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 Overread wrote:
Surely the right time to talk taxes is after you've got the majority of the workforce working again. Or at least relaxed restrictions so that there's potential for the majority to get back to work. Remembering that this whole year the tourist industry and anything connected to it is basically a dead duck. Even if work restrictions relax no one is going on long distance holidays and even within the country travel might be restricted/discouraged etc....

Next year is when you want to roll out tax increases alongside measures to boost the economy and promote the UK as a fantastic (empty ) holiday destination.

It was obvious from the get go that monetary issues would arise, considering most states did not keep their Budgets in Order before 2008 allready.

If anything, they should consider tax cuts at the lower end to try and maintain demand. Nobody will buy anything if they can’t afford it in the first place.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
If anything, they should consider tax cuts at the lower end to try and maintain demand. Nobody will buy anything if they can’t afford it in the first place.

Or, heart me out,Stop allowing taxi heavens .
Heck gaming companies Like activision blizzard promote what is in essence minor gambling and get money with Millions Of earnings whilest not playing taxes at all.

And that is but one company doing questionable Stuff

That’s a better solution, because there’s a lot of fethers sitting on piles of wealth thinking that they’re Smaug or something, with no intention or even hope of ever actually spending it themselves. And that money needs to grease the wheels to keep us all going.

A little bit of both might help, because the likes of VAT and fuel duty mostly effects those on lower incomes anyway.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
That’s a better solution, because there’s a lot of fethers sitting on piles of wealth thinking that they’re Smaug or something, with no intention or even hope of ever actually spending it themselves. And that money needs to grease the wheels to keep us all going.

A little bit of both might help, because the likes of VAT and fuel duty mostly effects those on lower incomes anyway.

This will never happen, however it should happen, why on earth does anyone need hundreds of millions in cash/assets (most likely assets), let alone billions? There's only 1 billionaire on the planet that is probably actually worth their value and that is Elon, and that is only because of his direct involvement in SpaceX, Tesla (going to finally kill off the fossil fuel engine soon) and Neuralink, and whatever else he is going to co-create in the future. The rest of them are parasites, worthless parasites. Well, maybe not all of them, but Bezos and Gates really can go get back int he sea and I'm sure the majority should as well.

Without getting onto the distribution of wealth, this is going to be an issue, whenever it happens. What needs to happen now is the promotion of schemes to get people back to work. This is going to be incredibly difficult with the fear so prevalent among the population. The furlough scheme needs serious evaluation as to its practicality. Having the government pay you indefinitely, to lock yourself in your home because you 'feel unsafe' going to work, is completely unworkable.

Well Spain is looking at going for a national payout for a living wage from the government.


As for the UK no one ever said it would be forever, heck we've only been at this for a few months. However its still far too early to have the workforce back at work in a big way. Even if you can get everyone back to work there's whole areas (as noted tourism) which are going to be shut down in all practical sense anyway.

The key is to ride out this period and inject money into the country to keep people in their homes; fed and healthy and in a decent frame of mind. Once that is over and people can get back to normal life and when movement restrictions are gone or at least relaxed within the country. Then you can start to say "Ok lets stop paying people; get businesses working again, give incentives to new start ups and then start considering raising taxes to pay for it all.

Doing so too early will just drain money out of the system and greatly prolong any recovery. People without money want jobs, but if there's no money in the system there's no retail or product demand in the system to promote jobs for those people.

I wish I saved that article that explained how to eliminate tax havens. The basic premise was, take the tax from the starting point of the sale, not the end.

So if for example the likes of Amazon made 2 billion in sales from the uk, you tax them on that up front, not after that money has been spirited away to the havens.

Now it doesn’t matter where they plant their headquarters, if they have any dealings at all in the uk then they have to pay. The only way to avoid it is to literally close up shop and not sell anything at all, which I doubt even they are spiteful enough to do.

The article explained it a lot better but it was a real eureka moment imo.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I wish I saved that article that explained how to eliminate tax havens. The basic premise was, take the tax from the starting point of the sale, not the end.

