Trump - Epstein e-mails

We have a SME, I can assure you that the majority of business owners are hard working honest people.

Our staff turn over is minimal, longest serving employee is now entering their 33rd year with us.

Labour has done absolutely nothing for the likes of us 🤬

It’s generally the really big businesses that run on those lines, and lawyers too rather than family type businesses.It happens a lot and Trump is definitely a fan of that kind of deal.

DaisyAnneReturns

Oreo

Trump’s modus operandi is the common business way of doing things by asking for something ludicrous and then doing some back and forth until a sum he’s satisfied with is offered.

Common is right, as its ons step up from gang warfare. My life experience does not show that all business people, particularly the very successful ones, work in this way.

Thuggery is not acceptable, and neither, to my mind is the average citizen's making a normality of such behaviour. It moves us ever closer to a lawless society.

Yes, in my working like I dealt with very large international companies, and none as far as I am aware behaved like Trump.

Trump is thuggish and abnormal in his behaviour.

Whitewavemark2 I agree 👍

(I am getting increasingly worried about myself I am agreeing with more of the left of centre posters than ever before 🤷‍♀️)

All will soon be revealed. Trump has allegedly told the Republicans to open the Files.
Wonder how many redacting pens they got through?

GrannyGravy13

We have a SME, I can assure you that the majority of business owners are hard working honest people.

Our staff turn over is minimal, longest serving employee is now entering their 33rd year with us.

Labour has done absolutely nothing for the likes of us 🤬

What do you expect a government to do for "likes of" and what did the Conservatives do that makes them palatable to you GrannyGravy?

DaisyAnneReturns

The raising of employers NI wasn’t helpful, for starters.

Incentives to take on apprentices. These are very costly to employers.

Business Council tax relief, especially as we have to pay for rubbish collections on top.

Just a few I can think of.

Conservative policy during Covid was essential to many businesses, and despite what is in the press the loans have to be repaid.

Oh I am politically homeless by the way!

One would expect a government which is keen on having a successful, buoyant economy to support SMEs DAR

Not that this has anything to do with the Epstein files but I can’t let this go by.

GG We have a SME, I can assure you that the majority of business owners are hard working honest people.

How can you possibly know that? How many do you know?

The last ONS data (for 2024) estimated that there were 5.5 million private businesses in the UK. Of these, 5.45 million were small enterprises (employing 0 to 49 preople). 37,800 were medium enterprises (employing 50 to 249 people). 8,250 were large (employing 250 or more people).

Over 4 million small enterprises do not employ anyone. They are people working only for themselves.

The largest number of SMEs (16%) were operating in construction.

The annual tax gap for 2024, the difference between what HMRC should collect and what it does collect, was almost £47 billion.

The tax gap from small business is the largest component of the tax gap by customer group at a 60% share in 2023 to 2024. Medium sized businesses 9%, large businesses 12%.

In other words, over £32 billion in unpaid taxes for 2024 related to non-compliant SMEs.

How is this honest?

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2024/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2024-statistical-release

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/1-tax-gaps-summary

That £32 billion of annual unpaid tax from SMEs would cover the annual cost of removing the two child cap on Universal Credit ten times over.

As for the unpopular rase in Employer’s NIC, it was to raise more funding for the NHS.

The Tories has reduced employee NIC substantially from 13.8% to 8%. The NIC cuts in the last two Tory budgets alone cost £20 billion.

NIC can only be used to (partially) fund the NHS and pay for contributory benefits. 95% of contributory benefits paid out is in State Pension. It is older people who use the NHS more than anyone else. The average age of an in-patient is 75.

In other words. when the last government cut employee NIC by £20 billion, it was cutting funding for the NHS and State Pension provision.

Perhaps if the 69% of SMEs coughed up the annual £39 billion they are evading and the Tories hadn’t given away £20 billion …

PaynesGrey the business people I know are all honest and upstanding.

Does your link show the reasons for non payment of taxes?

Is it due to companies folding?

Are they negotiating payment plans with HMRC?

Cannot open the link on my phone, sorry.

Cash flow can be very problematic for SME’s which can lead to late payments to HMRC.

Unless you are in a business where you get paid up front it is common practice for payment 30 days from invoice. This can be stretched to 60, 90, 120 days +.

All this whilst paying staff, utilities and general running costs.

