Transcription
Can you design tax in a way that people want to pay? In ancient Rome, there were taxes that people there were super taxes for the wealthy which the wealthy volunteered to pay simply because you got your name on a marble column. And there were people who came out of the woodwork and said, "No, no, I'm much richer than you think. Look, look, I've got all these fields here. You know, I really deserve to pay this tax and to be celebrated in in marble."
And I jokingly said, "I said, look, you can get people to pay more voluntarily. You just need a tiny token of recognition." Well, of course, it's easy, you know, if you pay the highest rate tax, you should be allowed to drive in the bus lanes.
I think the point about that was what was interesting when I said that meeting is I suddenly realized everybody in the room went white. And the reason is they were government employees, it was terror of the Daily Mail cuz they knew if that idea if someone just misunderstood the idea and went to the Daily Mail and said that the government is discussing allowing higher rate taxpayers to drive in the bus lanes, then both newspapers on the right and left would go completely deranged for the next sort of week.