What is also unhelpful about the tax system is that the tax authorities treat the contributor as a potential criminal. There is no relation of trust, or of fairness. My accountant told me that it is essentially a game between the tax authorities and the tax payers. The former try to get as much as they can out of you, the latter to pay as little as possible. That's not actually a great way to encourage the payment of tax.
Spoken like a true leftie, spending money is the solution to all our problems, even if we don't have it. To describe the UK as 'incredibly unproductive' compared to the rest of Europe is over egging it just a tad I think.
Indeed. No one likes to pay tax so simplify the tax system and enforce it. You must be rich to have an accountant :wink:
No. The accountant saves me tax and pays for himself. i got a bit disillusioned when I'd been filling in my own tax returns for some years and an accountant told me I could make some deductions I didn't know about. "No you can't!" I said, "it's not in the rules." "Oh yes it is", he said, "here." It transpires that accountants get sent addenda to the rules which most people know nothing about. So that's fair, then.
I'm like most people. I pay electricity bills, insurance, water rates, tax etc. I don't object to paying any of those things, but I don't try and pay more than is necessary and I'm happier if the bill is smaller rather than bigger.
John, it is a fact that the UK ranks 17th in the developed world in GDP per Capita. That's a fact. It's a fact which means we are unproductive. We are unproductive because our economy is based on service industry jobs rather than technology jobs. Look at leftie Denmark http://erhverv.ku.dk/english/research_collaboration/financing-opportunities/the-danish-national-advanced-technology-foundation/ http://www.investindk.com/Clusters/Cleantech These countries have higher GDP per capita as the population is on average better educated and in better jobs. Norway developed mobile Phone technology, the company was owned in the most part by the state. Nationalised industry. Statoil- nationalised industry. Norway also has a thriving shipbuilding industry. We build nothing bar the odd navy ship. Which water company in the UK, is the most efficient with the lowest bills, an who owns it? So yes, I a country invests it will see a return on that investment, create high value jobs, people pay more tax and better services are delivered. Call it sensible socialism.
The UK needs to get its finger out, regarding education. It will be left behind in mediocrity with no advantages over any other country. But then excellence is a dirty word, isn't it? All must have prizes. Pity the professional world doesn't work that way.
What it means is that we are less productive than some of the richest nations on earth, not that we are 'unproductive'. The state in the UK has a poor track record of running businesses, maybe it is to do with a Parliament full of PPE graduates. BUt there is an argument for utilites being state run, as we have discussed recently in another thread. Lefties can't distinguish between investing and spending. Think G Brown boasting of investing in jobs, yet they were all non jobs delivering services to those on benefit. In what way does that improve productivity ? We are living in a post industrial landscape. Those at the top do take a disproportionate amount from the pot but even if we increased taxes to a punitive level, and redistributed that wealth, it wouldn't solve the problem which is that we are in decline compared to the growth areas of the world. Globalisation has created wealth for the minority, the average worker is being left behind. Norway just doesn't have the structural problems that the UK has and can't be compared to the UK. The wheels are starting to come off economies such as Sweden and Denmark which are being flooded with imigrants looking for an easier life.
It is somewhat up to countries if they want immigration or not. The members of the EU voted for it (amongst themselves). I still don't understand what half of Africa is doing in the UK, not to mention China and Russia. When you get over 50% of Slough not having been born in the UK, you might ask yourself how far you want to take this particular policy. Britain can still choose to invest in education, set an immigration policy, invest in start-ups - there's no end of things to do. it doesn't just have to roll over - but I get the impression that the media and the politicians think it does.
So how many foreign owned utilities companies are paying proper tax on their UK gains then and why isn't the government doing anything about it.There will be good reasons for that apart from apathy. Have you any idea how long some countries who have better educational results have their kids at school for like Korea to name but one. Let's not compare ourselves too much against other countries without comparing other targets that we just wouldn't run to. Its a balance that every and every subsequent government here in the UK will have and has agonised over which is not a job that I would even want because in most cases,dammed if you do and dammed if you don't but an easy target for the press,opposition parties and many others who just don't want to look past there immediate views.
