I checked their numbers and their claim that 4 months had a total decrease of........18k in a total increase of 192000 from july 24 to june 25.........is true
Totally agree Apart from the fact that as we have seen that does not work! They've setup rules to "tax the rich" which are actually hurting the poor instead. They have pushed their 1.5m homes aspect but are nowhere near delivering any of it. They shouldn't need to repair public service that they are already paying "maintenance contracts" (PFI on! That's paying twice I agree Its not the "foreigner's" fault that the government has lied and lied about policies and stuff for a couple of decades leaving them as victims to be scapegoated for rich people and policy maker's arrogance, greed and lies.
The fall out has been since the market crash. This was started in "the good times" a decade earlier. It is what falsely gave us "the good times"
Nope. they should all have been strung up and kicked out when the expenses scandal broke. They should have been done over for any serious offences in position. They weren't. Raynor has been caught not because of how bad her crime is but because of her years of making any molehill into a mountain. Glass houses.
But she was made an example of. Which is progress. If you stand up in the house and state facts, and those facts are either lies or you are ill advised, you are no better than Raynor.
Then they are all out based on that definition of lying. There is not one politician in there that has not lied in the house! Every Prime Minister does it every week at PMQs to the Westminster bubble audience! Yvette Balls has done it constantly on every TV appearance for 20 years+ She is a serial liar!
The same week as claiming that kind of dishonesty should make you lose your job…! Like you said, glass houses.
There are lies and there are big lies. That's the game. If everything was analaysed properly to find exact truths they would all be out. Its that simple. And on tax laws they are now trying to go after Farage for "his home" in Clacton.........which his missus bought and its in her name. They just cannot see the law is an ass but it the law. Farage also gets his pay for his GB News and TV appearances to his company so pays corp tax and not full PAYE on it however what they miss is that if he draws any out he will pay tax on that as well so it evens out sort of. Obviously not as much which is why all these high paid media and celebs work for their own 1 employee companies which pay them. However for all the talk over the years Labour have not sought to make this illegal which is probably due to most celebs being left wing and lots of their own tribe taking advantage of this setup as well! Media and Celebrity is overwhelmingly "left wing." Tax is a rabbithole setup by the rich for the rich and wannabe rich. They are all at it, even the ones that will stand up in the house and talk the talk all the while they have in their past made vast pots of money from taking advantage of the very things they pretend to be against! If Labour really wanted to go after tax avoidance they could quite easily go after these "private companies" that the sole business practice is charging someone for the services of their only employee.....but they won't because their own side and supporters use that setup much more.
Rare Football-Politics crossover. Can we agree that if someone turns up to St Mary's in one of those Reform football shirts then they should be openly mocked and thrown out of the Stadium, simply for being cringe? (but actually really they shouldn't be allowed in because it will cause fighting).
Agreed. It's only a matter of time though sadly. Saw a Saints 'stop the boats' sticker towards the end of last season and a little part of me died inside.
Dipping my toe into this thread is like learning to swim in a piranha tank but that is a fairly simplistic statement that does more harm than good. I operated (and still have) a company like that from my time as a software contractor and it wasn't for tax avoidance purposes. I paid tax via the company in corporation tax, I paid VAT via the company on things I bought to run the company, I charged VAT too but i operated on very little outgoings as I didn't need to buy supplies etc so it was negligable benefit to me), I paid tax on anything I took out of the business to me personally. A really rough comparison on an "income" of 100K (makes the figures easier) - I exclude VAT as in most case what I charged wasn't offset by what I bought and it went straight into my VAT payments. 1. From that 100K I pay my expenses (business banking fees, accountant, filing charges, regus workplace etc) of about 3.5K, PAYE my tax free allowance of 12,570, I then pay the low rate of corporation tax (19%) on the remainder which leaves a company profit of just under 68K - I than pay 33% tax on that to take it out as a dividend leaving me with with a "take home" of 58K (remainder plus PAYE) - of course there is more detail in what is paid out around having pensions, etc but that's the gist of it. 2. If I earned 100K PAYE after deduction my take home would be 68.5K (using an online calculator) but this is not taking into account pensions etc so depending on your contribution level you could be shaving a few thousand of this figure. My reasons for it were not to make more money, it was that I wanted to have more say in what types of work I was doing and for who and when I worked. Also the vast majority of companies that wanted my services just couldn't pay individuals for short term contract work without that individual becoming employees of the company and am I going to become an employee of that company for 4-8 works of work and then move to become an employee elsewhere again and again with all the tax admin of constant job changes. Especially if I was fulfilling one small aspect of a much larger project as a sub contractor for a larger development firm in parallel to other work. Covid increased this by the fact we were forced to work remotely and I could work for companies that previously I wouldn't have entertained due to location (and those companies could attract talent they wouldn't have been able to before). Covid actually started to put pressure on the contract rates as surely working from home meant I had less expenses and could afford to be paid less (and that still hasn't recovered in some sections). They recently (and poorly) attempted to make this more stringent with implied employment rules so in a lot of cases there is almost no difference in being employed or contracted for purposes of how much tax is paid for a large portion of those using the system. Do I think HMRC make just about everything more complex than it needs to be, definitely, and I truly think that the system is not set up to be fair to the majority of people in comparison to the top minority (a tax of wealth would benefit everyone if done right). But to label a currently legal method of operation as en-masse "tax avoidance" is not a true representation of the situation for the vast amount of people doing it. I do allow for the fact that in any system there will be people using the system for illegal gains but that is what the enforcement elements of the tax service are there for - to ensure that the current law is applied correctly and punish those that don't pay what they owe correctly. Please be gentle in your responses (I am still a politics thread newbie)....
