L
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- Thread starter lame plumber
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Over in Ireland, d minister for finance was saying about when d country would get back to full employment. He said that'd never would cos some on d dole are allergic to work.
He got loads of grief over it, but fair play to him he didn't apologise.
There's still people coming to Ireland from elsewhere picking up jobs.
It's too cushy on d dole here. I say if ye worked and lost work ye should get loadsa help. Otherwise yer dole should be cut. I think it's about €200 dole for a single lad in Ireland a week. That doesn't include rent allowance.
To b honest, I've worked every day of me life, but sometimes I feel work is for mugs
He got loads of grief over it, but fair play to him he didn't apologise.
There's still people coming to Ireland from elsewhere picking up jobs.
It's too cushy on d dole here. I say if ye worked and lost work ye should get loadsa help. Otherwise yer dole should be cut. I think it's about €200 dole for a single lad in Ireland a week. That doesn't include rent allowance.
To b honest, I've worked every day of me life, but sometimes I feel work is for mugs
Work is not for mugs. Work is for peeps who take pride in themselves and want to make something of their lives. As for politicians not taking action against big companies that operate tax avoidance schemes, there is a good reason for that. Imagine if some big company says to the government: 'If you insist we pay this tax, our shareholders dividends will be down by 90%. We will just go ahead and close 300 stores leading to 5,000 staff being laid off work'.
Politician realises that these 5,000 laid off staff will have to claim some sort of benefit from the government. Unemployment figures will soar. That, is what no politician wants to be able to explain to it's people why they are out of work. Infact, governments have been known to pay ''investors'' to take on a supposedly failing company just so staff can be in employment. Eventually, the said investors strip the assets making as much money as they can for themselves and run off.
I agree with ye village. Hav worked all my life. Wouldn't change it but ye must get a pain in your rocks paying all d taxes going while some sit on their hands and it all comes to them
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Gray0689
G
Gray0689
G
Gray0689
As much as I thought this conversation was dead and buried weeks ago, I agree with voivid.
Companies like Starbucks avoid paying tax by over charging themselves for royalties in the UK business from countries with lower tax systems. The result is they make a loss on paper in the UK, but massive profits in other regions with a lower tax bill.
That's just wrong and sees us out of pocket by millions of pounds.
There's so much of it going on it is unreal.
Companies like Starbucks avoid paying tax by over charging themselves for royalties in the UK business from countries with lower tax systems. The result is they make a loss on paper in the UK, but massive profits in other regions with a lower tax bill.
That's just wrong and sees us out of pocket by millions of pounds.
There's so much of it going on it is unreal.
L
lame plumber
M
Masood
The fact is that what they are doing is actually legal. What we need is for the government to close those loopholes. As for the companies' threats to leave the UK, well we need to call their bluff. They would not disappear, as they make money here and making money is the reason companies exist...
The true cost of people that are being described as "poor" that are on unemployment or disability benefits, etc, are surely much higher than imagined.
Okay, some are on a couple of thousand in a year of extra money, but then there's the other extreme of families getting tens of thousands on benefits.
Got to remember that benefits can include free dental treatment, one off payments for essential items, free legal costs (often massive!) etc. Many of these real costs are invisible in government figures.
It would be no exaggeration for one individual to cost the UK a few hundred thousand in a year. Drugs, booze, laziness, violence, other criminal behaviour such as theft, vandalism, child issues - (custody, contact orders, social worker involvement, courts, barristers, judges, solicitors letters, etc), police costs. Take your pick.
Multiply all these "poor" people's real benefits up & it will amount to several of the big companies supposed tax dodges.
Okay, some are on a couple of thousand in a year of extra money, but then there's the other extreme of families getting tens of thousands on benefits.
Got to remember that benefits can include free dental treatment, one off payments for essential items, free legal costs (often massive!) etc. Many of these real costs are invisible in government figures.
It would be no exaggeration for one individual to cost the UK a few hundred thousand in a year. Drugs, booze, laziness, violence, other criminal behaviour such as theft, vandalism, child issues - (custody, contact orders, social worker involvement, courts, barristers, judges, solicitors letters, etc), police costs. Take your pick.
Multiply all these "poor" people's real benefits up & it will amount to several of the big companies supposed tax dodges.
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nope.....think you are wrong. All our business is electronically billed and paid for . So think you might be wrong ....again 😉
G
Gray0689
Absolutely agree. But then when the prime minister himself benefits from off shore accounts what incentive is there for change?
Both ends of the social scale are an equal burden on the average joe, the rich and the lazy.
Maybe the solution is a nationwide working mans (and women) strike and see the country grind to a halt?
Agreed. The likes of Amazon and Starbucks should be hit for more tax. The threat of leaving the UK is not really a problem in my eyes as they are usually the companies that employ people on minimum wage and zero hour contracts. They also take a lot of money from smaller companies (I know it is only business) but if they were to leave people would still shop on the internet but use a company that may treat their employees like human beings, and coffee shops wouldn't vanish forever little chains will start opening up.
R
Ray Stafford
A few points.
