“In this world,” as Benjamin Franklin so famously noted, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

And, with the United Kingdom likely to face a budget deficit of at least £170 billion in the current fiscal year, politicians of all persuasions will be desperately searching for new and additional sources of revenue.

After all, we not only have to pay for bank bail-outs and failing public finance initiatives, we must also find the money for endless costly initiatives such as ID cards, even if they only serve to erode our civil liberties.

To this mountain of debt we can add the horrendous expense of government IT projects that invariably and somehow inevitably never actually work, together with whatever sum we spend funding the occasional illegal war.

Were none of this sufficient, there is still a further price to be paid to maintain some of our legislators in the opulence too many mistakenly think they merit.

In other words, as soon as the next general election is over, and no matter which party wins, taxes are certain to rise.

Parliamentarians will be forced to stop devising yet ever more devious ways of feathering their own already palatial nests. Instead, if only temporarily, their focus will once again be on how best to deprive us of what little money we still have left.

Indeed, as Lord Clyde said as long ago as 1929, “The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue.”

What politicians will therefore crave will be new taxes that we all have to pay, and which none of us can easily avoid.

So, when some of them read a report on the Macedonian Radio and Television website that Serbia is set to introduce an additional 10% tax on mobile phone bills, their interest is certain to be aroused.

There they will learn this allegedly interim tax has been introduced as part of the Serbian government's anti-crisis measures, with the aim of boosting budget revenues to help tackle the impact of the global economic crisis.

The more astute will then turn to a recent report from Ofcom: The Communications Market 2008. On checking they will discover that in 2007 United Kingdom mobile retail revenues amounted to £15.1 billion. This year the figure should be higher, recession notwithstanding.

By introducing the same tax here the Exchequer could raise more than £1.5 billion. Better still, collection costs would be minimal, as the charge could simply be added to monthly bills or the cost of pre-pay top-ups. Nor is it possible to avoid payment. Unless we give up our phones.

The potential is just too good to ignore.

But perhaps we should not object too strongly. After all, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most widely cited judges in the history of the United States Supreme Court, succinctly argued: "tax is the price we pay for a civilised society."

That said, when you see the increase in your phone bill, you may be more inclined to agree with Ronald Reagan. In his opinion "the problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much."