Adam Smith Institute

UK Tax Prejudice Against Trading Abroad: The Problem of Surplus ACT and its Solution.

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Prominent academics, journalists and politicians highlight the historical contribution of Adam Smith and the role of his ideas in the shaping of modern economic thinking. Includes contributions by Leo Rosten, Professors William Letwin and Edwin G West who speak to The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments specifically, Richard Vernier, Russell Lewis, writing about Adam Smith today, Rt Hon Nicholas Ridley, Professor Norman Barry with a piece about the ethics of capitalism, and Dr Jeremy Shearmur.

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“These modes of taxation, by stamp–duties and by duties upon registration, are of very modern invention. In the course of little more than a century, however, stamp–duties have, in Europe, become almost universal, and duties upon registration extremely common. There is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”

“All taxes upon the transference of property of every kind, so far as they diminish the capital value of that property, tend to diminish the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour. They are all more or less unthrifty taxes that increase the revenue of the sovereign, which seldom maintains any but unproductive labourers; at the expense of the capital of the people, which maintains none but productive.”

So wrote Adam Smith over 300 years ago. Still the problem persists today, and even though Nicholas Gibb wrote this report into Stamp Duty two decades ago it is still pertinent today. Quite simply it is a call for the abolition of Stamp Duty.

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This report of a conference organised by the ASI in 1986 looks at the merits of reducing taxes. Chaired by Andrew Neil and a list of speakers which included James Gwartney, Lawrence Lindsey, George Gilder and Tom Bethell. At a time when much economic debate was and still is devoted to the relative merits of tax cuts or increased spending, the Adam Smith Institute felt that some consideration should be given to the effectiveness of tax cuts, particularly at the upper levels, in achieving greater revenues. There is now an established and documented history of the effect which tax cuts can have in increasing both the revenue yielded, and the proportion of it which is paid by upper income earners.

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... to the economic and political thought of our time. This book, written by Dr Eamonn Butler, gives an introduction to the great Austrian economist and political philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek. The book covers the themes of Hayek's work, which consists more than 25 books and numerous articles. The topics include Hayek's understanding of the market process; his critique of socialism and the meaningless term of social justice, and Hayek's suggestions for the constitution of the liberal state.

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