If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
How much more tax would you end up paying if they did scrutinise them?
If any politician or group of politicians in Britain are fool enough to sign up us to staying in the EU, the democratic consequences would be far, far greater than any imaginable outcome of no deal.
Even Corbyn gets this..
They won't - they will find a way of getting us to do it for them. Ref 2 : the deal nobody understands.
The notion of a second referendum, so soon, will be almost as corrosive for public trust.
If any politician or group of politicians in Britain are fool enough to sign up us to staying in the EU, the democratic consequences would be far, far greater than any imaginable outcome of no deal.
Even Corbyn gets this..
They won't - they will find a way of getting us to do it for them. Ref 2 : the deal nobody understands.
The notion of a second referendum, so soon, will be almost as corrosive for public trust.
Maybe for the moment, but getting less so by the day!
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
Brexit could do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals, but there has to be a viable party for Tory voters to go to.
In the 1920's the Liberals came under attack from both the Tories and the rapidly emerging Labour Party... At the moment there doesn't seem to be such an external threat to the Tories.
The most likely scenario is that Con lose the election, Jezza takes over and under new leadership the Tories rapidly regroup to take on Corbyn?
Regarding you last sentence, I heard the same in the 90s about regrouping in opposition to take on Blair.
Took 13 years, and thanks largely to David Cameron, the only Tory to win a majority in the last quarter of a century.
Blair won a landslide and led the strongest majority government since WW2 in 1997.
On current polls it will be another hung parliament with Corbyn propped up by the SNP and LDs in a minority government, the weakest government since WW2.
If any politician or group of politicians in Britain are fool enough to sign up us to staying in the EU, the democratic consequences would be far, far greater than any imaginable outcome of no deal.
Even Corbyn gets this..
They won't - they will find a way of getting us to do it for them. Ref 2 : the deal nobody understands.
The notion of a second referendum, so soon, will be almost as corrosive for public trust.
I suspect Farage etc would push for a boycott of any 2nd referendum.
If any politician or group of politicians in Britain are fool enough to sign up us to staying in the EU, the democratic consequences would be far, far greater than any imaginable outcome of no deal.
Even Corbyn gets this..
They won't - they will find a way of getting us to do it for them. Ref 2 : the deal nobody understands.
The notion of a second referendum, so soon, will be almost as corrosive for public trust.
I personally think its a bad idea, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen. If we are presented a situation (whether it be entirely the case or not) that we are facing a bad deal, with the possibility of an altered 'remain' that is better, then I think it will come around.
And the EU, and our politicians, know that this referendum would be the last time we would ever be asked about membership. They only have to win once.
There will be tax cuts unlike the failures of the last campaign with the dementia tax etc.
The NHS will remain ringfenced. The Laffer curve of course argues the more you cut tax the more revenue you raise in real terms. Tax rises do not always produce more revenue, sometimes the reverse e.g. the 50% top income tax rate under Brown.
Corbyn motivated his base last time and the Tories need to motivate their base next time.
The Laffer curve doesn’t say that at all, is says that for each tax there’s a rate at which revenue is maximised, which may be higher or lower than that which is currently charged. Taxes that are easily avoidable, such as corporation tax are probably too high, whereas taxes difficult to avoid such as property taxes are probably too low.
It says tax which is too high can reduce revenues just the same as having no tax at all.
Of course tax rates that are too high can reduce revenues, the government should seek for each tax to maximise their revenue rather than any other reason.
Supporters of other parties see for example high income tax rates on higher earners as forcing “the rich” to pay “their fair share”, but what it does in practice is encourage them to spend money on accountants or even drive them offshore completely.
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
What the fuck does the country know is a big bill? A billion, 50 billion? 200 billion? a trillion?
Find me ten people in the High Street who could tell you what our current GDP is and I'll buy you a packet of Bourbon Creams.
No one has any idea. As @Ishmael_Z has said, the govt should be managing expectations and putting about a number that they will come under. Whether that's £60bn coming in at £50bn or £80bn coming in at £60bn.
It's not the country that she has to get the bill past: it's the likes of JRM in her own rder. What then?
Well that is of course the point. IMO she should ask (arguably the only thing that will prevent absolute chaos in 2019) for an extension to A50 by two years. But that would drive her euroloons further into the abyss and they would likely come for her.
But at some point she has to face them down or she will trash the country.
Time for a Corn Law thread?
Please do so.
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
The only way Brexit could do to the Tories what WW1 (or more realistically universal suffrage in 1918) did to the Liberals when Labour replaced them is if the Tories abandoned Brexit and UKIP overtook them as the main party of the right a la Canada 1993.
This is pretty much what an article in Standpoint magazine said this month. The only new party likely is one that arises out of the Brexiteer wing of the Tory party (plus maybe UKIP elements) when they fail to get the hardest exit they dream of.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
There is absolutely no evidence the EU is trying to derail the process. The problem is a political one: the UK government cannot agree to the payment the EU wants because it would create serious problems inside the Conservative party and spark intense criticism from the Brexit-backing press. The sum itself is negligible in comparison to what a No Deal outcome would cost the UK.
If the government could admit to what it knows: that the EU has by far the stronger hand, then we could move forward.
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
What the fuck does the country know is a big bill? A billion, 50 billion? 200 billion? a trillion?
Find me ten people in the High Street who could tell you what our current GDP is and I'll buy you a packet of Bourbon Creams.
No one has any idea. As @Ishmael_Z has said, the govt should be managing expectations and putting about a number that they will come under. Whether that's £60bn coming in at £50bn or £80bn coming in at £60bn.
It's not the country that she has to get the bill past: it's the likes of JRM in her own party. Could she face him and that wing down with the support of some on the opposition benches? Yes, but it would destroy her government and it'd still leave several other red line issues unresolved - FoM, the ECJ, expat rights and the Irish border. What then?
Well that is of course the point. IMO she should ask (arguably the only thing that will prevent absolute chaos in 2019) for an extension to A50 by two years. But that would drive her euroloons further into the abyss and they would likely come for her.
But at some point she has to face them down or she will trash the country.
Time for a Corn Law thread?
Please do so.
