What's Taxing The Inland Robbery

[hyperD]

Flat tax rate - discuss...

Not quite so peaky as the current system?

Tories might use it in their next electioneering...

[ratewhore]

Flat tax rate - discuss...

[mcquiggd]

Why dont they get one of the big consultancies to set up an expensive 'self certification' system for claiming the dole and sickness benefit via the web? After all, if its good enough for submitting a tax return ....


Come to think of it, I reckon they already are, and its being written in Dundee.... (thats a place, not a .Net language).

http://forums.contractoruk.com/thread4007.html

[threaded]

I think these estimators may have solved the NHS crisis here and not quite realised it!

If these disability claimants are fit enough to return to work then the Doctors who are certifying them as unfit for work are clearly wrong and they have been wrong millions of times!

What other things have these Doctors been getting wrong? Eh?

One wonders: say someone turns up at A&E leaking blood from a stump of what used to be an arm. I bet the estimators would say they don't need surgery, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and prosthetics, no they need a job! So they could close all the A&Es, in fact all the hospitals and replace all of them with job centres. In fact the land currently used by all these hospitals could be reused to build houses for poor nurses and hard working families. Fantastic!

We are saved, the New Lie and their estimates are just so ...

[hyperD]

Thanks ASB. Noticed also from the Times:

Mr Blunkett's strongly-worded intervention has raised concern that he is attempting to deflect attention from the contents of the MPs' report.

Estimates suggest that two-thirds of the 2.6 million claimants - which accounts for 8 per cent of the workforce - are fit enough to return to work.

Over the past four years, as unemployment levels have fallen, the number of people claiming some sort of disability benefit has continued to rise.

[ASB]

Does anyone know what %age of total tax return is that? It's an astronomical figure. We could fight about 15 wars with that amount of cash!

Total Spending in 2006/7 is about 600 bln (bit less) so it represent about 17%.

Of course not all the 600bln is actually collected, there is a borrowing requirement but that isn't hugh (at least not in comparison to 600bln).

[threaded]

Gordo, by making the tax system more complex and by adding reversive scams such as IR35 and S660a has created a situation in which very few actually know how much tax they should or will pay.

I would suggest that the UK taxation system is now NP complete, i.e. completely non-deterministic.

These numbers you present and comments such as rounding to the nearest 500m are but indicators of this.

The worst part of this is the families receiving benefits who have been overpaid and are now suffering under the effects of a claw-back. To me that is beyond being wrong, but comes under the heading 'evil'.

[Rebecca Loos]

true
wonder why people don't believe it when they're being told the IR is incompetent!

[hyperD]

(from the Torygraph)

Income Tax

• 3.8m taxpayers paying the wrong amount of tax

• £575m of PAYE not collected, £295m unrefunded

• £9.6billion owed to Revenue for 2004-05 tax year - 40pc outstanding for more than 12 months

National Insurance

• £1.24billion in unpaid NIC for 2004-05 - £616m unreclaimable

• £283m written off due to "doubts about the reliability of the records"

• Remaining £333m written off because it is time-barred

• Revenue racing to collect £71m of NIC before it is time-barred in March

Tax Credits

• 1.9m families overpaid by £2.2billion - half relates to 283,000 families overpaid by £2,000-plus

• £123m of overpayments written off for 2004- 05, provision for further £961m of "doubtful debts"

• £7.9m overpayments due to software problems in 2004-05

• £80m of overpayments to 88,000 households in the past two tax years - biggest overpayment is £20,000

Nice link from BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4328936.stm

Overall benefits spending runs at £109bn a year.

Does anyone know what %age of total tax return is that? It's an astronomical figure. We could fight about 15 wars with that amount of cash!