have contributed to the 92 year old taking her own life. 

This is simply not a sustainable model.  But once a voluntary organisation gets big enough then it just has to raise enough money to keep going.  And not just for its charitable objectives, but to keep up the payroll for its own employees.

Surely, it would be better for society to ensure that its most vulnerable people were not left at the mercy of charitable largesse but were protected, as a right, by the welfare state of which we were so proud back at the end of the 1940s.  But the right-wing press has helped poison the concept of welfare with its constant references to scroungers and cheats, while governments of all persuasions have found it more expedient to let the voluntary sector pick up the pieces rather than ask people to pay reasonable increases in taxes to cover the cost of proper state provision.

Here’s an idea. Why not tax the charities and divert that money into the welfare budget? It would be a start. Or else there’ll be rough sleepers and food banks appearing in rural villages as well as in the towns and cities.