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
If the Conservatives were to disappear, then right wing voters would simply vote for another right wing party.
If any politician or group of politicians in Britain are fool enough to sign up us to staying in the EU, the democratic consequences would be far, far greater than any imaginable outcome of no deal.
Even Corbyn gets this..
They won't - they will find a way of getting us to do it for them. Ref 2 : the deal nobody understands.
The notion of a second referendum, so soon, will be almost as corrosive for public trust.
I personally think its a bad idea, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen. If we are presented a situation (whether it be entirely the case or not) that we are facing a bad deal, with the possibility of an altered 'remain' that is better, then I think it will come around.
And the EU, and our politicians, know that this referendum would be the last time we would ever be asked about membership. They only have to win once.
And in that situation the Brexit side may well advised to decide not to participate - other than spend the campaign running down the opposition and the process.
There will be tax cuts unlike the failures of the last campaign with the dementia tax etc.
The NHS will remain ringfenced. The Laffer curve of course argues the more you cut tax the more revenue you raise in real terms. Tax rises do not always produce more revenue, sometimes the reverse e.g. the 50% top income tax rate under Brown.
Corbyn motivated his base last time and the Tories need to motivate their base next time.
The Laffer curve doesn’t say that at all, is says that for each tax there’s a rate at which revenue is maximised, which may be higher or lower than that which is currently charged. Taxes that are easily avoidable, such as corporation tax are probably too high, whereas taxes difficult to avoid such as property taxes are probably too low.
It says tax which is too high can reduce revenues just the same as having no tax at all.
Of course tax rates that are too high can reduce revenues, the government should seek for each tax to maximise their revenue rather than any other reason.
Supporters of other parties see for example high income tax rates on higher earners as forcing “the rich” to pay “their fair share”, but what it does in practice is encourage them to spend money on accountants or even drive them offshore completely.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
In the vast majority of cases, there's very little to query or audit.
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
What the fuck does the country know is a big bill? A billion, 50 billion? 200 billion? a trillion?
Find me ten people in the High Street who could tell you what our current GDP is and I'll buy you a packet of Bourbon Creams.
No one has any idea. As @Ishmael_Z has said, the govt should be managing expectations and putting about a number that they will come under. Whether that's £60bn coming in at £50bn or £80bn coming in at £60bn.
It's not the country that she has to get the bill past: it's the likes of JRM in her own rder. What then?
Well that is of course the point. IMO she should ask (arguably the only thing that will prevent absolute chaos in 2019) for an extension to A50 by two years. But that would drive her euroloons further into the abyss and they would likely come for her.
But at some point she has to face them down or she will trash the country.
Time for a Corn Law thread?
Please do so.
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
The only way Brexit could do to the Tories what WW1 (or more realistically universal suffrage in 1918) did to the Liberals when Labour replaced them is if the Tories abandoned Brexit and UKIP overtook them as the main party of the right a la Canada 1993.
This is pretty much what an article in Standpoint magazine said this month. The only new party likely is one that arises out of the Brexiteer wing of the Tory party (plus maybe UKIP elements) when they fail to get the hardest exit they dream of.
Indeed but that party could appeal to some working class Labour Leave voters too.
Mr. Nick, if the political class reneged upon it there would be ructions. If that happened without a second referendum or a General Election with the EU at the heart of it, the political earthquake could have alarming and significant consequences indeed.
Which is why the government has to fall, and a second referendum has to be held, and why the strategy of Remain is exactly this.
As is the EU's strategy.
My fear is that should this happen the consequences for democracy and our Country would be far worse than the present very real problems
This government committed to leaving the EU would be better advised to make Brexit, if not a success, at least a tolerable fix that people can live with. Which they are not doing. At all.
It takes two to negotiate and the EU together with many here in the UK are actively trying to derail the process. I do not see how any can government can square the present impasse.
TM is between a rock and a hard place but so would any other PM .
She has made mistakes and is not a people person but for now there is no alternative
ThereDeal outcome would cost the UK.
If the government could admit to what it knows: that the EU has by far the stronger hand, then we could move forward.
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
The country voted to leave the EU and wants the politicians to get on with it and get the best possible outcome. Part of that outcome involves getting a trade deal with the EU. We only get a trade deal if we agree to pay an exit fee. The EU gets to set the exit fee. It's that simple.
Please point to where in the Treaties of the EU there’s any mention of an exit fee?
Not a single one does. But so what? The EU wants one. If we don't pay up we have no hope of a trade deal and the damage done to the economy will be immense. The people across the table have a far stronger hand than we do.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
There is absolutely no evidence the EU is trying to derail the process. The problem is a political one: the UK government cannot agree to the payment the EU wants because it would create serious problems inside the Conservative party and spark intense criticism from the Brexit-backing press. The sum itself is negligible in comparison to what a No Deal outcome would cost the UK.
If the government could admit to what it knows: that the EU has by far the stronger hand, then we could move forward.
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
What the fuck does the country know is a big bill? A billion, 50 billion? 200 billion? a trillion?
Find me ten people in the High Street who could tell you what our current GDP is and I'll buy you a packet of Bourbon Creams.
No one has any idea. As @Ishmael_Z has said, the govt should be managing expectations and putting about a number that they will come under. Whether that's £60bn coming in at £50bn or £80bn coming in at £60bn.
It's not the country that she has to get the bill past: it's the likes of JRM in her own party. Could she face him and that wing down with the support of some on the opposition benches? Yes, but it would destroy her government and it'd still leave several other red line issues unresolved - FoM, the ECJ, expat rights and the Irish border. What then?
Well that is of course the point. IMO she should ask (arguably em down or she will trash the country.
Time for a Corn Law thread?
Please do so.
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
If the Conservatives were to disappear, then right wing voters would simply vote for another right wing party.
Indeed 30 to 40% of the country is right-wing and 30 to 40% left-wing and 20% swing voters who decide elections.
The parties May change but the ideological makeup stays the same.
The country voted to leave the EU and wants the politicians to get on with it and get the best possible outcome. Part of that outcome involves getting a trade deal with the EU. We only get a trade deal if we agree to pay an exit fee. The EU gets to set the exit fee. It's that simple.
