BN66 - Round 2 (Court of Appeal)

[moira under the stairs]

common sense at last

http://order-order.com/2010/03/31/to...geeks-rejoice/

... and a ripple of applause was heard

[normalbloke]

http://order-order.com/2010/03/31/to...geeks-rejoice/

... and a ripple of applause was heard

This link appears in the above blog. Its either a good scam - the date puzzles me - or it should be for tomorrow! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/p...break-law.html

[RockTheBoat]

01236 785202 CTD dept. - voicemail, cheers hmrc!

I make that 40 000 001 calls unanswered

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Irony

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/elec...ax-reform.html

Perhaps it would be in the interests of all the ir35 scheme promoters if Labour actually got back in.

[KiwiGuy]

he he he

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...don-Brown.html

[BolshieBastard]

Anyone had recent problems receiving CTD's ?

I paid by chaps and sent the letter off on the 24th of February and still not had the CTD. However I received a self assessment statement saying I'd over paid xx,xxx (the amount of the CTD I made).

Is this likely to be backlog / resource related or a balls up ?

There's a phone number on the SA statement and also I notice a phone number back in this thread for the CTD dept, not sure who I should be calling.

any advice welcome.

Thanks in advance.

I've seen your later post about the voice mail.

Yep, been there! I made my payment and it took about 6 weeks before I finally got the certificate. Yours will turn up. Eventually.

When I phoned, I got the answerphone treatment. either they dont want to answer the phone or they are always in the boozer eating a deep fried mars bar with their pint of 'heavy.'

Not only that, the answerphone doesnt confirm you're through to HMRC so the lazy twats still give poor customer service. For all I knew, I could be leaving a message on some old granny's phone in darkest cumbernauld!

Did you remember to withold your number?

I eventually got my CTD but then another dept in hmrc cumbernauls wrote to my bank, quoted incorrect details and said they didnt know what the payment was for! My bank had to forward the letter to me!

How's that for incompetency on your part you nosey hmrc **** ers reading this forum and, an insight into how efficient the private sector are in sending your totally balls up letter on to me?

Why dont you make sure you do even the simplest of tasks correctly like someone's name right?

[portseven]

Who will hold this mob to account?

I keep on looking for a good oppotunity to pose a question to someone from one of the parties when they are on a phone-in radio show or something similar, and ask how what they are going to do about holding HMRC to account and how retrospective taxation can possibly be a good thing.

[TykeMerc]

Isn't there a complaints team/department of 5k staff that's specifically there for when you get poor service from a Government Dept? I could have sworn I saw one mentioned on the news a while back.

CTD handling should be done competently (ok, you can stop laughing I know I'm talking about HMRC here) and having a voicemail system that at least lets you know you're talking to HMRC isn't that much to expect.

[Tax_shouldnt_be_taxing]

"Fair Share" and why you would want to minimise your tax

http://www.uktaxcalculators.co.uk/

Use this to enter what your earnings would be via MontP and see how the tax which HMRC claim is due. Input the numbers for the last 8 years and you find that "fair share" doesn't mean much to us.

Enter your net as gross then click on the link in red about what the Government spends your tax on. Enter your income for the last 8 years and you find something extraordinary:

Nearly all the tax would have gone on "Pensions" and "Healthcare" followed by "Welfare". If you pay for private education then it leaves "Defence" and "Other Spending" as the big tax users with "interest paid to the national debt" next. Now when you consider that your Council Tax covers local "Protection" & "Transport" you have to wonder what is "fair" about giving all that tax up for things that you don't benefit from directly.

Defense - Yep
Protection - Yep
Transport - Hmmm
Other Spending - Maybe

But the rest??? I have private medical, private pensions. I don't use Welfare and never will. Locally I pay my share for transport and protection and I pay for private education. So that would leave nearly all the tax going to:

Pensions
Healthcare
Welfare
National Debt
Defense

Only the latter is credible as a benefit to my family. I'm not sure what "fair share" and "Social Policy" mean. But from the stats, it doesn't look like anything that helps me or my family out too much given that we are making ourselves as independent from the State as possible.

On balance then, it would mean that being fair should result in a tax rate of:

25%


Anyone?

[perfectlblue]

http://www.uktaxcalculators.co.uk/

Use this to enter what your earnings would be via MontP and see how the tax which HMRC claim is due. Input the numbers for the last 8 years and you find that "fair share" doesn't mean much to us.

Enter your net as gross then click on the link in red about what the Government spends your tax on. Enter your income for the last 8 years and you find something extraordinary:

Nearly all the tax would have gone on "Pensions" and "Healthcare" followed by "Welfare". If you pay for private education then it leaves "Defence" and "Other Spending" as the big tax users with "interest paid to the national debt" next. Now when you consider that your Council Tax covers local "Protection" & "Transport" you have to wonder what is "fair" about giving all that tax up for things that you don't benefit from directly.

Defense - Yep
Protection - Yep
Transport - Hmmm
Other Spending - Maybe

But the rest??? I have private medical, private pensions. I don't use Welfare and never will. Locally I pay my share for transport and protection and I pay for private education. So that would leave nearly all the tax going to:

Pensions
Healthcare
Welfare
National Debt
Defense

Only the latter is credible as a benefit to my family. I'm not sure what "fair share" and "Social Policy" mean. But from the stats, it doesn't look like anything that helps me or my family out too much given that we are making ourselves as independent from the State as possible.

On balance then, it would mean that being fair should result in a tax rate of:

25%


Anyone?

Here's a view to consider.

What you get is the peace of mind that those not as fortunate (or indeed hardworking) as yourself won't be breaking into your garage and stealing all of your stuff. They won't do this because they are being financially supported by the state and distracted by Jeremy Kyle.

You could say they're being bribed by the state not to get jealous of your success and take your beamer for a joyride.

Take that away and you'll have the American situation where you can have lots of nice stuff, but need to live here to avoid someone climbing in through your kitchen window and thieving your toaster.

Reducing income inequality (however it's achieved) benefits the rich and poor alike. Above very low levels of average income ($12,000), life expectancy (as an example) doesn't increase much as average income increases - only with lower average income inequality does it increase. Hence why we have double the infant mortality rate of Japan, despite having a higher average income

The same is true for almost all social problems - drugs/obesity/imprisonment/violence etc. See Finland, Japan (which has no welfare state to speak of and little in the way of redistributive taxes, but low income inequality 'at source'), Sweden (high taxes, big welfare state, healthier/happier population) etc. (source)

Bear in mind that 'reduced inequality' doesn't mean equality - it means that the best paid 10% make maybe 6 times that of the bottom 10% (e.g. Sweden), as opposed to 14 times (the UK) (source). So there is still an incentive to work harder, it's just not as dramatically skewed, and doesn't bring with it the same social problems.

Just a thought (and way off the main topic).

Incidentally, since I haven't posted here before, I should say that I deplore the use of retrospective legislation as a revenue-raising exercise. Retrospection may have limited use (e.g. to prevent windfall payouts as in Padmore), but not as a way to "claw back" tax which was not legally due before the legislation was passed.