ARmy Rumour SErvice

Most benefit recipients have actually paid for their benefits, through the NI fund that supports the 'Dole' as it is sometimes known as, a fund which is and has been always in credit. Besides which benefits are a circular payment, which is you give the recipient of benefits any money and they spend it in local shops supporting local people, which in turn ends up back at the treasury in the form of VAT and TAX [a form of Keynesian Economics]. This because they don't have much, and any money they do get is like a bonus. Tax thieves on the other hand or anybody who evades tax legally or other wise, in the main seek to move their loot overseas [such as the PM and the Chancellor both of who hold the vast majority of their wealth in off-shore tax funds, where it is free from any UK tax liability] buying overseas property and/or investments etc and put their dosh in overseas banks. This ensures that not only is the money not spent in the UK, but is an additional drain on the UK as vast sums of cash leave the country to be deposited in these off shore bank accounts.
So if you want to sort out the mess the UK is in, simply give the next round of quantitative easing directly into the bank accounts of the poor via increased benefits and see the economy immediately grow by what ever sum you plonk in the hands of them?
Thus it becomes a win-win, as the rich don't get any where near any of the money to salt away in foreign bank accounts with the foggiest belief that they can actually take it with them, and the country directly benefits from the use of the money it is printing. Will this happen? Nope because the Chancellor, aka Bum-Face, threepenny bit sucking dribbler hasn't the intellectual ability to understand what I have just written. Coz up his arse is the notion because he is rich he is very very clever.

To be honest, Bum-Face (as you call him) is wealthy because he is clever, is that a crime? Why can't the rich keep their money, it is after all theirs. You can't evade tax legally, it's lawful, you're allowed to do it, it's not evasion.

Originally Posted by CQMS

To be honest, Bum-Face (as you call him) is wealthy because he is clever, is that a crime? Why can't the rich keep their money, it is after all theirs. You can't evade tax legally, it's lawful, you're allowed to do it, it's not evasion.

I believe it’s a fine line between legal tax-reduction and tax-evasion, CQMS. A case in point:

I do a lot of translation work for a fairly local engineering company that’s managed to break into the Boxheed market with their products. With the first very technical translation, I had a pretty good idea of what was wanted, but I got in touch with the company and asked if I could come down and discuss a few points just to make sure that I had things right. That’s now become a regular occurrence.

The company is now in the third generation. Apparently the Granda (who started it) and the Da were all-round bon eoufs who were in the workshop more than the employees. But the currant-bun who now owns the place is a real arsehole. I liaise mostly with the Head Engineer, who's ex-Mob (RE) and we get along great.

The currant-bun pays himself two hundred grand a year, although he’s only in the office one or two days a week for a few hours, otherwise he’s out playing golf, pissing it up with his buddies or engaging in other life-sustaining activities. He established another company that’s supposed to do R & D, but he’s the only employee there. He once boasted to me that he only pays around nine percent tax on his income because it all goes through the shell-company he founded. That's all legal, apparently, but would you say that it's also moral and that he has the right to shaft the system simply because he can? And he’s not the only one by far working such a scam. Even gobment ministers are at it.

The question is: why is it so easy for twats like that to shaft the system (legally) while we normal folks have to pay our tax dues in full? Why can Vodaphone reduce its tax burden by six billion quid, but Tom the plumber can't?

MsG

Originally Posted by CQMS

To be honest, Bum-Face (as you call him) is wealthy because he is clever, is that a crime? Why can't the rich keep their money, it is after all theirs. You can't evade tax legally, it's lawful, you're allowed to do it, it's not evasion.

Eh?

Clever, indisputably. Clever enough to contest Tatton after the Man In White decided to call it a day. But he did not get rich inputting a database for the NHS, nor folding towels at Selfridges. His wealth comes from birth and a £4m Trust Fund, his father being an upmarket painter and decorator. Career towel-folders don't, by and large, tend to top the invite list for membership of the Bullingdon Club. Heirs to the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor, it seems, do. Tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion not. He'd know the difference. Claiming £50 on MPs Expenses for two DVD copies of himself giving a speech seems a bit parsimonious given his fortunate, err, fortune.

Socialism: the politics of spite and envy.

'why should that hard working person have more money than me'? Its not fair!'

Originally Posted by sunnoficarus

Socialism: the politics of spite and envy.

'why should that hardly-working person have more money than me'? Its not fair!'

Fixed, etc.

If it's been sent from my HTC Sensation using Tapatalk then I'm probably pissed.

This is an interesting report on tax evasion in the UK, with some surprising figures:
Tax evasion costs Treasury 15 times more than benefit fraud - Citywire Money
And here’s an article on tax avoidance:
New Statesman - Tax avoidance costs UK economy £69.9 billion a year
There have been many suggestions made to simplify the tax system in the UK (and in other countries), many of them quite ingenious, but they’ve never been implemented, although politicians complain that they should be. What's the reason for that? I contend that those who really run the country have instructed their servants (the politicians) to avoid changing they system and costing them more in taxes. The problem with that is that we normal folks then have to make up the shortfall. I don’t actually mind paying my share of the tax burden, but I do object when the rich and influential, who could really afford to pay their taxes without going without a crust, ensure that their share is as low as they can possibly make it without open rebellion taking place.

MsG

It's well known and acknowledged by governments past and present, that the loss to benefit fraud is counter-balanced in the government's favour (extremely so!), by the non-uptake of what is there to be rightfully and legally claimed in benefits.