So, as far as I can see, all the usual suspects are telling people to sign a petition to get a tax dodging bill promised.
Also, as far as I can see, no one has actually published the report it is all based upon.
So anyone signing has absolutely no fucking idea what they’re signing up to.
Well done chaps, well done.
I’ve asked ActionAid if they can publish the policy document they refer to in their FAQs. If they respond I’ll let you know.
I suppose that signing “in the dark” is akin to the old Soviet Union activity of joining any queue that you run into, regardless.
The great man says “I admit I would not have written the demands like that: maybe these campaigners are more media savvy than me.”
Looks like Ritchie’s client base don’t want or need him any more. Oh dear.
Come on, Tim, you know how this works.
You were brought up in a way of life that made you go to mass every Sunday and eat alchemous bread which had become the body of Christ. What report was that based on?
(I won’t accept ‘The New Testament.)
To be fair, the document is up now. Lots of wooly stuff about making laws ‘tougher’ but some specifics about withdrawing various reliefs which “will bring in £X” tax.
Which is of course bollocks.
Reliefs change behaviour. Withdraw the relief and the behaviour will change again. It’s like the constant clamour to get rid of the non-dom rules so we can get lots of tax out of rich arabs and Russians living here but with money off-shore. No we won’t get tax out of them. Why are they here in the first place? Because we don’t tax their off-shore income. Will they stay here if we do tax it? Of course they won’t. They’ll bugger off to Switzerland or anywhere else that won’t tax them.
Jeez.
Funniest thing in the policy paper is an admission at footnoate 7 that
“There is not a scientific definition of a “fair share” of tax”
Really? No scientist has defined ‘fair’? What the fuck are we paying scientists for if they can’t define fair?
http://kentlyonsdev2.com/tax-dodge/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/15.01.26-Tax-Dodging-Bill-policy-briefing.pdf
Policy doc here.
And note that according to the campaign, ‘tax dodging’ includes:
“Using tax incentives, that are provided for in law, but which are
not proven to provide the economic or social benefits
that would justify the loss of tax revenue.”
So that companies fully in compliance with the letter and spirit of the law can be accused of tax dodging if this campaign thinks the tax saved by the companies ought to be collected and spent on what they think it should be spent on instead.
If I contribute into a private pension, and get tax relief, but some fanatics think it should be spent instead on free limos for African dictators, am I a tax dodger?
“Using tax incentives, that are provided for in law, but which are not proven to provide the economic or social benefits that would justify the loss of tax revenue.”
But they have already admitted there is no “scientific definition” of a “fair share”, so what ‘proof’ is this going to be?
Crossing a couple of threads here but if I use vouchers to save on my non-food supermarket shopping – does this mean that because I’m paying less VAT that I am a filthy neo-liberal tax avoider to be punished under this proposed legislation?
They could have saved a lot of paper by just saying”How dare you think that you have any rights to any money you earn! We, your betters and oh-so-clever superior beings will decide how it should be spent! Hand it over, you filthy peasant”
All these years of extolling tax dodging and the social engineering involved in creating so many sole traders, white van men and SME’s who find it so much easier to avoid tax than the public sector who cannot escape it, and now the right wing blowhards are faced with a structural deficit because they’ve destroyed the tax base .
“White van men?” Are you Emily Thornberry under a pseudonym?
Removing “charitable status” from political campaign groups masquerading as charities might raise a few bob.
Reed: Whatever leftist fantasy shite you choose to declaim the present shower of corporate socialist slugs have no more love for the free market than a decayed old soviet coprolite such as yourself.
The tax base eroded?–they are still stealing 450-500 thousand million off the people of these islands each and every fucking year. That still not enough for you Trotsky? Its not not enough for them cos they are borrowing another 100 thousand million and still have a 100 thousand million deficit.
The public sector don’t make any money so they pay NO tax –sure the CS etc have money come out of their wages but is just paper shuffling–the scum of the state pay it out to the hacks with one hand and take it back with the other–net result zero.
The “public sector” (as that is commonly understood) actually pays the sort of taxes these people are whittering on about?