I'm retired living in the Netherland but used a similar approach to yours for contract/project hire in process engineering. My then Mrs worked at home as design drafter while I was office or site based later moving to overseas assignments. Getting international tax planning advice was essential and the savings made more than covered the fees. There's plenty of free advice from the bloke in the pub who usually started with "what you want to do is". It's 40 years or more since we had a visit by a VAT man who actually found we'd missed some things we could claim for. We kept our books in good order which was appreciated by the inspector.
I lived in Hilversum for a year (moved the family out there too) as I was working in Amsterdam Zuid for a while. The family enjoyed it and miss parts of it still, though I was jumping between the london and the amsterdam offices every week so I didn't really get to "live" there much as my week saw a lot of airport, train and office spaces... I use a local accountancy firm to do my company and personal tax returns (which is easy for her and there's only ever a few dozen transactions a year to deal with and they are repetitive) but it's worth it to ensure I never do something wrong as the lag between the money coming in and the tax being due can be more than a year or so but I have yet to be in situation where she's saved me more than she costs - but she doesn't cost much. I liked contracting before covid for the fact that I got to work all over the place (as I was willing to travel and stay over places if I could charge that over my day rate). Remote working not so much as my home office is not so glamorous but now I've co-founded a start up which is a whole different thing.
I did state early on that attacking on the sole premise of these people only paying 25% Corp tax ignores that they will have to pay tax on drawings so it sort of evens it out. I know most sole traders genuinely run their businesses in this sort of way however media folks basically just roll up to present a program and leave. Its not really a business at all. But I was early pointing out that the 25% instead of full PAYE is not the whole story of tax for this kind of setup I have been a sole trader in the past. so that is why I did put the caveat in there. However my product was not me turning up for a contracted 6 months a year paid to be me (or the version of me that they/I want to present me as.)
The problem I have with your position on this is that you are overlapping the different business constructs (sole trader, limited company, etc) to form your argument and they aren't operated the same way and the tax burden and mechanisms of tax differ. For example in the case of a sole trader the business and the person are generally taxed as 1 entity so your income is what the business earns and in the case of a limited company the company and the owners of it are taxed as distinct entities as they are not connected the same way. The media types you are discussing will not be sole traders - they will be owners of a limited company that's business is the provision of media services such as providing hosts or guests for tv shows / talk shows / dinner speakers, etc. The company can provide the same services to multiple customers at the same time. Customers pay the company for the work and not the person doing the work. The fact that the company owner can also be an employee of the company is irrelevant to the customer / company relationship. the company pays tax on the income it gets from it's customers, the employee pays tax on the salary paid to it from the company and the owners of the company pay tax on the drawings they take from the profits made by the business. This doesn't change whether there is 1 employee or 100. what people have issue with is that in the case of a 1 person company the roles overlap and there is a situation where the sliders on what is PAYE and what is dividend can be adjusted to the best outcome for the individual but it's legal and provided it's all done by the book and until such time the law changes HMRC don't have issue with it. obviously this is a generalisation and each companies tax affairs will be unique to it's own situation.
Agreed. I know a couple of Crypto traders that set "themselves" up as Ltd companies rather than be paying tax on each trade.
Tax would still be due on the profits of the trades so you need to be careful of your wording as you imply that by creating a ltd company they avoided paying tax and that wouldn't be the case
