Today, UCATT estimates over 50% of those working in the industry are falsely self-employed. The CIS Scheme is the main facilitator of false self-employment. It allows companies to deduct tax at source and avoid employing workers directly.
Hmm, OK, tax is deducted at source is it? SDo HMRC definitely gets its cut.
The Murph comments:
No wonder we have a tax gap.
Eh? Tax being deducted at source is a contributor to the tax gap?
What?
This is also good:
UCATT’s report The Great Payroll Scandal estimates that false self-employment is costing the Exchequer £1.9 billion per annum. As well as the impact that this has on individual workers, this is money that needs to be collected to give construction spending a shot in the arm and support jobs and apprentices. This is money that should be used to help rebuild schools, roads and hospitals. That’s why we must stamp this out.
Assume that there is tax being dodged (NI I assume).
Murphy\’s conclusion is that the way to revitalise construction is to make it more expensive to employ construction workers.
Err?
Murphy and I are pretty much never going to agree.
His philosophy seems to be that if I want to buy, say, a doctor for an hour, I can’t afford it.
But if I give him the doctor’s fee plus his cut for the bureaucracy bit, it’s free!
And, bugger it, I forgot to mention that when Murphy negotiates my appointment for three weeks next Thursday hence, he’s so stupid that the doctor doubles the fee and halves the consultation time.
I thought that the whole object of most construction workers was that they were entirely legitimately self-employed. Moving from site to site as their particular specialization is needed and from builder to builder (because they generally want to stay in a region)?
Site agents, foremen and similar, who stay with a project from start to end, and the quantity surveyors and possibly the architects are PAYE employees of the firm.
I can understand the union getting upset – if you work for yourself, you actually look for any value-add the union provides and measure that against the fees, rather than it being a sunk cost of the employment. It gives them fewer members to bully the employers with, as well as less income. But that’s nothing to do with taxation.
The Murph has just retweeted a link to this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/19/when-privitisation-gp-practices-wrong
One of the comments below: “I am shocked that private companies are running NHS GP surgeries for profit. I did not know. I don’t think most people do know. It really is no exaggeration that the tories are privatising the NHS bit by bit”
So people are genuinely ignorant that GPs’ surgeries are and always have been private for-profit companies
He may also be talking about employers avoiding taxes on overtime pay.
Over here there is a big fight over who is really *self-employed* vice being a de-facto hourly worker.
An hourly worker by law gets more money per hour worked over 40 hours and other things have to be provided (breaks, un-employment insurance for example) while a “self-employed” is allowed to take care of those things himself.
Outside of construction its been been a big point of contention for those “stick up for the little man” types (ie the people who like to get in the way of people making a living) in regards to whether strippers are employees or contractors at the clubs they work at.
@ Flatcap Army
I am banned from Murphy’s log for pointing out too many of his mistakes (and objecting to his gross and actionable libels) but you may be able to point out that the two companies mentioned by the Guardian didn’t make any profits – they incurred multi-million pound losses.
GP surgeries being private is nothing new, it increased a lot under Labour such that I’ve not seen an NHS employed GP for 20 years.
And people say private employed health service doesn’t work as well? Its what they’ve had for over a decade but haven’t noticed.
The surgery I use, most of the directors are GPs, think they may have a better idea of whats needed in the surgery than any manager in the NHS trust or minister.
John 77 – if you can be bothered just create another username and fake email. His blog isnt sophisticated enough to ban via IP address.