Since you seem to think i make statistics up John, see below. By another measure of the OECD, we are 18th, hence my figure of 17th. Note all the leftie countries above us. also note the position of the supposedly broke Iceland and Ireland, a country which pays its pensioners almost double what we do. How Trotsky is that! Rank Country 2012[1] Intl. $ 1 Luxembourg 88,276 2 Norway 65,638 3 Switzerland 53,733 4 United States 51,689 5 Australia 45,016e 6 Austria 43,848 7 Ireland 43,670 8 Netherlands 43,146 9 Sweden 43,017 10 Denmark 42,176 11 Canada 41,559e 12 Germany 41,231 13 Belgium 40,069 14 Finland 38,282 15 Iceland 37,569 16 United Kingdom 37,446 — OECD 36,931e 17 France 36,249 18 Japan 35,190e 19 Italy 33,140 20 New Zealand 32,163e 21 Spain 32,081 22 South Korea 30,800 23 Israel 29,830 24 Slovenia 27,493 25 Czech Republic 26,706 26 Greece 25,309 27 Portugal 25,275 28 Slovakia 25,193 29 Estonia 23,625 30 Chile 22,416e 31 Poland 22,167 32 Hungary 22,011 33 Mexico 18,288e 34 Turkey 18,114e e Estimated value. now if you read that table in conjunction with the map and data on this web link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality you will see that the only major country above us on the OECD table that has a more unfair society,in terms of wealth distribution is the USA. I would not want to live in a country like the USA. the data strongly suggests that societies which have a fairer distribution of wealth are more productive. other research has shown that societies with fairer distribution of wealth are happier. But to go back to Sweden and tax, I got that info on Swedish attitudes to tax from a program on radio 4. to follow on from a point AndyB made, if they can rush though legislation on immigrants, why can't they do it for tax avoiders like Starbucks, amazon, vodaphone?
thats a very good point Stu. The recent tables which put the far eastern countries at the top of the education tables looks very impressive until you look at the suicide rate of youngsters in those countries.
Beacuse it just isn't that simple. Any "rushed through legislation on immigration" is going to be more for show than for effect; as we have discussed here exhaustively, the UK system of benefits is not tightly linked to contribution, so eligibility for immigrants cannot be changed easily, without discriminating based on nationality. We are part of the EU so we have to allow a lot of free movement, and that too cannot simply be changed. Perhaps HMG should "rush through" yet more tax legislation? We already have one of the most complicated tax systems in the world, and making it more complex won't necessarily achieve what some seem to want. In the case of companies, it's only corporation tax that is a subject for debate - we have to remember that they are all acting as effective channels for VAT, Income tax, NI, Business Rates, etc. Any profits which are provided to shareholders as dividends are also taxed (the shareholder being liable for tax primarily in their own country of residence, usually). Funnily enough, Sweden has been reducing corporation tax rates in an attempt to encourage more companies to be based there, and IKEA's l tax contributions are regarded by some as being too small.
Rushing through legislation is a very bad idea, on any topic. A better idea is fully thought through legislation, which covers all the angles and anticipates all the problems. We have seen far too much rushed through legislation as it is, and we have seen the consequences.
i agree Pete. It was a tongue a cheek remark. the vodaphone debacle is 10 years old......and still nothing. Even a slowly produced bill would have been done by now.
My other source of information is my partner who 1) is on first name terms with Julian Sainsbury, having produced many social research documents that his foundation has commissioned. 2) has been described in the Guardian, as "one of the foremost young thinkers in social policy today" 3h and whose work has been picked up and implemented by local government, national government, the prison service a well as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation so, I believe, my posts are based on solid research by my partner,mrather than read from the Daily Mail or come from respected organisations such as the OECD. did you know child poverty is worse in the UK than Greece?
A lot depends on how you define poverty (relative or absolute) and a statistic like this might tell us more about Greek social behaviour than about the Greek economy (in a worse state than ours) or the Greek tax system (chaos I think). The UK pretty well tops the European league for teenage parenthood and single-parent families. I don't know why that is, but those two factors are bound to influence the degree of prosperity within which children are brought up. I doubt that the solution is to dish out even more benefits.
Wasn't child poverty defined as living in a household with an income of less than 60% of the average ? That means that if Warren Buffet came to live in the UK child poverty would increase. Who is Julian Sainsbury, another champagne socialist ? I see quite a few former satellites of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the lower half of that list 749er.
