Off Topic Political Debate

Absolutely no. If you want to kill Brtain do all the above, that is just pure madness. Why should a government be allowed to disproportionately tax, these are the policies of King John!!!!

 

Yes I know we've had and will always have a national debt as we borrow against future growth to stimulate the economy and enable a high quality of life. The issue is that it seems to have gotten out of control through a combination of increased spending and the recession which resulted in it being a higher than sustainable proportion of GDP. Corporation tax take as a percentage will go down in times of low growth if employment is increasing as it has been it means more income tax for a given GDP (ie we become less efficient), its also a sign that the state sector is disproportionately large. Tax avoidance is legal and a result of many weak governments not pulling the strings tight Biggest offenders are sole traders and small Ltd companies who can avoid income tax by paying small salaries and dividends with massive tax savings, all legal if a little immoral when the PAYE burden is so heavy. Corporations such as my own had sufficient accumulated losses to offset tax in the UK for many years to come but still chose to move tax residence to Switzerland with as you state a large number of intercompany costs to put the revenues in the right box. This is I feel very wrong and indeed stupid in our case as the only beneficiaries are the accounting firms.

 

50s - good Tory government with decent spending / tax regime. 60s Ok till the debt did go out of control and Wilson had to devalue - Labour economics.

One word - Thatcher. Payment to EU is purely political

 

Tax tax tax - change the record. Find the right combination of tax and spend. Stop giving money to every bleeding heart cause. Welfare is for the real needy and real poor not those in "relative poverty" Stop trying to solve the world's problems at the cost of UK taxpayers. Stop giving money to people to have children. Stop calling people who wreck their own marriages (if they even got married) single parents. Stop the idea that the collective - ie the state - can spend your money better than you can. Focus on providing good free education for all. Make the NHS concentrate on illness and not boob jobs and other unnecessary things, increase disease prevention, focus on mental health, focus on pensioners with no other income, stop EU bureaucrats wasting money.
There are many good things the state can provide but it has to know it's limits and stop there

 

Thankfully nobody with these crazy views will be anywhere near power in the UK. The quickest way to kill an economy, clearly you do not understand economics.

 

It is the small traders in the UK that are keeping the unemployment numbers down. The government have already set about reducing the benefits of paying by dividend whilst also increasing the amount of red tape to deal with. It is imperative to continue to encourage entrepreneurship so it remains worthwhile taking personal financial risks. One of the successes of our country is the ease in which it is possible to start a business with very little bureaucracy.

 

There's a difference between setting up a small business and being a self employed consultant for tax reasons though. This is a massive loophole where companies employ "consultants" rather than staff for 2 benefits 1) the company can fire without cost 2) the consultant pays about 1/5 the tax he would if he were on payroll.

 

My second daughter has just become a consultant setting up quite large deals in the NHS. Many benefits are not as lucrative as they were for tax purposes especially use of cars.

There are strict rules on so called consultants, including having to work for more than one company. Consultants have no holiday pay, sick pay etc and no work security so having a small advantage on tax is justifiable. The tax payable between PAYE and dividends is much much closer than your quoted plus will be closer still from 2016.

 

Not in the oil industry!

 

From next year somebody on £100k dividends will pay £25,500 tax instead of £20,233 this tax year. Obviously the biggest saving for somebody being paid mainly by dividends is not being liable for NI. I'm sure the chancellor has more reform in his sights on this one!!

 

diddums... 25k is still half of a PAYE bill....and these dividends are only paid against nett profits after the accountants weave their magic wand, you know the game!!!!

 

My heart bleeds!

 

I can assure you that accountants acting for consultants, small and medium sized businesses do not have the ability to save much tax. I've just read a BBC headline report about banks not paying any corporation tax. On reading further nearly all of them had set losses from previous years against recent profits. All perfectly reasonable.

My company uses Grant Thornton one of the larger accountancy firms and as the former FD I can vouch for the absence of any funny business. I believe GT were involved with a bit of a scandal at a high level with a couple of senior partners threatened with jail so provincial offices are dead keen to be seen to be whiter than white.

What happens with multinationals is obviously very different when they can cross charge for internal services between countries.

Again you have exaggerated the difference between PAYE and dividends. On a £100k PAYE salary (2015) they would pay £29,403 tax plus £5,271 NI.

Year ending April 2016 paid as dividends £ 20,233. (£25,500 for year ending April 2017)

A very small difference.

 

One of the biggest revenue losses is that some (most?) of us pay cash to tradesmen to avoid VAT or obtain a cheaper price.

Anyone like to own up?

 

When everyone goes on about big business avoiding taxes they usually omit to mention this area. I would not like to think of how much income tax and VAT are avoided in this way - as you say is anyone owning up? There is as much cheating by those on benefits as there is by small tradesmen as there is by householders as there is by big business as there is by bankers. To suggest one sector of society is somehow different is naive

 

However it is worth noting that small traders not paying a full share of tax enables a higher level of spending at the bottom end, helping to stimulate the economy. In my opinion it would be foolish to focus on sole traders and small businesses for the raising of tax revenue, when looking at tax avoidance. I believe Jeremy Corbyn had going after sole traders and small businesses as one of his economic policies within his campaign material for the labour leadership. In my opinion it's a ridiculous strategy.

 

During a recent visit to my dying father in law in Watford General I spoke to one of the nurses who told me most of them were now employed by agencies rather than directly employed.

Surely this cannot be cost effective for the NHS? There must be some way to reduce costs in this area. I can see the need for agencies but not supplying the majority of staff.

 

I don't totally disagree - but people ought to pay the tax as set rather than evade / avoid it. Small businesses though are vital to the economy and shouldnot be hit excessively. Arsenal though should be taxed out of existence and their money given to Spurs who need it more

 

The NHS seems to have several areas like this were there seems unnecessary waste of resources. As an example I have several friends who went into NHS admin jobs on starting wages of £10+ an hour with no prior experience after they left school. When compared to entry level jobs of the same type within the private sector this seems ridiculous. The individual amount being paid not being the issue, but rather the difference to the private sector.