Why is the government entitled to a slice of our wages?

crinkleshoes · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:42

Werewolf said:
What about the road network, the armed forces, the health service?
Or the prisons and courts that then deal with the suspects arrested by the police?

There are a huge number of things that require a collective payment to make possible, most of which you as an individual will hopefully never need the use of, but the ones you do need would cost you a fortune to pay privately for.

road is council, bit of normal tax for major networks... there is also road tax
health service is national insurance...

You do realise there are more successful countries with lower taxes... right?

30-50% is madness...

ultralaser · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:46

Moses said:
Would that do anything? Obviously some people would choose to avoid using their services, but are we really going to see a significant impact in terms of the likes of Uber/Amazon/Google losing out on customers just because they get a badge saying they avoid tax?

Potentially yes. I think the problem with companies like Amazon/Google/Uber is that we find it hard to translate big numbers into what the impact is. I think the government need to do a better job of humanizing the cost of tax evasion / avoidance. If we said (and it's probably not far from reality) that the tax evasion techniques those three use are the equivalent to 10's of new hospitals, 100's of new schools etc it might actually make a difference.

LabR@t · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:47

Wait until we are totally on digital money. No hiding it from the government.

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:48

Don't equate evasion and avoidance!

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:49

LabR@t said:
Wait until we are totally on digital money. No hiding it from the government.

Keep your eyes on Sweden. I believe they're the closest to a cashless society.

ultralaser · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:50

Vonhelmet said:
Don't equate evasion and avoidance!

I can equate them if I want. It's a free country.

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:54

ultralaser said:
I can equate them if I want. It's a free country.

Oh, ok. I'll equate 1 with 2 then.

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:55

Moses said:
Hmrc say they’re both wrong, with tax planning being the term for the okay way of not paying tax . TBH I don’t think it’d be a bad way of doing it... having evasion as illegal, avoidance as bending of the rules/overly aggressive exploitation of the rules/etc, then planning as working within the framework as intended/using products as they’re designed to be used/etc.

The line between planning and avoidance is fairly hard to draw.

ultralaser · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:56

Vonhelmet said:
Oh, ok. I'll equate 1 with 2 then.

Having spent some time with one of the companies that may have been mentioned in this thread, it's basically the same, with one side trying to claim they are on the right side of the law. Intent is the same.

LabR@t · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:58

Vonhelmet said:
Keep your eyes on Sweden. I believe they're the closest to a cashless society.

HMRC will take tax directly from your account.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...bad-for-tax-cheats-privacy-poor-quicktake-q-a

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 20:58

ultralaser said:
Having spent some time with one of the companies that may have been mentioned in this thread, it's basically the same, with one side trying to claim they are on the right side of the law. Intent is the same.

Intent to avoid tax? The entire thread is about being unhappy at paying tax. Apparently that's ok for individuals but not corporations?

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:01

LabR@t said:
HMRC will take tax directly from your account.

Maybe. It depends on whether they think that's more reliable than PAYE as it currently exists for most income tax. They're moving towards more "digital" tax for other taxpayers, but it remains to be seen how that plays out in the next couple of years. I'm not holding my breath.

stewski · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:01

Moses said:
Would that do anything? Obviously some people would choose to avoid using their services, but are we really going to see a significant impact in terms of the likes of Uber/Amazon/Google losing out on customers just because they get a badge saying they avoid tax? People already know they aggressively avoid tax/it’s basically public knowledge reported by the media all the time.

‘Gee whizz, my local book shop pays all its tax? Cool. Oh wait, amazon will cost me half as much...’

Well then Corporations won't mind the visible badge, it's already public knowledge and won't change anything

ultralaser · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:02

Vonhelmet said:
Intent to avoid tax? The entire thread is about being unhappy at paying tax. Apparently that's ok for individuals but not corporations?

It's not necessarily about being unhappy about tax, more about why we actually pay it and how it got started.

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:03

Moses said:
They’d still be a massive grey area, but it’d be smaller than we currently have. Obviously it wouldn’t be perfect, given how complicated tax is.

It's in dire need of simplification. Unfortunately most of the ideas that come out of the office of tax simplification are ridiculous for one reason or another. Given the ever expanding tax legislation they are apparently rubbish at their job.

stewski · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:04

ultralaser said:
Potentially yes. I think the problem with companies like Amazon/Google/Uber is that we find it hard to translate big numbers into what the impact is. I think the government need to do a better job of humanizing the cost of tax evasion / avoidance. If we said (and it's probably not far from reality) that the tax evasion techniques those three use are the equivalent to 10's of new hospitals, 100's of new schools etc it might actually make a difference.

In the case of Amazon public knowledge and PR due to the issue did affect behaviour, why play whack them one at a time?

Vonhelmet · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:05

stewski said:
Well then Corporations won't mind the visible badge, it's already public knowledge and won't change anything

It's not public knowledge, though. The tax note in a set of accounts barely tells you a thing, and it's very frustrating reading stories in the news from people with seemingly no tax knowledge attempting to draw conclusions from a dozen figures. Unless you can see the actual tax computations - which you can't, as they're confidential - you really don't know what's going on in a company tax-wise.

stewski · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:07

Vonhelmet said:
It's not public knowledge, though. The tax note in a set of accounts barely tells you a thing, and it's very frustrating reading stories in the news from people with seemingly no tax knowledge attempting to draw conclusions from a dozen figures. Unless you can see the actual tax computations - which you can't, as they're confidential - you really don't know what's going on in a company.

Indeed, it was not I claiming that.
But the tax office already assess the practices of avoidance in corporations and could make a reasonable grading, which could easily be made very public(as was in Amazons case)!

stewski · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:13

Take the Amazon Google cases, both were in HMRC sites and both are directly competitive.
I suspect one outcome/change was seen as better than the others (whilst neither may be wholly satisfactory) a grading of those two would likely push them towards tax 'competition' on the pair, a win for us and they could likely cover their own costs in PR, the maximum is only 19%

adolf hamster · 14 Oct 2017 at 21:29

Vonhelmet said:
Intent to avoid tax? The entire thread is about being unhappy at paying tax. Apparently that's ok for individuals but not corporations?

i think people's issue is that it's annoying that they as the "little guy" are paying their dues, which are a not insignificant slice of cash that they could use to great effect in their own lives don't like seeing news stories (no matter how much factual basis there may or may not be behind them) of massive corporations with massive profits seemingly not paying their way, especially when these few organisations make enough money that the proper (by which i mean morally proper rather than legally proper) taxes would be not only a benefit to the nation but also of little detriment to the organisation.

if these organisations feel they are doing "enough" in terms of their tax contributions then they should surely hold no fear at publishing these figures to reassure people that these news stories stating "company x doesn't pay tax" are indeed fake news and maintain their reputations.

otherwise people are going to be rightly annoyed that they're paying their tax but the government still doesn't have enough money to make improvements while the CEO's of google have £ signs spinning round their eyeballs.