Are The Greens the new Raving Loony Party!

Caroline Lucas has managed to get a debate on Wednesday about the NHS.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31768259

Okay, it might not make any difference, but it's interesting that the government says that the CCGs do not have to put out to tender. They are lying again.

Thanks for the link about NHS Jen, I have completed it and forwarded to MP and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates.

Just had a response from the green party candidate in my constituency.
I bet you know what he said.

The only way to get the NHS we want is to tell the government that we do not want to be a low tax country, we want to be a good wellfare country and if that means putting up taxes for all we accept it.

I watched this today.
If the banks were sorted out and tax paid by people who think that it's better to pay accountants to help them pay less tax than is morally right, there would be no need for ordinary people to pay more tax.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/03/09/margaret-hodge-the-pac-and-hsbc-questions-needing-answering/

The HSBC bankers did nothing but evade the questions.
Rona Fairhead is director of the BBC. She needs sacking. She was on the audit committee of HSBC for most of the time, but just said it was nothing to do with her. She took notice of what the external auditors told her. They were PWC and KPMG. They should be asked questions about their part in it. They both have members on government committees.
It's just plainly wrong.

act.one.org/sign/follow_the_money

A bank has a list of how much money is saved but will not make it public.
One needs many more signatures to make this happen.

A petition on One has made government agree to having overseas aid kept at 0.7% of GDP. Petitions work.

Wishful thinking, I am afraid durhamjen. Even if the government were able to collect 90% of all tax that is evaded - and that would be very impossible, it would still not be enough. We PAYE tax payers are so many that our incomes plus VAT produce such a large proportion of total tax that we are the main siurce of government revenue

The idea that making the rich, whoever they may be, pay all the tax they owe will sort out all our problems means conveniently forgetting that one of the main sources of tax evasion is all those of us who are self employed.

One of the biggest forms of tax evasion is small businesses, partnerships etc that barter between themselves or get paid in cash to evade tax or just dip into the till for the housekeeping each week. A form of tax evasion that is extremely difficult to trace when it is low key. When small businesses get greedy, they get caught but if they keep their withdrawals low and pay their VAT on time, short of being accompanied 24/7 by a tax official it is impossible to trace.

Many small businesses are too small to need to pay VAT. There are 460,000 small businesses, and many of them do not take £79,000 so do not need to pay VAT.

In the hidden economy, only £4.4 billion is thought to be owed of the total £34 billion.

Most of the hidden economy tax that is owed is from excise duties not paid, from people smuggling in tobacco and alcohol.

HMRC says that the tax gap is £34 billion. Tax Research puts it as over £100 billion. That's because HMRC have had a light touch on rich people paying tax.
Osborne is obviously going to give a tax cut in the budget. You can tell by the smirk on his face. It will not help those small businesses that take less than £10,000, and there are many of those.

This is why the rich should pay more tax. Either that or be paid less. It might help to even up society.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-divided-decade-the-rich-are-64-richer-than-before-the-recessionwhile-the-poor-are-57-poorer-10097038.html

The vast majority of small businesses some are actually quite large including asmall manufacturers, professional partnerships etc, and they do need to pay VAT and even those that do not should be paying income tax and if they dip into the till they may not be evading one tax but are certainly evading the other.. Personally I think that they evade more than £4.4 billion. That is just the amount that HMRC could ever prove has been avoided.

A simple example from my own tiny bit of tax evasion. About 10 years ago for about 2 years I very occasionally took in overflow from my neighbour's B&B. The income, before costs was about £120 a year for about 2 years. I never declared it on my tax form, not for VAT, but as income because the tax response to odd extra income like that is very complex and lasts for years and it seemed very heavy-handed for a very small amount of money.

In my case the amount untaxed was infinitesimal but there are many people and tiny businesses evading much more than that.

No-one argues that the rich are not getting richer nor that the poor are getting poorer but it doesn't follow that taxing the rich more or chasing them more assiduously for unpaid tax will be enough to finance the welfare state we would all want.

I don't agree with you FlicketyB but if we are not going to make sure that the rich pay the proper amount of tax, (the underpayment of which is accepted by most commentators to be many billions) what do you suggest to address the massive and growing inequality?

So you cheated the taxman, Flickety. It does not mean all of us did.
Shouldn't you be more careful what you write on here.
The rich paying what they morally should would save the NHS from going the way it is - unless of course the Tories get in again.