It's not that simple, because there is no commitment from the EU to give us a trade deal even if we sign a cheque today for the entire out-with-the-fairies sum they seem to be demanding (which is, let's not forget, something like 5 years' worth of our contribution as a full member, has no rational basis in the treaties, and which is more than the annual defence budget).
That has been the problem all along: they are refusing to have the conversation necessary to unlock any deal, namely what we get in return.
Clearly, there is a 'bad deal' scenario which is massively worse than a 'no deal' scenario, namely one where we do agree to give them megabucks and then the trade deal never actually happens or is paltry.
I really don't know the government can do to resolve this mess. Just agreeing to pay megabucks wouldn't resolve it.
The government could start by deciding what kind of deal it wants.
The country voted to leave the EU and wants the politicians to get on with it and get the best possible outcome. Part of that outcome involves getting a trade deal with the EU. We only get a trade deal if we agree to pay an exit fee. The EU gets to set the exit fee. It's that simple.
It's not that simple, because there is no commitment from the EU to give us a trade deal even if we sign a cheque today for the entire out-with-the-fairies sum they seem to be demanding (which is, let's not forget, something like 5 years' worth of our contribution as a full member, has no rational basis in the treaties, and which is more than the annual defence budget).
That has been the problem all along: they are refusing to have the conversation necessary to unlock any deal, namely what we get in return.
Clearly, there is a 'bad deal' scenario which is massively worse than a 'no deal' scenario, namely one where we do agree to give them megabucks and then the trade deal never actually happens or is paltry.
I really don't know the government can do to resolve this mess. Just agreeing to pay megabucks wouldn't resolve it.
The government could start by deciding what kind of deal it wants.
If the Conservatives were to disappear, then right wing voters would simply vote for another right wing party.
Depends how the party disappears and fractures.
If it is replaced because it isn't very good then yes.
But say it splits into a cultural right wing party and an economically right wing party then the voters might end up voting for multiple right wing parties (and other parties from the centre to the further right)
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
What the fuck does the country know is a big bill? A billion, 50 billion? 200 billion? a trillion?
Find me ten people in the High Street who could tell you what our current GDP is and I'll buy you a packet of Bourbon Creams.
No one has any idea. As @Ishmael_Z has said, the govt should be managing expectations and putting about a number that they will come under. Whether that's £60bn coming in at £50bn or £80bn coming in at £60bn.
It's not the country that she has to get the bill past: it's the likes of JRM in her own rder. What then?
Well that is of course the point. IMO she should ask (arguably the only thing that will prevent absolute chaos in 2019) for an extension to A50 by two years. But that would drive her euroloons further into the abyss and they would likely come for her.
But at some point she has to face them down or she will trash the country.
Time for a Corn Law thread?
Please do so.
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
The only way Brexit could do to the Tories what WW1 (or more realistically universal suffrage in 1918) did to the Liberals when Labour replaced them is if the Tories abandoned Brexit and UKIP overtook them as the main party of the right a la Canada 1993.
This is pretty much what an article in Standpoint magazine said this month. The only new party likely is one that arises out of the Brexiteer wing of the Tory party (plus maybe UKIP elements) when they fail to get the hardest exit they dream of.
Indeed but that party could appeal to some working class Labour Leave voters too.
Indeed. Strong anti-migration, social conservatism etc
If the Conservatives were to disappear, then right wing voters would simply vote for another right wing party.
Depends how the party disappears and fractures.
If it is replaced because it isn't very good then yes.
But say it splits into a cultural right wing party and an economically right wing party then the voters might end up voting for multiple right wing parties (and other parties from the centre to the further right)
As was the case in Canada with the Reform Party and the smaller Progressive Conservatives Party after the PC were trounced in 1993 until the Reform Party effectively took over the PC to create the current Canadian Conservative Party in 2004.
The pay off bill is an issue for the whole Country.
Do you really think the Country will stomach a big bill - TM is more in tune with the electorate when she says she will protect tax payers money, than you give her credit for.
Furthermore the EU are in collusion with some in the UK actively delaying negotiations hoping that by running down the timescale the Country will either meet their demands or the Government will collapse and their dream of the UK staying in the EU is fulfilled
What the fuck does the country know is a big bill? A billion, 50 billion? 200 billion? a trillion?
Find me ten people in the High Street who could tell you what our current GDP is and I'll buy you a packet of Bourbon Creams.
No one has any idea. As @Ishmael_Z has said, the govt should be managing expectations and putting about a number that they will come under. Whether that's £60bn coming in at £50bn or £80bn coming in at £60bn.
It's not the country that she has to get the bill past: it's the likes of JRM in her own rder. What then?
Well that is of course the point. IMO she should ask (arguably the only thing that will prevent absolute chaos in 2019) for an extension to A50 by two years. But that would drive her euroloons further into the abyss and they would likely come for her.
But at some point she has to face them down or she will trash the country.
Time for a Corn Law thread?
Please do so.
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
The only way Brexit could do to the Tories what WW1 (or more realistically universal suffrage in 1918) did to the Liberals when Labour replaced them is if the Tories abandoned Brexit and UKIP overtook them as the main party of the right a la Canada 1993.
This is pretty much what an article in Standpoint magazine said this month. The only new party likely is one that arises out of the Brexiteer wing of the Tory party (plus maybe UKIP elements) when they fail to get the hardest exit they dream of.
Indeed but that party could appeal to some working class Labour Leave voters too.
Indeed. Strong anti-migration, social conservatism etc
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
One thing that HMRC is quite adept at is turning solicitors, businessmen and accountants into unpaid tax collectors, through SDLT, IHT, VAT etc. The consequences of not being honest are potentially very unpleasant, so it makes sense to be honest.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
How much more tax would you end up paying if they did scrutinise them?
My returns are, of course, totally complete in all respects and not a single penny of tax is underpaid. But HMRC does not know that because it has never bothered to check.
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
They could start with the Carers Allowance, which is a disgrace.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
UK govt tax revenues are approx. 700bn. HMRC estimates they miss out on 35bn.
That figure doesn't include profit shifting from companies like Amazon, Starbucks etc. who say all their profits are in Lux etc. Other estimates go as high as 120bn tax gap.
