John McDonnell’s speech:
Labour’s plan to balance the books will be aggressive.
We will force people like Starbucks, Vodaphone, Amazon and Google and all the others to pay their fair share of taxes.
They are. To think otherwise is to fall prey to Ritchie’s maunderings again.
Let me tell you also, there will be cuts to tackle the deficit but our cuts will not be the number of police officers on our streets or nurses in our hospitals or teachers in our classrooms.
They will be cuts to the corporate welfare system.
There will be cuts to subsidies paid to companies that take the money and fail to provide the jobs.
Cut’s to the use of taxpayers money subsidising poverty paying bosses.
Cuts to £13 billion tax breaks given to buy to let landlords for repairing their properties, whether they undertake the repairs or not.
And that’s Farnsworth’s maunderings and hasn’t Osborne already (disastrously) already shot that buy to let fox?
This lot won’t work out well if they do in fact gain power.
“Cuts to the use of taxpayers money subsidising poverty paying bosses.”
That sounds like Labour intends to cut in-work benefits. I won’t ask John McDonnell to explain, I know he can’t.
Guess my landlord won’t be fixing or improving my house share under a labour government. Still at least I can take pleasure knowing that if he did so he wouldn’t be paying slightly less tax. I can feel as a drafted martyr towards the tax law.
So too by forcing firms excluded from VAT. I’ll happily pay 20% yo 17% more gladly knowing that the VAT cost is full attached to the price or, for 17% more at least 3% of the tax incident falls on the business.
Sticking it to the man
There isn’t a prayer of them gaining power. Cloud Cuckoo Land.
The Sun front page is great today.
Apparently the majority of Britain “shares Corbyn’s values”. Really? I had no idea most British people were self-hating student trots who hang around with viscous anti-Semites. Maybe I should get out more.
I can’t see the print version of the Sun, but the leader online is a complete demolition Corbyn and Mad Mac
“Cuts to £13 billion tax breaks given to buy to let landlords for repairing their properties, whether they undertake the repairs or not.”
*sigh* Is he referring to ‘wear & tear’ allowance, which has nothing at all to do with repairs to properties and which Osborne has already abolished from next year?
If he is, he shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and if he isn’t, wtf is he on about?
Professor Murphy is getting over-excited in Brighton:
I did a fringe even for The Snith Institute
Corbyn wants to see mandatory sick pay, maternity pay and paternity pay for the self-employed.
I await the detailed plans for how this will work with interest.
GD
What about paid holidays? And what about the company car, and the use of a mobile phone, and the bonus scheme, and, and…
Hang on a second – my plumber is self employed……
it’s brilliant, isn’t it!
GlenDorran
I am interested too because I can see only two outcomes.
1) there’s some bullshit equation to add onto some ones cost which ‘reflects the passed up opportunity of SSP and MP/PP’
Except that lack of protection should already be priced in, but whatever it’s the governments job to intervene and protect people from rational risks
OR
2) we pay for it all. You can bet your bottom dollar too that self employed will take the maximum number of sick days off too. If you give yourself ten days holiday a year, guess what you might as well get paid for it!
No doubt when the rational sick pay abuse spirals out of control the state will require intense forms of proof. Leafing to the next gen of academics and corbynites to denounce it as a disciplinary technique to make us all obey, dehumanising, punishing the poor and on and on
@ Rob Harries
If the self-employed guy is off sick the job doesn’t get done. So it only makes sense to take days off sick if your earnings are less than statutory sick pay.
The vast majority of self-employed people (excluding the handful who are “self-employed” when writing columns for The Grauniad while paid a full-time employees elsewhere) are self-reliant and hard-working – your caricatured skivers wouldn’t want to be self-employed and wouldn’t last long if they did try it.
@ GlenDorran
I shall have to pay myself statutory sick pay on the days when I am ill. I shall do it with leaves from the Magic Money Tree.