So if for example the likes of Amazon made 2 billion in sales from the uk, you tax them on that up front, not after that money has been spirited away to the havens.

Now it doesn’t matter where they plant their headquarters, if they have any dealings at all in the uk then they have to pay. The only way to avoid it is to literally close up shop and not sell anything at all, which I doubt even they are spiteful enough to do.

The article explained it a lot better but it was a real eureka moment imo.

I suspect the core problems are :

1) Enforcing it for the whole country not just the super-rich

2) Making it viable for both the super-rich and the smaller retailer.

Eg how do you determine the amount of tax per product sold when you collect it at the point of sale. In theory the person who sells 1000 books should pay more tax than the person who sells 100. And the person who sells 100,000 should move into a different higher tax bracket because they've sold way way more and thus made more profit. However if you do it per-sale; then you've got to have a flat value per item (so basically you're back to VAT). Otherwise if you charge the person who sells 100 books the same tax rate as the 100,000 then either one is going to be crippled by a bill they can't afford; or one is going to be paying a pittance.


In theory that's why you collect all the money in at the end and then declare taxes based on the total amount earned in a given year. That way those who earn significantly less pay significantly less in tax even to the point of having exception brackets.

Still getting some tax of them would be better than the current no-tax. I recall the stink that happened when Facebook was revealed to pay £1 in tax a year to the UK. They relented that year and paid more so that the UK didn't abandon their service. I've no idea if they've kept up with it.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Brace yourselves fellow Brits... The taxes are coming. Chancellor considers increases in income tax, stopping state pension rises, and freezing public sector pay. Looks like someone looked in the piggy bank.

As Overread mentioned, way for them to pick the worst possible timing.

American prisoners showing exceptional logic. In bad sense. Trying to get infected by corona under assumptlon they get free from jail. Plan is semi working. They get coroea but not freedom. Nice job eh?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer manages to tax individual workers' income at source at variable rates. I don't see why it couldn't be done to businesses too.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Chancellor of the Exchequer manages to tax individual workers' income at source at variable rates. I don't see why it couldn't be done to businesses too.

Well you could Overall adopt a diffrent model low buissness taxi high income tax in individuals.
That way companies have more ressources and income tax can easily be differed via tax progression.

Regardless, stopping legal loopholes exploitation that goes on in certain countries as brought up in my exemple would do also well.

I would argue that is kind of the model we have now.

Individuals are taxed 20% or more on their earned income, plus 11% national insurance, then pay 20% VAT on lots of things they need to buy, not to mention Council Tax, which is weighted away from the higher value properties.

Meanwhile, corporation tax is 18%, and businesses get breaks such as writing off expenses against profits.

However I completely agree with you about the need to plug the loopholes.

Yeah individuals pay higher % than companies. As it is effectively companies can be even be paying single digit taxes. If at all.

Good or bad is another thing.

It's not like anyone in the UK didn't know tax raises and brutal austerity were coming.

Still, good to get those announcements out and shift attention away from the still abysmal testing and PPE situations.

Councils still have yet to get costs down after 2008.
Every year, the council I work at has to cut more services to meet incoming taxes. Some councils have had to call for serious help to meet the basic needs.
The UK tax system isn't working well.
Is it that the biggest companies are mostly based outside the UK and the wealth is heading out of the countries like mine?
While tax systems are not all the same, companies can choose where to base their funds. Individual tax systems cannot afford to change too much, or funds get moved out.
Look at the NHS. It is being propped up by charity campaigns. Spending cuts have been a huge reason for that.

You guys know that rates are capped yes? I think it’s a major underlying problem to local government that needs addressing asap.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Councils still have yet to get costs down after 2008.
Every year, the council I work at has to cut more services to meet incoming taxes. Some councils have had to call for serious help to meet the basic needs.
The UK tax system isn't working well.
Is it that the biggest companies are mostly based outside the UK and the wealth is heading out of the countries like mine?
While tax systems are not all the same, companies can choose where to base their funds. Individual tax systems cannot afford to change too much, or funds get moved out.
Look at the NHS. It is being propped up by charity campaigns. Spending cuts have been a huge reason for that.

