The state, by its very nature, is the executive committee of a ruling class. It’s the mechanism by which landlords, usurers, bureaucrats and rentiers extract wealth from the majority of the population. That’s the “civilization” your taxes are paying for.

The only good tax is no tax. Why? How would we fund government without taxes? Those are good questions to ask. But first let's understand what taxes are.

In the last four years MPs have raised beer duty by over 40%. Now they want to hike it again. Write to your MP and we can stop them.

The tax code isn't a document I can recommend perusing. It's written by lawyers and it's nearly five times as long as the Bible. In some countries, being forced to read it would qualify as a human rights violation. But a closer look reveals an indecorous truth about Washington: What Congress can't accomplish because of the limits of law or public opinion, it can usually backdoor through the tax system.

Legal privilege has never completely disappeared even in the freest markets. But where it has been constrained the most, gradually throughout much of the world over the past 200 years or so, markets and trade have indeed flourished, to the benefit of all—especially the least well-off in society. People became rich and super-rich in unimagined numbers through trade rather than plunder. Plunder, after all, at best redistributes wealth; it never creates it. The rich earned their wealth.

I can understand spending money on things like biodiversity projects and habitat restoration. Those benefit the critters. But having a branch of the Department of Fish and Game for "climate science" and "renewable energy"? That seems to stray quite a bit from the DFG's mission.

Taxation is the evil from which all the State’s other wickedness flows. Unless it loots us first, it cannot pay its bullies to bomb and torture villagers in Iraq; its goons cannot irradiate nor sexually assault us in airports; its prisons cannot cage people for growing, smoking or merely holding a vegetable. Indeed, absent taxation, we would probably have no government at all. Politicians might still curse us: given their thirst for power, many would probably forgo a paycheck and rule us solely for the joy of ordering us about. But without the finances to enforce their whims, we could ignore them just as we do other busybodies and cranks.

And for all we hear about getting people working to help the economic recovery, these excessive taxes are hitting the millions of taxpayers that have to drive to work every morning. The Sun newspaper, who published an exclusive look at our report, are running a "Keep it Down" petition to keep the Conservative party true to their pre-election promise of keeping fuel duty down. We urge you to sign it here.

Using an identical method, researchers at the Department for Transport found that taxes on flights have been excessive since February 2007, and they have risen sharply since then as you can see here.

E-mail Chris Huhne and let him know that you don’t want to pay more when you drive to work or take a well-earned break!

But Mr Eppink, a former Commission insider whose recent books “Life of a European Mandarin” and “Bonfire of Bureaucracy in Europe” predicted calls for EU taxes earlier this year, said: “Unsurprisingly, the Commission’s main entry gate may be open to EU taxes, but I am sure ordinary taxpayers will close all doors and windows. No wonder the Commission is launching it in August as its midsummer night’s dream”.

This is why the TPA's most important battle begins today. It would be utterly unacceptable if the coalition negotiations were to focus on the more arcane technicalities of different systems of Proportional Representation, or simply on how much taxpayers' cash should be dished out to particular regions or constituencies in order to buy MPs' votes. The core, fundamental issue on which the new Government should be built is how to cut public spending, radically reduce the deficit and start to put the public finances back in balance.