 Now consider the making of general legal norms. In England there is a Value Added Tax of 20 per cent. That is the case because the U.K. Parliament enacted (in language that you may well consider rather peremptory) that ‘VAT shall be charged at the rate of 20 per cent’ (Value Added Tax Act 1994 s 2(1), as amended by the Finance (No 2) Act 2010, s 3(1)), and English law treats Parliament as having law-making authority. We can imagine a system in which the contribution of that legislative act to the law of England is qualified by a discretion on the part of tax collectors to collect more or less than 20 per cent. We can imagine a system in which judges are given an equitable jurisdiction to reduce the tax where a company supplying goods and services is at risk of insolvency. There are sound and pressing reasons, instead, for English law to treat the decision of the legislature as having determined the tax. The central reason, of course, is the allocation of the taxing power to the Parliament; subsidiary but very important reasons concern the rule of law values to be secured if taxpayers and enforcement officials and judges are all bound by the decision of Parliament.