Basically we are missing out on a lot of money. Certainly enough for 350m/week for the NHS.
There will be tax cuts unlike the failures of the last campaign with the dementia tax etc.
The NHS will remain ringfenced. The Laffer curve of course argues the more you cut tax the more revenue you raise in real terms. Tax rises do not always produce more revenue, sometimes the reverse e.g. the 50% top income tax rate under Brown.
Corbyn motivated his base last time and the Tories need to motivate their base next time.
The Laffer curve doesn’t say that at all, is says that for each tax there’s a rate at which revenue is maximised, which may be higher or lower than that which is currently charged. Taxes that are easily avoidable, such as corporation tax are probably too high, whereas taxes difficult to avoid such as property taxes are probably too low.
It says tax which is too high can reduce revenues just the same as having no tax at all.
Of course tax rates that are too high can reduce revenues, the government should seek for each tax to maximise their revenue rather than any other reason.
Supporters of other parties see for example high income tax rates on higher earners as forcing “the rich” to pay “their fair share”, but what it does in practice is encourage them to spend money on accountants or even drive them offshore completely.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
In the vast majority of cases, there's very little to query or audit.
But you could say that about any inspection process - most schools are OK, most companies produce fair accounts, most cars are safe but that does not mean we should stop inspecting, auditing and testing them.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
How much more tax would you end up paying if they did scrutinise them?
My returns are, of course, totally complete in all respects and not a single penny of tax is underpaid. But HMRC does not know that because it has never bothered to check.
How do you know? I think a lot of this is automated now - algorithms scanning for stuff.
Twice in my life I have been queried about tax - once HMRC income tax and once VAT for my business.
Both times, when I asked why, they said that they look for regular patterns and when something doesn't seem to fit a standard pattern - they query. The first was a long time ago, so no IT scanning I suspect, but the VAT was recent, and I suspect a computer was the one that spotted a 'wrong' pattern.
In both cases I was completely in the right and the tax return stayed unchanged.
If the Conservatives were to disappear, then right wing voters would simply vote for another right wing party.
Depends how the party disappears and fractures.
If it is replaced because it isn't very good then yes.
But say it splits into a cultural right wing party and an economically right wing party then the voters might end up voting for multiple right wing parties (and other parties from the centre to the further right)
Isn't that sort of what happened with UKIP and the Tories under Cameron? Happier times.
If the Conservatives were to disappear, then right wing voters would simply vote for another right wing party.
Depends how the party disappears and fractures.
If it is replaced because it isn't very good then yes.
But say it splits into a cultural right wing party and an economically right wing party then the voters might end up voting for multiple right wing parties (and other parties from the centre to the further right)
Weren't we having this exact same argument about the inevitable demise of the Labour Party a few months ago?
The Conservative party has always, always had its old-fashioned, small-c conservative, pro-family, anti-drug, paternalistic wing. And it has always had its free marketeer, libertarian, slash-the-state wing. Somehow the two manage to co-exist peacefully because they know they need to be united to win. The same is true of Labour: Look at how quickly they have lined up behind Corbyn now they think he can win them an election.
The Tories aren't going anywhere. If anything, they are more damaged by folk memories of Thatcher in the North than they are by Brexit, which will be seen as incompetence rather than malice.
The fact that May tried to make inroads into this vote in GE2017 and failed so utterly shows how strong those folk memories are. Get the socially conservative working class on side, the ones who went from UKIP back to Labour - I'm not sure the Tories can win another election without them. It will annoy the libertarian wing of the party no end, but when the other option is splitting the party and ending up with Corbyn, the sensible thing to do would be to wait their turn and await a time the country is more amenable to free market policies.
It's completely the wrong thing to do by the way. A Singapore-style free-market Brexit is the best chance we have of getting out of the whole mess alive. However, it doesn't stand a chance of winning the next GE.
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years.
Secondly, looking after your own family members is presented as the cosy, caring, heart warming option, and by God it isn't. I was very happy to wipe my childrens' arses for the first couple of years of their lives, but I'm buggered if I'm having them doing the same for me when I'm 80. For all our sakes, I don't want that to be their final memory of me.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get my hands on some barbiturates...
My returns are, of course, totally complete in all respects and not a single penny of tax is underpaid. But HMRC does not know that because it has never bothered to check.
Alternatively their risk-assessment systems are spot-on and so they have quite rightly concentrated their efforts on other taxpayers who are less organised or less honest than you are.
I've had a few things queried over the years, although my figures have always been accepted in the end. Mostly the queries were about slightly unusual transactions such as setting off a capital loss against income, which is fair enough. I had one which was bat-shit bonkers, when some particularly stupid tax inspector kept asking me for an interest statement which I'd already sent them, finally threatening to fine me. In the end I sent her another copy of the document I'd already sent her, with a massive felt-tip pen sign saying "READ THIS!", which did the trick.
A second referendum will never be on. Apart from the bitterness, the Leave prospectus will be too easy to write ... "Do you want to submit to blackmail? Do you want to vote for rule by Juncker? Are you a patriotic Brit, or an EU lickspittle - slobber, slobber."
I remember Richard Nabavi et al screaming at me & others that we were "loony" to say a permanent deficit was fine a few years ago....
"Boles said the government should accept that “the age of austerity” is over and that, while said austerity was the right policy when the annual deficit stood at 10% of GDP, but it was “absolutely fine” for it to remain at its current level of around 2.6% indefinitely.
"We should stop trying to cut [the deficit] any further. We should drop our surplus target because the urgent priority now is to get productivity up and to get real wages up....
Many governments run deficits of that sort of level [ie, around 2.6%] year on year. So long as you are spending the money on investment, there is a very good prospect that that will generate a return in the economy that enables you to pay the debt down.""
A reasonable argument - for now. But if you debt is approaching 100% of GDP, what happens when the interest rate a which government can borrow rises above the current eff all ? If you also have a large structural balance of payments deficit, the markets can make those spending calculations impossible in a relatively short space of time.
Government borrowing is essentially a confidence trick as much as it's anything else. Maintaining the confidence of your creditors is not optional.
