Firstly this is meant to be "Serious" discussion so don't falsely attribute quotes to people. You should like your source or edit the post. Fwiw the previous three conservative prime ministers all went to grammar schools. Gordon Brown went to the scottish equivalent, Blair to a public school and Wilson to a grammar school.
It's about knowing who and what you vote for. Instead of thinking in terms of 'good guys' or 'bad guys', think: what does this politician do (not say!); how does that serve my interest and how much power do I feel comfortable giving him/her? Meanwhile as you say: take responsibility for yourself. It is remarkable how many things in life you can take care of for yourself if you don't rely on government/NHS/authorities to do it for you.
You do know that benefit fraud accounts for only £2 billion right ? Versus the £32 billion in tax evasion and avoidance. To me that would seem that the rich are getting away with stealing £30 billion more than benefit claimants.
Tax evasion is breaking the law and there are fines and jail time for that. Tax Avoidance is when the rules are set up so you can do A and pay x tax but chose to do B instead and pay x/2 or whatever. Getting an ISA or a Penson is tax avoidance relative to just investing in shares or sticking money on deposit. If you want to reduce avoidance, simplify the system, get rid of schemes to encourage this or that and you reduce the options to avoid tax. When you have very high rates and lots of fancy schemes then it's worth paying a tax advisor to fiddle around. If the system is simpler a person with a lot of wealth to invest will be less likely to get involved with all that hassle. And you can cut costs at HRMC to boot. Anyway surely you would want to prosecute both tax evasion and benefit fraud, not chose between them.
It seems to me that folks are starting to conflate scrounging on welfare and welfare fraud. It's one thing to accept a miserable life in a sink estate living off the dole (if it's so nice and easy, I wonder why more people don't opt for this glamorous lifestyle). It's another thing entirely to abuse the system to gain more than is allowed. If you're going to get upset about the scroungers living off of your tax dollars, then you should be equally upset at subsidies across the board. Same goes for fraud. In the end it's mostly an exercise in risk management. How can you maximize income from taxes while reducing the amount of money lost through fraud or other waste?
Indeed. I only mentioned benefit fraud and tax evasion to highlight the contrast in the generally held belief of the "Evil Poor" and "scrounger" sub-culture in UK. That is mentioned in the article that megamale posted and spoke of. EDIT: Ohh and when he/she said "The rich didn't steel from you. Stop looking for someone to blame." I thought it relevant to point out that this just isn't true. The rich steal much more from us than the "Evil Poor"
Just bear in mind there are some silly numbers thrown around about tax avoidance. People say this company makde 1bn so they should be paying hundreds of millions in tax, but that ignoreds the fact that they may have bought a lot of plant or other assets that are set off against tax earlier than they are written off in the accounts. Certainly there are some international funny schemes that seem a bit much but ijust to pull a report and accounts and point at the headline tax number and profits number is pretty dumb.
The figures i used for tax avoidance are from the 2011-12 HMRC official figures. The figures i used for benefit fraud are from official figures release by the CPS, HMRC and the DWP.
True, but i think that highlights how the so called rich are able to get away with a great deal more than the poor. In a perfect world we wouldn't have benefit fraud, tax avoidance and/or evasion, but as mentioned in the article by the OP, and the generally held belief. We seem to be demonizing the undeserving poor when they actually cost the country a great deal less than the deserving rich.
It is interesting. Starbucks, for example, had sales of £400m in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax. It transferred some money to a Dutch sister company in royalty payments, bought coffee beans from its own Swiss subsidiary and borrowed against high interest from other parts of its own business. Amazon, which had sales in the UK of £3.35bn in 2011, only reported a "tax expense" of £1.8m by basing its office for UK transactions in Luxembourg. Rich folk turning bookkeeping tricks is 'tax avoidance'. A plumber taking payment in cash is 'tax evasion'. Yeah, right...
Your Pension and ISA are tax avoidance. As is stuff like the enterprise investment scheme. People try an avoid their estate being subject to IHT by making tranfers to their children. If you want to stop tax avoidance then you need to take out the reliefs, schemes, exemptions including the ones that support this you might approve of.
