The Fabian Society's Commission on Taxation and Citizenship, to which I was secretary and which reports on 28 November, ran a series of discussion or focus groups exploring public attitudes on the subject. Taxes invoked deeply negative feelings - not just political antipathy, but a highly emotional aversion. This is not just a dislike of paying taxes, which would hardly count as news. It is that people seem to make almost no connection between the taxes they pay and the public services that these finance. Taxes are perceived almost entirely as a burden, a drain on the individual and family budget, from which no tangible gain is seen.
People know that taxes pay for public services.
But their perception of the past ten years is that taxes have risen while public services have got worse. Higher taxes have not led to better public services, so there seems no reason to think that lower taxes would lead to worse services. The Dome has become the symbol for this view, even though it was financed from Lottery money, not from taxation. This isn't just about income tax. Until recently, it was received wisdom in political circles that, while income tax may have become untouchable, you could always put up indirect taxes because the public wouldn't notice them.