A tax on advertising

I believe that we should levy a small tax on high-value advertising.


Advertising is unpopular and is generally regarded as a blight on our lives. Though low-end advertising like classifieds and small notices serve an important economic purpose; most high-end advertising serves no useful purpose. It exists to artificially inflate the price of and demand for products by exaggerating their intrinsic worth. This artificial inflation of demand does increase economic indicators, but does not actually improve economic wellbeing -indeed, it harms the economy by encouraging citizens to misallocate their own resources.


Apart from its economic impacts, there is also much work linking advertising and anti-social problems. Advertising has been linked with eating disorders, materialism, burglaries, feelings of inadequacy, depression etc.


Therefore, apart from raising (much-needed) revenue, there are sound economic reasons and indeed possible social benefits from reducing the pervasiveness of advertising. Therefore I would like to see such a tax levied.


It could be argued that advertising pays for much of our media. Nevertheless, at this time, when the VAT on newspapers and magazines has been reduced as part of the Governments jobs initiative, it seems like a perfect time to introduce such a measure. By introducing a levy on advertising as the VAT on newsprint is reduced, we will effectively be reorienting the income structure of news outlets, increasing the income derived from customers and reducing the income they derive from advertisers. In this way, news outlets might (a bit of a stretch) be inclined to print more quality material and eschew hollow articles about consumerist lifestyles and unnecessary products.