For richer not poorer

At a time when the total tax burden on households in the lowest fifth of incomes is 42%, but on the highest fifth it is only 34%, I want lower taxes on lower incomes and higher taxes on higher incomes. The real "middle England" (actually the middle fifth of households in the UK) pays 36% of gross income in taxes, so there is a case for a shift of the burden from the middle to the top as Peter Hain proposed.

But the case for lowering the burden of taxes on low incomes is far stronger than any politician mentions. The argument Polly Toynbee describes (Tax is out of the bag, June 25) would be more intelligent if politicians would demand fair taxes for all, not higher or lower ones as if that applied to everybody.
Prof John Veit-Wilson
University of Newcastle
j.veit-wilson@ncl.ac.uk

· High rates of tax are not the way to maximise the amount of money that the Treasury gets in. When taxes are too high, people evade them, or employ expensive accountants to avoid them. Or they pack it in and retire early. Or leave the country - remember the "brain drain" when the top tax rate was 83% under the Wilson government? When Geoffrey Howe cut those rates to 60%, the share of tax paid by the top 5% of earners rose, from 24% to 27% of the total. When Nigel Lawson cut it to 40%, the effect was even bigger. The three big tax cuts in the US (Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan) show exactly the same thing.
Dr Eamonn Butler
Director, Adam Smith Institute

· The reason to tax the super rich punitively is not to make anyone "feel better about their paltry pay packet" (Comment, June 24), but to show everyone, not least the rich, that we are a society that believes in fairness and responsibility and condemns greed. As for the argument that they will avoid paying, they do that anyway, and if the revenue only collects half of what it should, then half of 90% is a lot more than half of 40%.
MB Loftus
Cheltenham, Glos

· I had to sell my sick, elderly mother's home to pay her nursing home fees. These must be paid out of taxed income. Interest rates have more than halved since she entered the home, so I am now drawing on her capital to pay the fees. Thus people in my mother's position are effectively taxed at more than 100%.

As for the argument that we can't raise the tax rates on high fliers because they'll leave the country: wouldn't we all be better off if the serial wealth destroyers who have brought so many companies to their knees, yet who are so expensively paid off, had buzzed off elsewhere?
Elizabth Balsom
London

· The Social Market Foundation ideas on taxing housing capital gains (Report, June 23) do have some merit. People could be allowed a cumulative capital gains allowance over the years for which the house has been held. But it does seem absurd that this one huge source of lifetime income should be completely untaxed, especially in the face of those not affluent enough to join the club.

One of the major benefits of living in the affluent south is the capital built up in a house, funded by higher salaries to "compensate" for the cost of housing. Here in Kendal I am looking at a working-life capital gain of £250,000: my peers in the south-east can expect twice that.

But the most curious thing is that stamp duty is paid by the buyer rather than the seller. The buyer is trying to raise every last penny; the seller has just raised it. Surely it would be more equitable if the onus of payment were reversed. It would also act to keep prices down.
Richard Pater
Kendal, Cumbria