[Sloper]

Compliance with the law on theft or drugs is based on a varied degree of compliance and consent which is unbalanced and contingent on risk / benefit.

The laws of physics cannot be broked, human laws can. (paraphrased, see rawls on rules etc)

The people at the financial margins both top and bottom are where the varied compliance is to be found it's us suckers in the middle that are hog tied and abused.

[slackline]

Thats touching on another alternative to increasing VAT.....legalise drugs and tax them.  But that would be far too sensible, got to maintain the party line, keep the middle classes happy, waste money fighting a "war" that can't be won, fill up the jails, ignore the scientific evidence on the relative risks/harms, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, its just plain lazy to say "Oh well, these rules we've made are complex, so lets not rock the boat despite obvious problems with them."

[slackline]

The people at the financial margins both top and bottom are where the varied compliance is to be found it's us suckers in the middle that are hog tied and abused.

That may be true, but the government are more than happy to spend large amounts of money on advertising campaigns and chasing and prosecuting benefit fraud (i.e. those at the bottom of the financial margin), yet do dick all at the other end of the spectrum where people are avoiding tax.

[Jaspersharpe]

There's already provision for earning money in other countries, paying the correct tax there and getting the correct tax credit here under the double taxation agreements in place. It's actually a simple and pretty fair system which works for both individuals and companies.

This is a completely different issue to offshore tax havens / networks of dodgy offshore companies etc which are a fucking con for very rich individuals and large companies to avoid paying what they should.

[slackline]

Good article on tax dodging

[Jaspersharpe]

Pressure mounting on senior HMRC officials:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jan/19/national-audit-office-investigate-multinational-tax?CMP=twt_fd

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b171fbd4-2343-11e0-b6a3-00144feab49a,s01=1.html#axzz1BUTwlzNy

[slackline]

Seems its not just VAT where people will be worse off.

Got a letter from the HMRC telling me what my tax allowance will be (which now includes not only pay, but "Casual Payments"???), but close inspection of the numbers on the letter indicate that the point at which you jump from 20% to 40% tax has been reduced from £37400 to £35000.  Thankfully this won't affect me but I'm sure it will affect quite a few across the country, although its by no means the biggest income band (this page has some crude and outdated numbers).

[Johnny Brown]

...and still no change in mileage rates since 2002/3. Thank god fuel prices haven't gone up in that period, or I'd be fucked.

[Jaspersharpe]

Slackers - The personal allowance has been raised by £1000 though so this is actually better for lower income workers and is only a reduction of £1400 on the basic rate band in real terms (not £2400). If you aren't a higher rate tax payer you will actually be about £200 a year better off.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget-updates/autumn-tax/tiin2525.pdf

Whatever "casual payments" are, they've always been taxable as (despite widely held misconceptions) there's no such thing as "casual labour" when it comes to employment income.

JB - Yeah, the mileage rate is a disgrace (although still often better for the self employed than having a "business vehicle").

[slackline]

Slackers - The personal allowance has been raised by £1000 though so this is actually better for lower income workers and is only a reduction of £1400 on the basic rate band in real terms (not £2400). If you aren't a higher rate tax payer you will actually be about £200 a year better off.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget-updates/autumn-tax/tiin2525.pdf

Whatever "casual payments" are, they've always been taxable as (despite widely held misconceptions) there's no such thing as "casual labour" when it comes to employment income.

It appears so, but what I find confusing was that I had two letters indicating that my tax allowance from employment at work is a fraction over ~£6300 and then any "casual payments" from work had a tax-free allowance of roughly ~£1300 (don't have the letters with me to check exact amounts, but there were definitely two letters with two different tax codes, but they totaled to the ~£7475 in the document you linked).

This seems a shift away from the previous year where I had one tax allowance.

At my work I don't get "Casual payments" for anything, I get paid by my employers, so based on the two letters it suggests to me that my tax free allowance will be the ~£6300 and not this higher total of £7475 because I don't get any "Casual payments" on which such an allowance can be applied!  All sounds designed to confuse people and make things more complicated to me and I shall be investigating further with Payroll exactly what this means.

  The petrol mileage sucks big time, its a fucking joke.

P.S. Good figures in the document you linked, the reduction bumps an estimated 400,000 from the 20% band to the 40% although it claims that 280,000 of these are better off, cheers for linking to it.

[Jaspersharpe]

Whatever shite they've sent you (they're good at that!) your personal allowance will be £7475. Everyone's is. This may then be adjusted for age / benefits in kind / expenses etc etc etc but this "casual payments" thing makes no sense whatsoever. You're right to check it out.

[slackline]

Whatever shite they've sent you (they're good at that!) your personal allowance will be £7475. Everyone's is. This may then be adjusted for age / benefits in kind / expenses etc etc etc but this "casual payments" thing makes no sense whatsoever. You're right to check it out.

Sorted this, cock-up at the HMRC office.

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimate 750000 affected by new higher tax rate banding

[Jaspersharpe]

A step in the right direction but when the VERY rich still often pay nothing it's just minor fiddling really.