Taxing the rich: It's tough. That's why it must be done

Doesn’t he realise that past governments have failed, despite their repeated public pronouncements and election promises, to enforce inheritance and land taxes?

Doesn’t he know that it’s one thing to do what the public expects him to do but quite another to really get down to action?

Academics have warned him that collecting more taxes from the wealthy is a tough nut to crack. Politicians have tried before, but none has been able to implement a really effective inheritance tax system. And it’s even more difficult to make landlords pay higher taxes for unused land.

Wealthy landowners are usually the same people who wield power in society, the new prime minister has been warned, and they would do everything possible to torpedo any attempt to have them sacrifice their wealth. They have always managed to put heavy pressure on those in power to halt such controversial legislation. And, without exception, they have been successful so far.

The same group of cynics has also poured cold water on Prayuth’s apparent attempt to put an end to populist policies, including the lifting of subsidies that have had the effect of distorting the market mechanism for a number of items.

Overhauling the pricing systems for energy products is one of the serious challenges facing the prime minister. It’s fine, and even mandatory perhaps, to talk publicly about resetting the price of oil and gas products “to reflect the real market prices” and avoid market distortion.

But if any government gets serious about enforcing such a policy, public reaction will be negative. Previous governments could testify to the high political risk of removing subsidies that send the prices of commodities up. 

Does General Prayuth realise that doing both – getting the rich to pay higher taxes and depriving the middle-class of subsidies on their everyday goods – is just not possible, not “doable” in the political context?

But there are also people around the prime minister who insist that the main reason the public has so far given him high marks for the job is that they believe he will do what others before him thought was not doable.

Prayuth has repeatedly and publicly pledged to do what badly needs to be done to overhaul the country. His is a “reform agenda” that could not be carried out under a “normal political system”, where politicians owe political, financial and personal debts to the wealthy, influential and powerful, whose demand has always been: Keep the status quo if you want our support for you to stay in power.

Past politicians, both in office and in opposition, had to toe the line, because their power base was reliant on the support of the rich and powerful. Any attempt to embark on “reform” plans that affected deeply rooted vested interests would have been interpreted as a challenge to the establishment.

But General Prayuth’s agenda promises to uproot the old and create a new society free of corruption, thereby reducing the longstanding gap between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the noisy urban and the voiceless rural people.

It’s precisely because the issues are tough and appear to be “impossible” that Prayuth has decided to take on the challenge. If they were simple and easy to implement, those tasks would have been carried out already and the country wouldn’t have fallen off the cliff to the point where he had to step in to undertake what he and his coup-making colleagues have described as an “undesirable but necessary mission”.

In other words, the fact that the mission appears to be “impossible” makes it all the more crucial that he ensures it’s done, and done right.