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Likewise, no one doubts the hardships facing many small businesses, or the risks they take on; neither is it in dispute that small businesses employ a great many people, create lots of wealth and so on. The question, again, is whether that warrants taxing small corporations at a lower rate than other firms — large corporations, unincorporated businesses — or for that matter wage-earners.

I am again grateful to the many correspondents who pointed out that “governments have always” favoured one form of business or another, or that tax policy is about deciding “what sectors of the economy are to flourish,” as I will always cherish the advice of another that the true return on investment is “measured after-tax.”

This last is of course true, in terms of what influences investor decisions. But as far as the economy is concerned, it is the pre-tax rates of return — the real costs and benefits of each investment — that count. Good tax policy, then, far from deciding what sectors should flourish, is about removing the influence of the tax system on decision-making. This is what economists mean by “tax neutrality”: the aim should be to tax all income at the same rate, no matter how it is financed or in what sector it is invested or how it is paid out. And not only investment income. Whether it is earned from capital or labour, saved or consumed, “a buck is a buck is a buck.”

No one doubts the hardships facing many small businesses, or the risks they take on

Is starting a small business a risk? You bet: including the risk that your product is a flop and your business model a bust. Does it come with certain costs? Also true. It’s also potentially highly lucrative, or rewarding in other ways. It’s up to you to decide whether those rewards are worth the costs and risks, not the taxman. Certainly we should not wish the government to discourage risk-taking, but neither should it artificially encourage it: there is such a thing as an optimal level of risk, as we surely learned a decade ago.