What would you like to see cut?

I want to respond to rosequarts post at 10.13. I'm on the left as is clear from my posts, but I'm share rose's cross post saying that tax credits etc are paid to top up low wages. Why don't we have a living wage? That would be a start but would still leave people living hand to mouth whilst working. Why should we pay taxes to support multinationals like Tesco and the likes of Amzon, starbucks and co who avoid paying taxes whilst paying their workers the minimum wage?

Sad thing is, GT57, that these sweet tax deals for the rich are quietly cooked up behind the scenes, slipped into international agreements, then allowed to run riot for the benefit of the few. Every now and then a few handfuls of crumbs are publicly tossed into the charity bucket to keep us all quiet. Most of the media are in on the scams so its hardly ever reported. The Tories are only doing what they have always done - screwing the workers, pensioners and plebs!

Country by country reporting is what you are talking about, GillT.
Tax Research has been plugging it for years.
Gillybob, lots of the big companies say they are paying taxes because their employees are paying taxes. These are often the companies which use zero hours contracts and minimum pay, so their employees are not paying taxes into the coffers. one of the main reasons the tax take has gone down is because there are not enough people on high enough wages to pay tax.

You'll appreciate this, papa.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/12/08/christmas-has-come-early-for-dodgy-lawyers/

Tax evasion of all sorts is a major problem in the UK including suppression of sales, VAT evasion, duty evasion - you name it it is done, a far larger problem then benefit fraud.

Put this together with all the largest accountants getting very fat on putting together tax avoidance packages for the major companies, like amazon, google and many others, and the tax loss spirals into space.

Not just accountants, whitewave. Have a look at my link to papaoscar. It's lawyers as well, and they have been given special dispensation.
I don't suppose that it could have anything to do with Cameron's brother being a solicitor, could it? After all, the reason Cameron was rich was because of his dad setting up tax avoidance schemes in overseas tax havens.

So the old double standard is still alive and kicking, then, Dj. Perhaps we should all opt out of PAYE and get Santa to drop our tax liabilities down Luxembourg's chimney on future.

That is if we could pa I bet there are quite a few GN's who pay no or very little tax, and are grateful for the crumbs

What crumbs? If you do not pay tax it's because you do not earn enough to pay tax, not because you fiddle the tax.
In October the government announced they were going to cut 1000 more jobs in the tax office, and close 14 offices altogether.
At the same time they announced that they had failed to collect £34 billion that they knew was owed. That cannot make sense to anyone on here.

yes dj I know - what I meant was that many will see the raising of the personal allowance as something to be thankful for. Of course many of the grans may not earn enough to pay any tax at all.

I actually agree with you durhamjen the point I was trying to make was that the poor employees of these (corporation) tax avoiding companies do pay their taxes. They have (like the rest of us) no choice. People protesting outside these companies are not "getting at" the tax avoiders they are getting at the employees.

I don't think anyone earning minimum wage should be paying tax at all.

It has to depend on how many hours they work, doesn't it?

I agree, gillybob. Just 30 hours a week on minimum wage means you have to pay tax. That's far too low. That's why there are so many in-work families who have to apply for benefits.

Perhaps I should start a separate thread because I do recognise this is a bit of a diversion www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/caroline-lucas-infrastructure-bill-british-green-policies-15bn-roads-pollution

but, Caroline Lucas feels to me like the last honest politician and the Greens, the last left wing party. Over and over again she uses her position as an MP to truly challenge the government. I've looked at this thread a few times and I have to admit my first reaction to the question 'what would you cut' was to say 'nothing, we have to fight the cuts'. We go on buying the governments line that the country is just like a housewife's purse and it's all our fault for spending beyond our means when the real culprits are the banks and bankers and the rich and well connected who evade paying their share all the way down the line (as many of you above have posted).

The article I've linked to is about us spending £15bn on the roads, the way in which this avoids building a sensible public transport infrastructure, the additional air pollution which will ensue from this policy and then goes on to point out how the government is making it watertight for fracking companies to do what they like despite our protests. It takes very little looking on the internet to see the dire effects of fracking in a country as large as the US, the health effects, the environmental damage and the silencing of protest in the face of corporate power.

It's all horribly wrong, playing into the hands of the powerful and we are like pawns in their game. Makes me so angry!

But we still need the A1 dualling, as it's dangerous as it is north of Morpeth.

The office of National Statistics has now got a new website which is supposed to be easy for anyone to use to find things out. alpha.ons.gov.uk/#!/alpha

That's a very interesting website durhamjen, it's a bit disarming to be greeted with the pop up telling you it's a prototype!

I don't know the roads 'oop north' but down here in the south, every blooming road is so permanently crowded that they could all do with an extra lane and that would only solve the problem for a year or so at the most. The roads are filled with speeding frustrated motorists which makes every journey so frightening that I'm stopping driving if I don't absolutely have to!

I'd like to see Question Time cut, then maybe we can have some political debate instead of entertainment dressed up as political debate.

Limit it to one topic per episode, put experts in the field on the panel, put the politicians and other interested parties in the audience, and leave Joe Public at home.

Yes, HS2 should be scrapped and we should withdraw from the wars we are involved in. I know the reason we are there is to protect the UK from terrorism but I think we are only making things worse. And that's without mentioning all the young people who are losing their lives.
We also need to look at people/companies who are not paying their taxes and to penalise them heavily when they are found out. My next suggestion will be unpopular but I think we should re-examine the money this country is paying in overseas aid. Bob Geldof has a lot to answer for, in my opinion, as it now seems to be politically incorrect to even think about reducing it.

crun, I gave up watching QT long ago because it was so completely predictable. Once I'd found out who the panellists were, I could pretty well write the script.Luckily Newsnight is on at the same time.

Yes annodomini, I stopped a long while ago too. I think the last straw was Anne Widdecombe talking over everyone else on the panel every time they spoke. I put it on last night because of Farage and Brand, but 5 minutes was about as much as I could stand.

A few years ago, BBC4 screened an archive debate from an election campaign about 1959(?). There were just four or five panellists debating nuclear disarmament, and there were no fatuous soundbites, no acting up to an audience of baying idiots, everyone had the courtesy to listen without interrupting....bliss!

I have to agree that Question Time has become less interesting over the last few years.

The woman with the blue hair was a pain in the neck and seemed to be more interested in making herself noticed than in making a valid point.

If you want politics, crun, 131 on freeview is the politics programme.
I watch it lots of the time. They show many of the committees in the Commons, which explains why not everyone is in the main house for debates.

Annie, it's a prototype because the main website is so hard to follow. It's still possible to get all the statistics, but often difficult to find what you want. This should make it easier. I tend to look at www.fullfact.org to find statistics the easy way, but they often direct you to the ONS.

Here's an interesting take on the tax problem from Tax Research.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/12/12/why-do-we-have-tax-abuse-because-the-big-4-promote-it/

I have wondered why people from the four accountancy firms have fingers in every pie, even the NHS.

Yes the Revenue departments are more than aware of the squillions being made by the accountancy firms who devise ever more complicated tax avoidance schemes. A lot of tax payers money is then put in to try to counter these schemes. Tax payer looses out every which way.