See, that can happen but companies especially smaller to mid sized ones, which incidentally employ the most people in the most stable work environment, don't do that respectively can't do that
It's by and large global coorperations that can flee countries. The small and midsized ones just die.

For the mid and small sized companies local infrastructure is WAAAAAYYY more important aswell as availability of an adequatly educated workforce and the laws sourrunding work.

Which is why decentral organized countries tend to overall invest more into differing infrastructure and which is why there is more possibility to operate these kinds of buisnesses.

And to be blunt, what i have seen in rural parts of england or even germany or especially france, these non centre regions are extremely depressing in regards to infrastructure, schooling, transportation and even just basic companies.

Reasonable excuses to be outside in the UK now include emotional wellbeing. Which means anyone can go outside and the police can't bother them (unless they're gathering of course.)

The bigger issues is actually hitting the mega-companies without at the sametime hitting smaller middleweight firms that would likely go under if you hit them with the same tax bracket. Which is what tends to happen - you update a load of tax systems and those paying tax before now pay more (in some groups) whilst the mega company shifts things around and diverts tax elsewhere.

It's like how Amazon and several other major delivery firms get out of having worker expenses and employee support by hiring "independent contractors" to be their delivery drivers.

Of course you won't stop it all, but when companies like Facebook could get away with £1 in tax per year the only tax you're getting out of them is what their employees are paying, which in theory is money that they'd pay anyway if they had another job.

 Overread wrote:
The bigger issues is actually hitting the mega-companies without at the sametime hitting smaller middleweight firms that would likely go under if you hit them with the same tax bracket. Which is what tends to happen - you update a load of tax systems and those paying tax before now pay more (in some groups) whilst the mega company shifts things around and diverts tax elsewhere.

It's like how Amazon and several other major delivery firms get out of having worker expenses and employee support by hiring "independent contractors" to be their delivery drivers.

Of course you won't stop it all, but when companies like Facebook could get away with £1 in tax per year the only tax you're getting out of them is what their employees are paying, which in theory is money that they'd pay anyway if they had another job.

These megacorps would need a good busting due to their monopolistic nature.

Who knows maybee we get a second Teddy. by that i mean a fluke of history to curb some excesses.

Yeah, it would not be simple at all to do that sort of tax reform, I'm afraid. Not all companies even directly sell to the consumer. My wife works for a company that makes generate (the explosives) for airbags in the USA. The airbags are assembled in Mexico, shipped to auto manufacturing plants in various eastern European countries, and then the cars are sold to consumers. The company is based out of South Korea.

What country gets to tax them?

This is why I hate globalisation at times.

And yeah, a second Teddy would be a fantastic thing right about now. Just to see the look on Jeff’s face...

Back on topic please folks, ta!

Well this is rubbish,

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/12/uk-rail-worker-dies-coronavirus-spat-belly-mujinga

a worker coughed and spat on by somebody claiming (clearly correctly) they had corona virus has died from it

I really hope we see a murder trial

I sincerely hope so. Manslaughter at the very least.

Well, she may have caught it from somewhere else...

I'm not excusing the act, which is deplorable and deserving of punishment, but they might have difficulty proving that was the specific cause of her infection.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Well this is rubbish,

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/12/uk-rail-worker-dies-coronavirus-spat-belly-mujinga

a worker coughed and spat on by somebody claiming (clearly correctly) they had corona virus has died from it

I really hope we see a murder trial

Yeah, stories are like this are why I'm astounded there are still people in this thread arguing that we can trust the public not to be idiots.

I hope they find the guy who spat at her.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Well, she may have caught it from somewhere else...

I'm not excusing the act, which is deplorable and deserving of punishment, but they might have difficulty proving that was the specific cause of her infection.

The intent to do harm was still there, so an assault charge would at least stick. On the other hand, what if they find the spitter and they end up testing negative for the virus?