1) Tackling tax evasion and reforming the benefit system are not mutually exclusive. We have HMRC working on the former and the DWP working on the latter. We should not defend abusers of one system by seeking to divert attention to abusers of the other.
2) The overall scale of illegal tax evasion is wildly overstated by many commentators. [DLMURL="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364009/4382_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_2014_IW_v4B_accessible_20141014.pdf"]HMRC figures[/DLMURL] produced to the same rules under both colour governments show the total tax gap (the difference between what they think is genuinely due, and what is actually collected) steady at about £34billion plus or minus £3billion for every year since fiscal year 2005/6. As a proportion of the total, it has fallen slightly from around 8.5% to about 6.8%.
3) Of that total, HMRC estimate that large businesses are responsible for £9.3bn, substantially less than the £15bn attributed to small and medium sized businesses. The balance is made up of criminal activity and individuals.
4) A powerful force in reducing corporate tax avoidance (thats the legal kind) is not aggressive enforcement, but the steady reduction in UK corporation tax rates. Most corporate tax schemes do not seek to avoid tax altogether, but to move it from a high tax jurisdiction to a low tax jurisdiction. Back in 2010, the UK corporation tax was 28% - one of the highest of the developed countries. (The US is nominally high, but so riddled with exemptions that the effective rate is much lower). As the UK rate has been progressively lowered to 20% (now one of the lowest), the incentive to create tax avoidance schemes has reduced, and indeed may even have reversed, so multinationals may be moving profits into the UK to take advantage of the lower rate. As corporate structures move at least a year (and often 2 or 3 years) behind the tax changes, we may not yet have seen the full scale of the benefits of this. However, it is entirely possible (even probable) that in the long run, the total tax take from the lower rate may exceed the take from the previous higher rate - bearing in mind the incentives to avoid the latter.
5) The directors of companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to take all legal measures to maximise long term shareholder value. This includes taking professional accountancy advice to minimise tax liabilities, so long as this is within the law.
This last point resonates particularly strongly with me, as the director of a £multi-million company. Unlike many companies, my shareholders are not wealthy individuals, hedge-funds or any of the other political bogey-men. My shareholders are all either current employees, or recently retired employees of the business. And I can absolutely assure you that the lad in the warehouse who sold his motorbike to buy £1000 worth of shares, or the girl in the accounts team paying for her shares out of salary deductions, no more wants to share dividend income or capital gain with the chancellor than anyone else. Which is why they hold their shares in a government approved scheme which reduces their tax liability.
Does that make them part of the problem? Or part of the solution?
🙂
1) Tackling tax evasion and reforming the benefit system are not mutually exclusive. We have HMRC working on the former and the DWP working on the latter. We should not defend abusers of one system by seeking to divert attention to abusers of the other.
2) The overall scale of illegal tax evasion is wildly overstated by many commentators. [DLMURL="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364009/4382_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_2014_IW_v4B_accessible_20141014.pdf"]HMRC figures[/DLMURL] produced to the same rules under both colour governments show the total tax gap (the difference between what they think is genuinely due, and what is actually collected) steady at about £34billion plus or minus £3billion for every year since fiscal year 2005/6. As a proportion of the total, it has fallen slightly from around 8.5% to about 6.8%.
3) Of that total, HMRC estimate that large businesses are responsible for £9.3bn, substantially less than the £15bn attributed to small and medium sized businesses. The balance is made up of criminal activity and individuals.
4) A powerful force in reducing corporate tax avoidance (thats the legal kind) is not aggressive enforcement, but the steady reduction in UK corporation tax rates. Most corporate tax schemes do not seek to avoid tax altogether, but to move it from a high tax jurisdiction to a low tax jurisdiction. Back in 2010, the UK corporation tax was 28% - one of the highest of the developed countries. (The US is nominally high, but so riddled with exemptions that the effective rate is much lower). As the UK rate has been progressively lowered to 20% (now one of the lowest), the incentive to create tax avoidance schemes has reduced, and indeed may even have reversed, so multinationals may be moving profits into the UK to take advantage of the lower rate. As corporate structures move at least a year (and often 2 or 3 years) behind the tax changes, we may not yet have seen the full scale of the benefits of this. However, it is entirely possible (even probable) that in the long run, the total tax take from the lower rate may exceed the take from the previous higher rate - bearing in mind the incentives to avoid the latter.
5) The directors of companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to take all legal measures to maximise long term shareholder value. This includes taking professional accountancy advice to minimise tax liabilities, so long as this is within the law.
This last point resonates particularly strongly with me, as the director of a £multi-million company. Unlike many companies, my shareholders are not wealthy individuals, hedge-funds or any of the other political bogey-men. My shareholders are all either current employees, or recently retired employees of the business. And I can absolutely assure you that the lad in the warehouse who sold his motorbike to buy £1000 worth of shares, or the girl in the accounts team paying for her shares out of salary deductions, no more wants to share dividend income or capital gain with the chancellor than anyone else. Which is why they hold their shares in a government approved scheme which reduces their tax liability.
Does that make them part of the problem? Or part of the solution?
🙂
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