Me too, but last time they tried that there were riots. And most people think it was a triumph of the people over government. It is looked upon as A Good Thing that it was scrapped.

It completely ignored the basic fact that any tax had to be easy to collect, fair and based on the ability to pay. The fairest system would be to scrap all these stealth taxes and roll it all into income tax. The overall tax take would be the same but would be less distortionary.

Pets I can agree with, children less so. If you dissuaded people from having any children at all, you have the (unlikely) potential to end up with a population that is almost entirely elderly, then dead.

I would be in favour of increasing taxes after two children (maintaining to lessening the population - some people won't, some will have one, people are dissuaded of having more).

Actually, I'd rather everyone kept their procreating to merely replacing themselves.

Yes but if you did that then the birth rate will fall well below the level just to maintain the population. Italy has a replacement rate IIRC of around 1.1 which means by 2100 the population of Italy will have plummeted from 60 million to around 18 million. That creates huge problems in itself.

Indeed, but what Jim was proposing meant that even having one child would cost a couple more tax. If you did it my way you would at least have the financial chance to have two children before having to pay more tax.

Lucky Italy! Population growth is a huge problem in and of itself - we can't simply go on creating more and more people in some endless cycle. It's clearly unsustainable. Population reduction is a necessary thing.

Yes population growth is a problem definitely on a global scale, but the reason that people have kids is as a form of pension provision. We are genetically configured to want to have kids, otherwise we would have gone extinct years ago. The issue as to whether they are a burden is dependant on how selfish you are. If you believe in working for a common goal chances are that you support free education etc. If you want your personal taxes lower so that you do not have to pay for the mistakes of others then why not stop free education at 5 like much of the developing world. The UK population has only grown because of the immigration of foreigners and their higher birthrate.

Anyone that believes you could reduce the birthrate significantly through taxation is being a little unrealistic.

If you look at the UK population, those with the largest families tend to be the ones with the lowest income. It's mostly the better off that "plan" children to fit with their careers.

Then they cannot have any more because they are not up to it. I know of people who have kids late and struggle, whereas my ex had her kids younger and thinks they are clueless. Many do not want kids because they do not go with suede sofas or their lifestyle, that is their choice. So imposing costs on others so that they can have tax cuts is egregious.

Stereotypically, as you've said, lower income houses have more children, so if there was a tax on each member of a household, these people would probably be exempt from it.
Those better off would think less of having children as it's even more of an expense, however there will be people in this bracket that really want children.

I don't see that as being fair. But then life isn't fair, those who can support themselves should support every other Tom, Dick, and Harry I suppose.

maybe, just maybe
if the senior executives (ar$eholes) within 'local' Govt. gave up all their bonuses then weekly bin collection costs would not be a problem

why are 'local' council executives/employees or any other civil servant paid a bonus ?

and they should also stop local (council) tax money being shipped overseas for investment ...

Because on some levels it's rewarding and makes people work harder?
I'm completely against any position where a bonus is expected regardless of whether it's deserved.
Dad's unit got a bonus the other year for exceptional performance (they'd beat a fair few deadlines and done some other work that wasn't really their work to do), they were promised another bonus the following year if they worked hard. Arguably they worked just as hard the following year and didn't get a bonus, moral went down somewhat and they arguably worked less hard the following year.

Yes but at levels well above median wage it makes no difference at all no matter what they will tell you.

if you look at the history of the 'poll' tax you will find that local Govt. were the ones that made it fail

example
a household paying, then, £100 rates per house was then billed for £100 per person within the same household

i can understand why they rioted ...