Well, if the Tories thought they needed some magic to get them out of their current woes...Wiki tells us:
"To pay her way through sixth-form college, Mordaunt became a magician's assistant to Portsmouth magician Will Ayling, once president of The Magic Circle...."
A second referendum will never be on. Apart from the bitterness, the Leave prospectus will be too easy to write ... "Do you want to submit to blackmail? Do you want to vote for rule by Juncker? Are you a patriotic Brit, or an EU lickspittle - slobber, slobber."
Sounds like Hague's 'do you want to live on a diet of Brussels'. Seems like we did.
There will be tax cuts unlike the failures of the last campaign with the dementia tax etc.
The NHS will remain ringfenced. The Laffer curve of course argues the more you cut tax the more revenue you raise in real terms. Tax rises do not always produce more revenue, sometimes the reverse e.g. the 50% top income tax rate under Brown.
Corbyn motivated his base last time and the Tories need to motivate their base next time.
The Laffer curve doesn’t say that at all, is says that for each tax there’s a rate at which revenue is maximised, which may be higher or lower than that which is currently charged. Taxes that are easily avoidable, such as corporation tax are probably too high, whereas taxes difficult to avoid such as property taxes are probably too low.
It says tax which is too high can reduce revenues just the same as having no tax at all.
Of course tax rates that are too high can reduce revenues, the government should seek for each tax to maximise their revenue rather than any other reason.
Supporters of other parties see for example high income tax rates on higher earners as forcing “the rich” to pay “their fair share”, but what it does in practice is encourage them to spend money on accountants or even drive them offshore completely.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
Agree 100%. Fiddle a few quid from the dole and youve got a criminal record or even jailed. Fiddle millions in tax and you're lauded and given a knighthood. I do my tax return and a couple of others as a favour. Never once has there been a query. Touch wood. Speaking to insiders i understand HMRC is just happy to see the tax return arrive and it goes through on the nod.
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years. [snip]
Only if invested at 0%. Even if you only get a 3% return (and I'd have thought you should get better), that'd be £15k a year. Add in pensions and benefits that the person would receive as well and the likelihood is that most of the capital would be comfortably preserved. (How many people who go into a care home due to old age live another 10 years anyway, never mind more?)
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
One thing that HMRC is quite adept at is turning solicitors, businessmen and accountants into unpaid tax collectors, through SDLT, IHT, VAT etc. The consequences of not being honest are potentially very unpleasant, so it makes sense to be honest.
You are quite right in thst all of us eho complete tax returbs are doing HMRC's job, and not just those you mention. My opinion is that the system ecourages people to be dishonest, not necessarily on a big way, but a few quid here and there. Who' going to notice? Certainly not HMRC.
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years. [snip]
Only if invested at 0%. Even if you only get a 3% return (and I'd have thought you should get better), that'd be £15k a year. Add in pensions and benefits that the person would receive as well and the likelihood is that most of the capital would be comfortably preserved. (How many people who go into a care home due to old age live another 10 years anyway, never mind more?)
As I recall, the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
In the vast majority of cases, there's very little to query or audit.
But you could say that about any inspection process - most schools are OK, most companies produce fair accounts, most cars are safe but that does not mean we should stop inspecting, auditing and testing them.
I agree with (another)nick. I've been submitting returns for 10 years with no queries, even though the "profits" section is simply one box to fill in with all calculations leading into it a matter for me to work out. By contrast, when I briefly claimed benefits, filling out the form to report each little translation job sometimes took longer than the work itself, and I felt at the time that I was a mug either for (a) reporting it or (b) doing the work at all (since the effective marginal tax rate was way over 50% for the reasons we discuss with Universal Credit).
The default assumption seems to be that sole traders are honest souls with precise records of all income and expenses, while benefits claimants are dodgy characters who need to be scrutinised at every turn. Requiring a bit more info on profits (at least total income and total expenses) and a bit less info on casual labour (just a total of income from jobs yielding <£50, say) would be fairer and less of a disincentive to work.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
One thing that HMRC is quite adept at is turning solicitors, businessmen and accountants into unpaid tax collectors, through SDLT, IHT, VAT etc. The consequences of not being honest are potentially very unpleasant, so it makes sense to be honest.
You are quite right in thst all of us eho complete tax returbs are doing HMRC's job, and not just those you mention. My opinion is that the system ecourages people to be dishonest, not necessarily on a big way, but a few quid here and there. Who' going to notice? Certainly not HMRC.
I had a query some years back about the interest I had received on my Euro account, which at the time was paying 0.5% pa. Somehow HMRC had got the idea I had a couple of hundred pounds of interest from this account, whereas in reality it was just a few pounds. It took a bit of back and forth correspondence before they accepted their information was wrong. But, since on the tax form you just declare one bulk figure for interest, and I had a range of accounts (and didn't need to tell them what accounts I had anywhere in the return) the fact that they thought there was a discrepancy implies that, that year at least, they did a fair bit of checking on my return. Maybe there's some sort of random sampling going on?
I’ll do a thread on Brexit will do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals.
Brexit could do to the Tories what WWI did to the Liberals, but there has to be a viable party for Tory voters to go to.
In the 1920's the Liberals came under attack from both the Tories and the rapidly emerging Labour Party... At the moment there doesn't seem to be such an external threat to the Tories.
The most likely scenario is that Con lose the election, Jezza takes over and under new leadership the Tories rapidly regroup to take on Corbyn?
Regarding your last sentence, I heard the same in the 90s about regrouping in opposition to take on Blair.
Well I didn't put a time-limit on how long it would take... Just that, IMO, it's most likely the Tories hang together and eventually come back (because they always do)
That said, it's hard to see Jezza having a six year honeymoon like Tony did so I'd be surprised if it took the Tories as long to regroup opposing Jezza as it did opposing Blair.
Johnson has to resign after the Iranian comments today if not he should be fired in disgrace. I am a moderate, fluctuate a bit right and a bit left but really this Government should go and allow another to be formed. Probably the only way to unite the country is a second referendum, the result would have to be respected whatever the result.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and a former school friend who has managed the MP’s multimillion-pound investments are mentioned fleetingly in the Paradise Papers leak.