No, it does not. The pamphlet only mentions “corporation tax”, “corporate income tax”, the Substantial Shareholdings Exemption (which is a corporation tax break) and the Diverted Profits Tax (a version of a corporate income tax.) So nothing about VAT, Employers’ NI etc which the public sector does ‘pay’ (arguments about incidence not withstanding.)
Reed, you colossal prick.
Firstly, most of the private sector is on PAYE, too.
Secondly, no-one in the public sector earns diddly squat without the private sector – though that way has been tried, a few times. In your beloved USSR they had to build walls to keep people from fleeing the socialist nirvana, and execute or imprison a few to encourage obedience. In Venezuela, they haven;t even got enough bog roll. Think of that – nothing to wipe your mouth with.
Thirdly, most people don’t actually mind paying a bit of tax – it’s things like working people in (say) Pembrokeshire paying for a Porsche for the twat who organises the bin collections that sticks in the craw, a bit.
http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/county/11751907.__9_000_to_settle_former_Pembrokeshire_County_Council_chief_executive_s_Porsche_lease/?ref=rss
@DBC Reed – It’s a constant cry-baby whine from you lefties that everyone else is ‘getting away with it’ and it’s not fair.
Everyone else is avoiding tax, quaffing champagne, lounging around in swimming pools and having lots of sex. and you’re not and it’s not fair.
So you hope desperately that it’ll all go wrong, that somehow all the people enjoying things you don’t get to enjoy will go bankrupt and lose the lot and that’ll somehow make you feel better.
Sorry mate, it just won’t happen. You’ll carry on having a miserable unfufilled life, sat around expecting the state to do everything for you whilst those with more get and and go get up and get on.
But if it makes you feel better, my pool is outdoors and although it’s heated, it’s too expensive to use in the winter so I only use in May-September.
People like you are the perfect embodiment of the typical left wing existence. Born crying, live complaining and die disappointed.
Dear me ,that didn’t go very well.May I point out that I have form on here for extolling the virtues of land value tax, which taxes capital gains people don’t earn by their own efforts, while denigrating income tax? In that I am very similar to our host Mr Worstall and free-market tax reformers like Mark Wadsworth. If the right-wing blowhards had adopted the latter’s carefully costed LVT scheme to replace the existing tax regime I would not be complaining.But denigrating tax collection per se is a nonsense.There must always be Pigouvian taxes and LVT by discouraging land price inflation is first among that number.
@AC I presume your effort is not a parody? As a champagne socialist, I have not lacked female company. I sympathise with your having a pool you can’t use for over half the year. I have exactly the same problem with my cabin cruiser.
“Using
tax incentivesfeed in tariffs, that are provided for in law, but which are not proven to provide the economic or social benefits that would justify theloss of tax revenueeffect on the cost of energy at the point of consumption.”I dunno, with a little work I can live with it. Retroactive, I presume?
Yes, that was pretty obvious.
You didn’t make the slightest attempt to answer any of the questions?
Of course you may. 😉
Cabin Cruiser?
Was it confiscated from some Cuban trying to make his escape to Miami?
@ DBC Reed
So Gordon Brown is a right wing blowhard now?
We live and learn!
Certainly he did a lot to destroy the tax base – manufacturing employment declined more and faster than during Mrs Thatcher’s role in office when we got rid of horrendous levels of overmanning in natioonalised industries and his treatment of North Sea Oil reduced oill production by 51% and gas production by 31% (and arguably single0-handedly increased the Brent Oil price to $100) – but most of the cause of the structural defdicit abour Alastair Darling (also a Labour politician so not normally to be described as right-wing) was his wasteful spending, a lot of which was a blatant attempt to buy votes for a corrupt Labour government.
Every right winger has a right to feel insulted.
about which Alastair Darling (…) complained
Andrew C
Thanks – got to page 4 and it was the usual combination of non-sequiturs,logical fallacies, breaches of international law and special interest pleading masquerading as concern for the poor…. Absolutely appalling and I’m being generous. Any charity signing this in receipt of ANY taxpayers money from the UK or EU needs it removed as they have been taken over by morons…
It doesn’t, it taxes house ownership.
DBC has unwittingly proposed a complete solution to the problem of the deficit… Quanruple the size of the “tax paying” public sector , and… SHAZAM!! No more deficit. 🙂
Simples.