However I am baffled by the idea of the self-employed having both maternity *and* paternity leave – is the LGBT spectrum to be expanded to hermaphrodites?
Rob H
I’m a bit confused! 1) – yes, I agree, he’s already priced it in, but how would 2) work?
For example, how would my self employed plumber get SSP from his “employer”? He’s coming at 3, he’ll be gone by 4, unless he’s sick (or late from another job)…
Does he send in a form to the government to claim SSP back? Cause that sounds well dodgy to me? Employers may pay up to 6 months (or more) in a year; will the government match that?
Is it the shadow chancellor or the Telegraph that cannot spell Vodafone?
Rob H, to be honest that 3% wear and tear allowance was alwauys a little bit stupid. When I rented out my house, 15 or so years ago, I had to replace a washing-machine – I claimed the cost of the replacement and also the allowance and it got through without even a question. 3% is probably broadly ok over a number of years but surely it is better to just go for specific costs…otherwise landlords will all end up as imaginative as MPs.
@Diogenes
Wear & Tear allowance is 10% of rents net of council tax/water rates if paid by the landlord. It has been for as long as I can remember doing tax. Certainly it was 10% 15 years ago.
If you were only claiming 3%, maybe a HMRC official took pity on you and allowed the washing machine?
@ Andrew C
It is 10% of rents less allowable expenses. It has always struck me as introducing moral hazard – the landlord pays the same tax if he replaces worn-out furniture or chooses not to do so.
Sounds like the allowance is effectively depreciation on fixtures and fittings. Normally a new appliance would be capitalized but repairs would not and could be claimed. I see no specific issues with depreciation or an equivalent on F&F, perhaps not on the building itself though as typically buildings go up in value over time.
A landlord may not replace worn out items, but at some point they have to, or get less rent. Does depend on whether there’s any tenancy tribunal for tenants to air grievances in though…or they could move I suppose.
@John77
“@ Andrew C
It is 10% of rents less allowable expenses.”
John
No it is not. It is 10% of rent less expenses ‘normally met by the tenant if paid by the landlord’ such as utility bills and council tax. The point being here is that it is assumed that if the landlord is meeting such expenses normally met by the tenant they have increased the rent to compensate.
You don’t take account of expenses normally borne by the landlord. Repairs, letting agents fees, loan interest (most important), accountancy fees etc are NOT taken into account when computing the 10%
@ AndrewC
i.e. allowable expenses
@John 77.
No. You are being simplistic
Interest is an allowable expense. Council tax is an allowable expense. They are treated differently in a W&T computation.
My calculation
Rents received (say) £10,000
less
Interest £5,000
rates (paid by landlord) £500
W&T £9,500@10% £950 £6,450
Taxable £3,550
Your calculation on same figures?
AndrewC
Expenses allowable for this purpose which is not just utility bills and council tax Paragraph 352 of IR150 gives council tax water and sewerage charges as *examples* – these are *not* a complete list. You, for example, have omitted insurance.
Ok I admit to faulty memory…the 10% allowance was an invitation to claim…plus then I claimed for a new washing machine in addition. It was allowed
I think that a 10% annual allowance is way beyond what is needed, and is open to abuse.
On the other hand, a receipt by receipt claim is probably over onerous. Maybe a 3% allowance is the answer…and no claims for new machinery. I myself felt I was doing too well as a “buy-to-let” landlord.
@John77
You’re talking in riddles.
“Expenses allowable for this purpose”
What purpose?
I have ‘omitted’ insurance. What have I omitted insurance from? I mentioned expenses normally met by the landlord ‘such as’ utility bills and council tax. They were given as examples not as an exhaustive list.
“it is 10% less allowable expense”
What is?
Wear & Tear allowance is 10% of ‘net rents’ That is rents less certain expenses that would normally be met by the tenant.
That you quote IR150 says much. IR150 was withdrawn by HMRC years ago and the rules on W&T are given at HMRC Property Income Manual 3205.