You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Some people think they should keep all the money they earn without paying taxes, others disagree. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
You should write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer
In most countries around the world, while paying taxes is required by the law and considered a civic duty, it also brings about downsides that lead to certain individuals or corporations trying to evade or deduct the tax they need to pay.
Some people claim that levying taxes is unfair and they deserve to keep all their legitimate income to themselves because they fight every single minute for it. High taxes can not only stifle the motivation of individual workers but also exert a negative effect of penalising hard work. The more concerning situation, however, is that with all taxpayers’ money accumulated, the government, albeit even an elected one, could misuse or even become corrupted, not to mention those authoritarian ones. In this case, it is better to keep the money to their own instead of anyone else.
However, other people argue that taxes revenue provides a vital source for the government who shoulder the responsibility to build a strong country and provide important public services such as police, healthcare, education and many other vital ones which are closely tied to every single citizen’s well-being. Without this revenue, there would be no money to pay for government workers, resulting in no organisation to run the country and probably jeopardising national security. Therefore, paying taxes should be every single taxpayer’s responsibility.
My view is that it is every capable citizen’s duty to pay taxes to support and provide our government necessary sources to protect our entire country as well as improve our personal life quality, only in the condition that they must be well used and absolutely cannot be abused by incompetent officials.
[ Written by – Phoenix Xu ]