Oh and the inference, that business owners must be wealthy…

GrannyGravy13

Whitewavemark2 I agree 👍

(I am getting increasingly worried about myself I am agreeing with more of the left of centre posters than ever before 🤷‍♀️)

I used to be a Conservative party member, then I joined UKIP. I have changed my views considerably, the abject failure of Brexit and the complete mess made of the pandemic which became insanely politicised did a lot to change my views. Now I am more mindful about whose benefit are things being run for. I really dislike the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer unaccountable hands. If I have to choose between nation states /blocs and corporations I will take the former if they are democracies.

GrannyGravy13

Cash flow can be very problematic for SME’s which can lead to late payments to HMRC.

Unless you are in a business where you get paid up front it is common practice for payment 30 days from invoice. This can be stretched to 60, 90, 120 days +.

All this whilst paying staff, utilities and general running costs.

Oh and the inference, that business owners must be wealthy…

We spread our customer base across private and public sectors. Public sector was really good at paying in a reasonable time frame as they were required to by statute. Some private companies really too the P. Cashflow was always an issue, our staff were very high paid IT people and when we had lulls or a late payments we haemorrhaged money. We got close a few times to losing it all. We went for about 6 months with only me drawing a salary and my husband deferred his so we could pay the staff. Company directors are not all wealthy. We were not poor but we didn't earn multiples of our highest paid staff either.

Over 4 million small enterprises do not employ anyone. They are people working only for themselves. (PaynesGrey)

I wonder how many of these have been pursued into self-employment when they are only working for one company that dictates all their work?

I am afraid that a large part of that unpaid tax is tax evasion. The black economy.

Whitewavemark2

I am afraid that a large part of that unpaid tax is tax evasion. The black economy.

Yes, nail bars, barbers, car washes etc.

Whilst I still use cash, I avoid places with cash only signs. It costs businesses to pay cash into their banks, why would any legitimate business put itself in a position of paying extra costs..

Back to OP

DH has just said a high ranking government official (USA I assume) has been named and has announced that they are stepping back.

Off to google in between wrangling a five year old ready for 8am school start 🙀

GrannyGravy13

Whitewavemark2

I am afraid that a large part of that unpaid tax is tax evasion. The black economy.

Yes, nail bars, barbers, car washes etc.

Whilst I still use cash, I avoid places with cash only signs. It costs businesses to pay cash into their banks, why would any legitimate business put itself in a position of paying extra costs..

Though there is another reason for "cash only" signs and the ones I know of do seem to be doing this/certainly say they're doing this in order to make sure we keep cash - as the risk is so high of the Powers-that-be doing what they want and abolishing cash totally (it is all part of the 2030 plan) and then it will be part of we could all be tracked much more readily. Imagine if They decide to do another Lockdown at some point and the rules state "Not allowed to go more than x distance from your home without special permission" and you've gone somewhere further than that distance and need to pay for something by a traceable method. Cue for Big Brother on your doorstep saying "You went outside your allowed radius and we have proof - ie because you bought something whilst there".

They have cameras in all sorts of places these days - but we don't want to add even further to the way that they can trace even the honest ones amongst us.

Remembering that one blazing row was enough during Lockdown - ie me having a row with a police person because she was hassling a man sitting on his own peaceably (I won!).

Whitewavemark2

I am afraid that a large part of that unpaid tax is tax evasion. The black economy.

I thought the figures for SME tax evasion were compiled solely from registered businesses? Ow can the HMRC quantify the money lost through the black economy. Are these registered businesses, too?

GrannyGravy13

Back to OP

DH has just said a high ranking government official (USA I assume) has been named and has announced that they are stepping back.

Off to google in between wrangling a five year old ready for 8am school start 🙀

I think it might be Larry Summers, who I hadn’t heard of before, he’s a former Democrat Treasury Secretary, but I don’t think from reading this that he has been for some years, he is involved in a left leaning think tank? He is probably a bigger name in the US than in the UK.
edition.cnn.com/2025/11/17/politics/elizabeth-warren-larry-summers-harvard-epstein

Good to see that Trump beginning to lose control of the Republican Party.

It’s the first big chink in his armour from what the US press are saying Whitewavemark2, Republican senators have shown they have backbone.

Not sure where this is going, but allegedly Farage has been mentioned 20 times in the Files.
Could be some 'power play' between him and that creep Steve Bannon?

GrannyGravy13

Back to OP

DH has just said a high ranking government official (USA I assume) has been named and has announced that they are stepping back.

Off to google in between wrangling a five year old ready for 8am school start 🙀

I saw some uproar about a previous Harvard President. I wonder if that is him or if it is (likely) another powerful man.

I am just sitting back watching this week as this unfolds. Dominos.