A few points: 1- Why are you (and everyone) comparing "sales" and tax amount. Tax is paid on profits. You can make a lot of sales and very little profit (ie airlines). Starbucks said, believe it or not, that the UK was unprofitable. 2- Why are we only talking about corporation tax? If you look at the full range of taxes a business pays corporation tax is not the main one. VAT, Business Council Taxes, Employer NI... Let alone all the indirect taxes such as their employees PAYE, fuel, etc. 3- It is a "duty" for a business, any business, to do everything to reduce their tax bill legally. Call it avoidance, but if they didn't, and opted to pay more tax just because they are good guys, it would be a "donation". 4- If we are unhappy with this and think that the corporations are having it easy then the fault is not with the corporation, it's with the politicians that make the tax rules. They negotiate international tax agreements. Simplify the tax system, reduce tax rates, enforce auditor rotation, etc etc. This is a whole topic in itself, but it is certainly the politician's job to fix, not corporations.
AFAIK Pension's are classed as taxable income. ISA while being a form of tax avoidance are limited in the size of the investment and it's only the interest earned that isn't taxable. While people may try to avoid inheritance tax by transferring property to their children, the rules on making a gift are not simple. For instance you have to live for at least another 7 years to be exempt, also if you benefit or attach conditions to the gift you are not exempt. Everyone tries to avoid paying tax, the problem comes when people or company's play the system to aggressively avoid millions of pounds, not when it's thousands (IMHO) EDIT: Totally agree it is the politician's job to fix, not corporations. Maybe this is why we get fed the undeserving poor, benefit fraud spiel by the politicians, if we all blame the poor we wont look at the real problem.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...brits_n_5152005.html?1397628731&ncid=webmail1 Our govt won't be happy until we're exactly the same as the USA. IE; you either have everything or you have nothing. Next step to this outcome is to get rid of the NHS and privatise healthcare so that it's only available to the rich, and the poor die younger.
@megamale: 1. The game is rigged to reduce apparent profits. If the UK is unprofitable, why is Starbucks still here? 2. Many of these taxes are passed on to the customer (VAT), or are the same taxes we mere mortals pay. No compassion, sorry. 3. Does business have a moral obligation towards society? I believe it should. An amoral business is a harmful business. 4. You mean the same politicians who have vested business interests? In any case I believe that society should regulate itself, by taking responsibility for its actions, rather than rely on a bid daddy telling them what's naughty and what's nice. Companies are run by people who (presumably) have a moral conscience. Let them exercise it. The idea of business as an amoral activity is contrary to the principles of society.
Let the market decide. If a business is unfavourable in your eyes, avoid it. Let others choose whether they want to or not. I can't find a link but I'm sure, some years ago, I read an interview with Richard Branson where he stated he was sure his businesses broke at least one law every single day. It's inevitable because there's so much legislation governing all manner of things, no way of effectively educating and enforcing it all to the extent where businesses habitually comply, and the nature of business being that it finds shortcuts, exploits loopholes. It's a fantasy to consider that the biggest businesses have become so big just by providing a better service/product. Bending/breaking the rules gives you the competitive edge. Regulation will never be able to keep up. Congrats on the 25k, by the way, Nexxo
Do you know what I find unbelievable about him? and just what it is that makes me hate him so much? He had a disabled child. The child was heavily disabled, and, died. Which is utterly tragic. Like totally and utterly tragic. So just how can he be so cruel and relentless on disabled people ? The man has no conscience. Not even a shred of one. Not once has he asked himself how he would feel if Ivan grew older and was being victimised by his government and left a life of misery because he was targeted and used to gain votes (by blaming the country's state on him and other unfortunate souls like himself).
Cameron and most politicians wouldn't have to worry about any of their children being victimised by any government, they have enough personal wealth to never have to worry about who is going to pay for anything they may need.
1. I think there is a problem with transfer pricing abuse (what Starbuck have been up to). Basically you organise licensing and suppy between subsidiaties so the profit ends up in the countyr with the lowest rate. Previously this was of material good and the auditors/taxman will chekc if the pricing seems resonable form time to time. With Starbucks and others they were charging licence fees for the branding makign it impossibel to say what a fair price is. I think some international effort is needed there to put a squeeze on this. I'm not giving them a pass on this. 2. VAT - there isn't much scope for avoiding this without straight out breaking the law. I know well from our own business as my wife has a couple of ice cream parlours and we pay net vat of ~11% of our turnover after deducting VAT on inputs. That can't be manipulated orther than by not selling stuff or straight up fraud. 3. Exactly why the heck have we got more of an obligation to society that the people who work in the shop? Heck some of the take home more than we make in profits. 4. Politicians can have vested interests without ever having worked for a business. Look at the local council leaders with plum 200k jobs on the neighbouring council.