Rees-Mogg is referred to because of a $680,000 payment he received when the BVI-based investment firm he worked for was bought by a Canadian bank. Rees-Mogg held more than 50,000 shares in the BVI-based Lloyd George Management at the time it was bought by Bank of Montreal in 2011. There is no suggestion he avoided tax on any profit.
So he had shares in a company he worked for...the scandal. And the other stuff is all on record already.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and a former school friend who has managed the MP’s multimillion-pound investments are mentioned fleetingly in the Paradise Papers leak.
Rees-Mogg is referred to because of a $680,000 payment he received when the BVI-based investment firm he worked for was bought by a Canadian bank. Rees-Mogg held more than 50,000 shares in the BVI-based Lloyd George Management at the time it was bought by Bank of Montreal in 2011. There is no suggestion he avoided tax on any profit.
Sometimes in politics, perceptions matter more than the facts.
Probably the only way to unite the country is a second referendum, the result would have to be respected whatever the result.
Er... no!
Let's say REMAIN wins a second referendum... Why should LEAVE voters who won the first referendum "respect" the second when their referendum win wasn't respected?
Piers, it's very easy to think of something worse for Britain than "this embarrassing slow-motion national car-crash". And that is you, Piers, pontificating about what is embarrassing.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and a former school friend who has managed the MP’s multimillion-pound investments are mentioned fleetingly in the Paradise Papers leak.
Rees-Mogg is referred to because of a $680,000 payment he received when the BVI-based investment firm he worked for was bought by a Canadian bank. Rees-Mogg held more than 50,000 shares in the BVI-based Lloyd George Management at the time it was bought by Bank of Montreal in 2011. There is no suggestion he avoided tax on any profit.
Sometimes in politics, perceptions matter more than the facts.
His views on things like abortion are far more damaging. This news is not some jimmy Carr-esque tax dodge.
As I recall, the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
I very seriously doubt that the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
I spent 5 years of my life visiting my mother in care homes. The turnover of residents was very slow, most residents were in there for way longer.
My mother moved care homes once (as her condition deteriorated). This may end up counting as one stay of two years and one stay of three years.
The statistic that needs to be calculated is how long does any individual need residential care.
For dementia sufferers, that is going to be measured in many years. We do know that there are about a million Alzheimers & Parkinsons sufferers in the UK now.
Probably the only way to unite the country is a second referendum, the result would have to be respected whatever the result.
Er... no!
Let's say REMAIN wins a second referendum... Why should LEAVE voters who won the first referendum "respect" the second when their referendum win wasn't respected?
We know in advance they won't - Farage said as much before the first vote.
But the referendum has been respected, A50 has been triggered and the UK is negotiating the detail of an exit deal. If, when they see what the deal means for the country, voters decide that leaving would be a mistake, that is surely better than blindly proceeding to make the mistake regardless.
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years.
Secondly, looking after your own family members is presented as the cosy, caring, heart warming option, and by God it isn't. I was very happy to wipe my childrens' arses for the first couple of years of their lives, but I'm buggered if I'm having them doing the same for me when I'm 80. For all our sakes, I don't want that to be their final memory of me.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get my hands on some barbiturates...
Indeed. To be fair, £500k will go a lot further as they will take into account your current pension income (State plus any company).If you can get to £1500 per month from that, the shortfall, is £2500 (assuming £1000 per week as you say) which means 200 months or the thick end of 17 years.
So...any Remainers who put their money offshore are fair game too now, eh?
Careful with your answer - given that Remain was funded by the monied Establishment and Leave voters, as we are constantly told, are a collective of Britain's pig-shit thick paupers....
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
.
I had a query some years back about the interest I had received on my Euro account, which at the time was paying 0.5% pa. Somehow HMRC had got the idea I had a couple of hundred pounds of interest from this account, whereas in reality it was just a few pounds. It took a bit of back and forth correspondence before they accepted their information was wrong. But, since on the tax form you just declare one bulk figure for interest, and I had a range of accounts (and didn't need to tell them what accounts I had anywhere in the return) the fact that they thought there was a discrepancy implies that, that year at least, they did a fair bit of checking on my return. Maybe there's some sort of random sampling going on?
Many years ago I had a letter querying the interest I was declaring. I called them to confirm it was correct and although I can't remember the exact conversation I was challenged on that without them giving anything away as to why they thought I was telling fibs. Fortunately before this got to far I realised what the issue might be. To achieve a higher return I held funds in my name that belonged to my company. I had contacted HMRC before doing so and they gave me permission provided I had a written agreement with my company to do so and that the interest was declared for Corporation Tax and I didn't make use of the funds personally (the company is 100% owned by me). I provided a copy of the Corporation Tax Inspectors letter and all was ok. It does show they were on the ball though. The amount involved was only in the low thousands.
You have to read it really carefully to find that he didn’t do this to really avoid tax. Nobody would go through setting up and managing a company just to avoid 3.5% of stamp duty / transfer tax.
It is on the future you are restricted to how much of that money you could take out of the country. No idiot given the choice would potentially want to have a load of money locked in another country if you sold your house.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
As I recall, the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
I very seriously doubt that the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
I spent 5 years of my life visiting my mother in care homes. The turnover of residents was very slow, most residents were in there for way longer.
My mother moved care homes once (as her condition deteriorated). This may end up counting as one stay of two years and one stay of three years.
The statistic that needs to be calculated is how long does any individual need residential care.
For dementia sufferers, that is going to be measured in many years. We do know that there are about a million Alzheimers & Parkinsons sufferers in the UK now.
My sister was in a nursing home for 2 and a half years under the Wales NHS contining care scheme before she died at a cost to the Health Board of £96,000 - Yes £96,000 for one person.
Those who promote free care are not being honest. The annual cost is in the tens of billion
So...any Remainers who put their money offshore are fair game too now, eh?
Careful with your answer - given that Remain was funded by the monied Establishment and Leave voters, as we are constantly told, are a collective of Britain's pig-shit thick paupers....
I'm all in favour of tax minimisation strategies.
Just to be clear, the vast majority of Leave voters are a collective of Britain's pig-shit thick paupers, not all of them.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
HMRC are well advised to study the bell curve of tax returns and focus on getting the highest returns for their efforts.