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/nhs-brink-privatisation-health-service-cross-party-bill&sa=U&ei=jHAAVeFZ0ZVq0ZCBwAU&ved=0CAgQFjAB&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNE6TLWlUcf8zyOx10UnXH9j5tZEXQ

As guest house owners, Flickety, we actually used to put some of our own money into the business over the winter, so we could pay the bills. I imagine there are a lot like us.

I do not know but tax as a means of evening up incomes would need to be so punitive, around the 90% mark for the wealthiest, those with money would live in other jurisdictions and companies would move their domicile to other countries. Foreign wealthy owners would move away and house prices would fall as the London property market crashed. Fine for those who want to buy a house but not fun for all those who have bought over the last ten years and found themselves in negative equity.

M. Hollande followed a similar policy in France and had to back track after a year as the wealthy relocated to surrounding countries. Gerard Deperdieu famously took out Russian citizenship.

i would be far happier to see a multiplier connection between salaries/staff numbers/turnover and maximum pay, with directors agreeing a salary when they join and then receiving the same annual pay rise as the staff with bonuses fixed as a multiplier of any rise in the profitability of the company.

If you remember the 1950s and 60s you will remember how many wealthy people including the Rolling Stones domiciled themselves oversea to avoid paying the very high rates of supertax, as it was called, charged on high incomes.

Those who would have to pay 90% already have their money off-shore, Flickety.
Did you watch the grilling of HSBC directors? Gulliver says he is domiciled in Hong Kong so does not need to pay UK taxes, even though he's the director in the UK and lives in the UK. Must be wrong, although obviously he does not think so. I couldn't care less if all these rich people went to live elsewhere. They are not paying taxes here anyway.
Mick Jagger has a house here and has to pay extra tax on the value of his house, even though he says he lives in the US.
By the way, do you not mean the 60s and 70s?
I was born in 1949, so do not remember the 50s. The Stones did not make records until the 60s. I do not think they decided straight away that they were paying too much tax.

I'm not suggesting a 90% tax rate. We are not France; we don't have "supertax" - our highest rate of tax is 45% on people earning above, I think, £150,000 p.a. That is the absolute maximum that will be paid, even if someone has an income of millions of pounds a year. Nevertheless, however wealthy, some of them just don't want to pay.

In the publication Management Today in 2012 it was reported that 1 in 10 high earners pay too little tax. 6% of £10million+ earners paid less than 10% in tax, while another 3% paid less than 20%. Just over 20% paid more than 40% in income tax.

Our income tax is certainly not that low compared to some other countries such as the US. However, it is a lot lower than in Scandinavia which is well known for a high taxation system and consequently a much more equitable distribution of wealth, together with excellent childcare, education, care for the elderly and healthcare provision.

An article on the US News - Economic Intelligence - website states that
high taxation does not affect Scandinavian work motivation and productivity. Denmark in particular has a "clean and transparent" tax system, without many loopholes and deductions. This keeps people from sheltering their income.

My son's partner is Danish. Her parents complain about the high tax they had to pay, but now they are both retired, they are pleased they are Danish.
They realise that their system was much better for them when they were at work because of the security they had when, for example, she was off work for a couple of years sick.

The Labour party were laughed at by Osborne and Cameron for putting up the top rate of tax to 50% just before the last election. If the Tories had left that, we would not be in the dire situation we are now.
Look at what Osborne is going to do now; £20 billion cuts from welfare in the budget. Where can he get that from?
The man has no idea how millions on welfare live. He is just vindictive.

I suppose all the Tory donors could instead just pay all the tax they have avoided/evaded out of the goodness of their hearts, instead of donating to the Tory party.

Although I would certainly agree that everyone should pay all their taxes I don't think you are right Jen when you say

If the Tories had left that, we would not be in the dire situation we are now.

I think it has been generally proved that higher taxes reach a tipping point where they do not bring in more money.

I think the first thing would be to get rid of tax reliefs. It would mean tax rates could be brought down in the long run.

However, our taxes are not exceptionally high. It seems the "tipping point" for some multi-millionaires is set extremely low if 6% of £10 million+ earners feel comfortable paying less than 10% tax on their incomes.

An extra 5p in the pound, Gracesgran? They wouldn't even notice.

I agree with that, Eloethan. Some rich people are just very greedy. They are probably the same ones who complain about the number of people going to foodbanks.

Eh? Why would rich people complain about the number of people going to food banks? What are they complaining about, exactly?

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rob-owen-bell/how-have-millionaire-tori_b_6421342.html

Michael Gove and Edwina Curry both say that the poor are to blame for food banks.

An interesting article from someone who has left HMRC.

https://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/jenny-manson/what%E2%80%99s-gone-wrong-at-hmrc