The Bedroom Tax Is A Tax, No Matter What The Tories Say – Guy Debord’s Cat
Vox Political has demonstrated very clearly the point made in the title of this Guy Debord’s Cat article – many times. However, it contains appealing aspects and is worth perusal. For example:
The so-called Spare Room Subsidy, which is more accurately termed “The Bedroom Tax”, is an example of [Tory] cruelty. However the term “Spare Room Subsidy” itself is indicative of their ignorance. Since when was a charge for something considered a ‘subsidy’?
The Oxford English Dictionary describes a subsidy as:
A sum of money granted by the state or a public body to help an industry or business keep the price of a commodity or service low.
An example of this would be
a farm subsidy
Does the Bedroom Tax sound like a “subsidy” to you? No, it doesn’t sound like one to me either.
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More Orwellian Double Talk, and also the aggressive bureaucrat’s and PR people’s favourite habit: deliberately using the wrong word to obfuscate their policies.
Labour are trying to stop the bedroom tax, (No, it is not a donation it is a petition to back up a debate.) :-
https://donation.labour.org.uk/page/content/bedroom-tax?source=bedroom_tax_1&subsource=facebook_taf&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=taf&utm_campaign=bedroom_tax_1&att=oVJNgR0j3wlbBq3
Mike, as I learnt it from the speye blog last year, the correct term in the legislature was under occupancy penalty, but the Tories thought it would put them in a better light if they were to call it the removal of the spare room subsidy. But this was a nonsense because there was no such thing as a spare room subsidy in the first place, for them to remove! But you are right – many Tories are arguing it’s not a tax, it’s a spare room subsidy, and any that say this obviously don’t know what a subsidy is.
You’re absolutely right – and this blog has mentioned many times – that the correct term is the State Under-Occupancy Charge (or penalty, as you put it). Even this is a misnomer, though – nobody had ever been told, before the charge was imposed, that they may be penalised for using less of a property than the state demanded so it was wrong for the state to do so. As it was not a condition set down in their terms of occupancy, it is justifiable to say this charge is a tax levied on the affected tenants after the event. The fact that it is a colloquial term, rather than what was set down in the statute books, is neither here nor there.