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
.
I had a query some years back about the interest I had received on my Euro account, which at the time was paying 0.5% pa. Somehow HMRC had got the idea I had a couple of hundred pounds of interest from this account, whereas in reality it was just a few pounds. It took a bit of back and forth correspondence before they accepted their information was wrong. But, since on the tax form you just declare one bulk figure for interest, and I had a range of accounts (and didn't need to tell them what accounts I had anywhere in the return) the fact that they thought there was a discrepancy implies that, that year at least, they did a fair bit of checking on my return. Maybe there's some sort of random sampling going on?
Many years ago I had a letter querying the interest I was declaring. I called them to confirm it was correct and although I can't remember the exact conversation I was challenged on that without them giving anything away as to why they thought I was telling fibs. Fortunately before this got to far I realised what the issue might be. To achieve a higher return I held funds in my name that belonged to my company. I had contacted HMRC before doing so and they gave me permission provided I had a written agreement with my company to do so and that the interest was declared for Corporation Tax and I didn't make use of the funds personally (the company is 100% owned by me). I provided a copy of the Corporation Tax Inspectors letter and all was ok. It does show they were on the ball though. The amount involved was only in the low thousands.
As usual when I try and manipulate the quotes through lack of space I cockup and attribute my comment to someone else. Sorry IanB2
Rory the tory passed over again....the head of Isis is more like to get a top job with the government than Rory!
Rory has an appearance problem. It's unfair but there it is. Bluntly, he looks like Tim Nice-but-dim. If he is serious about climbing the greasy pole he must follow Mrs Thatcher's lead and engage professional advice on appearance and posture.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years. [snip]
Only if invested at 0%. Even if you only get a 3% return (and I'd have thought you should get better), that'd be £15k a year. Add in pensions and benefits that the person would receive as well and the likelihood is that most of the capital would be comfortably preserved. (How many people who go into a care home due to old age live another 10 years anyway, never mind more?)
As I recall, the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
If HMRC scrutinised tax returns as thoroughly and critically as the DWP scrutinises benefit claims the tax take would increase massively. The vast majority of tax returns are never queried or audited - I do two returns each year, my personal one and a company one. In more than 20 years HMRC has never queried anything.
HMRC staff numbers have fallen dramatically. Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
Yes and it is the epitome of personal responsibility to make savings of assets to pass on to your children without having the state taking most of them. If you have £500k of assets to suggest the state should take 90% of it is outrageous and on any case may leave some of the children of the deceased more reliant on the state and welfare and taxpayers thsn would be the case through inheritance of family assets.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
They could start with the Carers Allowance, which is a disgrace.
£62.70p a week and a credit for national insurance towards a state pension.My daughter had to give up work to look after her severely disabled child.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years. [snip]
Only if invested at 0%. Even if you only get a 3% return (and I'd have thought you should get better), that'd be £15k a year. Add in pensions and benefits that the person would receive as well and the likelihood is that most of the capital would be comfortably preserved. (How many people who go into a care home due to old age live another 10 years anyway, never mind more?)
As I recall, the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
That's a fair point - though if the average stay is as short as you say (it was longer in my grandmother's case: about 3 years IICR?), it won't have much impact either way. There might well be a case for supporting people / families who do end up in long-term care e.g. supporting payments after 5 years.
Full time care should be funded by social insurance as I have already said and ad is done in the Netherlands and Japan.
I agree about social insurance but that's not where we are currently. I do think where dementia care is involved there needs to be a lot more thought about how that is funded but we come back to the central point.
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
Care homes cost about £1000 a week. That's all of 500k used up in 10 years. [snip]
Only if invested at 0%. Even if you only get a 3% return (and I'd have thought you should get better), that'd be £15k a year. Add in pensions and benefits that the person would receive as well and the likelihood is that most of the capital would be comfortably preserved. (How many people who go into a care home due to old age live another 10 years anyway, never mind more?)
As I recall, the average stay in residential care is less than a year.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
Comments
http://www.publico.es/politica/independentistas-repetirian-mayoria-absoluta-21-d-escano.html
On current polls it will be another hung parliament with Corbyn propped up by the SNP and LDs in a minority government, the weakest government since WW2.
And the EU, and our politicians, know that this referendum would be the last time we would ever be asked about membership. They only have to win once.
Edit - more like an extrapolation based on polls.
Companies House Breaches team has 4 people in it to monitor 3.8m companies.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/11/26/the-scandal-of-uk-company-regulation/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/14/companies-off-hook-for-16bn-tax
Hence why they brought in the dividend tax - must have wiped ,000s off the list of those who do tax returns - then that idiot Hammond cut it back to £2000pa - clown.
The parties May change but the ideological makeup stays the same.
If it is replaced because it isn't very good then yes.
But say it splits into a cultural right wing party and an economically right wing party then the voters might end up voting for multiple right wing parties (and other parties from the centre to the further right)
The £500k of assets of which you speak are primarily going to be in property or perhaps stocks and shares. The family has a choice - do they take on the mantle of carers with all that flows from it in which case the £500k asset can either go towards supporting the cost of that care at home or can be used as an inheritance or, where there is no practical prospect of at home care, do we allow the individual an extremely comfortable final few years in a well-run residential care facility which is paid for out of assets ?
It's a choice, in the case of dementia, a forced choice and that's why I think in those instances more thought needs to be given to supporting the family.
Should not a family-supporting Conservative Party be actively promoting the notion of families as carers, adapting employment, planning and taxation policies to encourage people as far as possible to loom after their own family members rather than going into the residential social care arena ?
HMRC estimates they miss out on 35bn.
That figure doesn't include profit shifting from companies like Amazon, Starbucks etc. who say all their profits are in Lux etc.
Other estimates go as high as 120bn tax gap.
Basically we are missing out on a lot of money.
Certainly enough for 350m/week for the NHS.
Twice in my life I have been queried about tax - once HMRC income tax and once VAT for my business.
Both times, when I asked why, they said that they look for regular patterns and when something doesn't seem to fit a standard pattern - they query. The first was a long time ago, so no IT scanning I suspect, but the VAT was recent, and I suspect a computer was the one that spotted a 'wrong' pattern.
In both cases I was completely in the right and the tax return stayed unchanged.
The Conservative party has always, always had its old-fashioned, small-c conservative, pro-family, anti-drug, paternalistic wing. And it has always had its free marketeer, libertarian, slash-the-state wing. Somehow the two manage to co-exist peacefully because they know they need to be united to win. The same is true of Labour: Look at how quickly they have lined up behind Corbyn now they think he can win them an election.
The Tories aren't going anywhere. If anything, they are more damaged by folk memories of Thatcher in the North than they are by Brexit, which will be seen as incompetence rather than malice.
The fact that May tried to make inroads into this vote in GE2017 and failed so utterly shows how strong those folk memories are. Get the socially conservative working class on side, the ones who went from UKIP back to Labour - I'm not sure the Tories can win another election without them. It will annoy the libertarian wing of the party no end, but when the other option is splitting the party and ending up with Corbyn, the sensible thing to do would be to wait their turn and await a time the country is more amenable to free market policies.
It's completely the wrong thing to do by the way. A Singapore-style free-market Brexit is the best chance we have of getting out of the whole mess alive. However, it doesn't stand a chance of winning the next GE.
Secondly, looking after your own family members is presented as the cosy, caring, heart warming option, and by God it isn't. I was very happy to wipe my childrens' arses for the first couple of years of their lives, but I'm buggered if I'm having them doing the same for me when I'm 80. For all our sakes, I don't want that to be their final memory of me.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get my hands on some barbiturates...
I've had a few things queried over the years, although my figures have always been accepted in the end. Mostly the queries were about slightly unusual transactions such as setting off a capital loss against income, which is fair enough. I had one which was bat-shit bonkers, when some particularly stupid tax inspector kept asking me for an interest statement which I'd already sent them, finally threatening to fine me. In the end I sent her another copy of the document I'd already sent her, with a massive felt-tip pen sign saying "READ THIS!", which did the trick.
But if you debt is approaching 100% of GDP, what happens when the interest rate a which government can borrow rises above the current eff all ? If you also have a large structural balance of payments deficit, the markets can make those spending calculations impossible in a relatively short space of time.
Government borrowing is essentially a confidence trick as much as it's anything else. Maintaining the confidence of your creditors is not optional.
"To pay her way through sixth-form college, Mordaunt became a magician's assistant to Portsmouth magician Will Ayling, once president of The Magic Circle...."
Seems like we did.
But your calcs should be done on real interest rates, since care fees rise every year; you'll be lucky to get a safe return of 3% above inflation.
From Arron Banks to Jacob Rees-Mogg: The Brexiters who put their money offshore
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/09/brexiters-put-money-offshore-tax-haven?CMP=share_btn_tw
The default assumption seems to be that sole traders are honest souls with precise records of all income and expenses, while benefits claimants are dodgy characters who need to be scrutinised at every turn. Requiring a bit more info on profits (at least total income and total expenses) and a bit less info on casual labour (just a total of income from jobs yielding <£50, say) would be fairer and less of a disincentive to work.
That said, it's hard to see Jezza having a six year honeymoon like Tony did so I'd be surprised if it took the Tories as long to regroup opposing Jezza as it did opposing Blair.
I am a moderate, fluctuate a bit right and a bit left but really this Government should go and allow another to be formed. Probably the only way to unite the country is a second referendum, the result would have to be respected whatever the result.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and a former school friend who has managed the MP’s multimillion-pound investments are mentioned fleetingly in the Paradise Papers leak.
Rees-Mogg is referred to because of a $680,000 payment he received when the BVI-based investment firm he worked for was bought by a Canadian bank. Rees-Mogg held more than 50,000 shares in the BVI-based Lloyd George Management at the time it was bought by Bank of Montreal in 2011. There is no suggestion he avoided tax on any profit.
So he had shares in a company he worked for...the scandal. And the other stuff is all on record already.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-41833878
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/928618836374511617
Let's say REMAIN wins a second referendum... Why should LEAVE voters who won the first referendum "respect" the second when their referendum win wasn't respected?
I spent 5 years of my life visiting my mother in care homes. The turnover of residents was very slow, most residents were in there for way longer.
My mother moved care homes once (as her condition deteriorated). This may end up counting as one stay of two years and one stay of three years.
The statistic that needs to be calculated is how long does any individual need residential care.
For dementia sufferers, that is going to be measured in many years. We do know that there are about a million Alzheimers & Parkinsons sufferers in the UK now.
Mr. Price, cheers for that tip. Got on at 81 with Ladbrokes (67, but boosted).
But the referendum has been respected, A50 has been triggered and the UK is negotiating the detail of an exit deal. If, when they see what the deal means for the country, voters decide that leaving would be a mistake, that is surely better than blindly proceeding to make the mistake regardless.
So if someone's 80, that takes them to 97.
Careful with your answer - given that Remain was funded by the monied Establishment and Leave voters, as we are constantly told, are a collective of Britain's pig-shit thick paupers....
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/09/revealed-scheme-gary-lineker-tax-barbados-home?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
You have to read it really carefully to find that he didn’t do this to really avoid tax. Nobody would go through setting up and managing a company just to avoid 3.5% of stamp duty / transfer tax.
It is on the future you are restricted to how much of that money you could take out of the country. No idiot given the choice would potentially want to have a load of money locked in another country if you sold your house.
Doesn't matter which ones you use - they will all show that HMRC staff numbers have fallen significantly since 2010.
And the HMRC tax gap estimate is 35bn...
https://ion.icaew.com/taxfaculty/b/weblog/posts/mind-the-tax-gap-2016
So I think hiring some extra people to collect some of that cash would be a good idea.
Those who promote free care are not being honest. The annual cost is in the tens of billion
Just to be clear, the vast majority of Leave voters are a collective of Britain's pig-shit thick paupers, not all of them.
NEW THREAD
I think that runs at much more than normal inflation.
This reckons more than double:
https://www.ft.com/content/21b808ca-9cc0-11e5-8ce1-f6219b685d74
But overall the plan is to cut numbers by 1/3 by 2021.
Still it's not as though Brexit might mean more work for the civil service or anything...