Treasury to write off £4.3bn of public money paid out during Covid.

paddyann54

So ,is no one incandescent with rage about the tens of BILLIONS or more handed out to Johnsons mates for useless goods?How about the PPE still in storage and costing upwards od a million pounds a day ,that OK? Or the money that simply disappeared in Tory supporters bank accounts...offshore of course ? Only the people at the bottom of the food chain that are causing all the "Its public money" hysteria ,meanwhile the rich get ever richer and the poor have to decide whether to eat or heat!

Yes, of course we are. This has been discussed many times on here and will be again no doubt when it gets close to GE.Some of us want the public to be reminded and we try ti do that. But there are people who us we that we should get over it and that the PM has done a very good job.

PS. I was a secondary school teacher and know a bit about horrendous hours and stress of the job, not that it's relevant to this discussion.

Germanshepherdsmum

My commiserations Dinahmo. It totally changed my view of private pensions too - unless I had an employer putting money in too (as when I worked in local government in the early part of my career) I wouldn’t do it again.

growstuff yes I did make a good living as a lawyer but the horrendous hours and the stress are things I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’m sorry your financial position isn’t good, really I am, especially with the increase in fuel bills and the cost of living generally. I can assure you that £4000 is a lot of money to me. My pension income isn’t great (see above) and I’m very lucky to have been able to save whilst I was working, also to have a husband able to do the same. I was very badly off financially years ago as you may recall and I remember very well what it was like to feed my son and go without myself. I have every sympathy believe you me.

So you can appreciate that it was a big blow to me losing the equivalent of £4000pa. My occupational pensions were just over £600 a month and my rent alone is £825 a month. I needed the income I get from self-employment, but there was no support and it gets up my nose when accountants tell me I didn't get any help because I hadn't been declaring my income. I barely earn enough to reach the tax threshold, even before Covid, so I do resent somebody claiming I didn't get help because I'd been cheating the system. It would have been better to write that some people cheated the system but a considerable number fell through all the cracks. There were about 3 million of us. The Chancellor knew but just ignored the problem.

So ,is no one incandescent with rage about the tens of BILLIONS or more handed out to Johnsons mates for useless goods?How about the PPE still in storage and costing upwards od a million pounds a day ,that OK? Or the money that simply disappeared in Tory supporters bank accounts...offshore of course ? Only the people at the bottom of the food chain that are causing all the "Its public money" hysteria ,meanwhile the rich get ever richer and the poor have to decide whether to eat or heat!

My commiserations Dinahmo. It totally changed my view of private pensions too - unless I had an employer putting money in too (as when I worked in local government in the early part of my career) I wouldn’t do it again.

growstuff yes I did make a good living as a lawyer but the horrendous hours and the stress are things I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’m sorry your financial position isn’t good, really I am, especially with the increase in fuel bills and the cost of living generally. I can assure you that £4000 is a lot of money to me. My pension income isn’t great (see above) and I’m very lucky to have been able to save whilst I was working, also to have a husband able to do the same. I was very badly off financially years ago as you may recall and I remember very well what it was like to feed my son and go without myself. I have every sympathy believe you me.

Growstuff If you had read my first post thoroughly you would have understood that when I wrote about people being pissed off it was in the first paragraph which was just concerned with those people who had received the SEISS grants.

You would also have seen that I said there were thousands of self employed people who did not qualify for the grants. I also mentioned that the people who had received the grants were declaring on their tax returns and paying income tax and Class 4 NIC as appropriate.

The OP was referring to the bank loans being written off. I doubt that many self employed people took them out because the grants were sufficient. In fact out of well over 100 clients only one of mine did.

The systems for dealing with grants and loans were very different.

Finally, if you are prepared for MTD the congratulations. I'm not and many other accountants, as well as their clients, are not. We all have more important things to do.

Germanshepherdsmum

Sorry to hear you’re still working but glad you enjoy it. Perhaps like me you and your husband had pensions with Equitable Life. So many professionals did - and were advised to contract out of SERPS until the house of cards started to fall down, so don’t get a full State pension either.

Yes we did. For most of my working life I worked for small firms and I only for a large firm with a decent pension scheme for 5 years. At that firm all the partners had their pensions with EL and so I decided that what was good for them was good for me, my DH and my BIL. The latter retired before the debacle and got a decent pension. We lost out as did thousands of others. It put me off pension schemes.

Growstuff I did in fact start a petition on 38 Degrees about the self employed who were missing out on the SEISS grants. I didn't realise at the time that I had to quite a lot until they took it on. I was too busy and in any event don't do social media like Facebook and Twitter. Other people were more successful than me in bringing their petitions to 38 Degrees.

PS. I guess the partner in a law firm earns more than I did. My combined income from self-employment and private pension wasn't even enough to pay tax. The £4000pa I lost was my housekeeping money. It's pocket money to some.

What has been implied about self-employed people was nasty too.

You should get out more if you haven't ever heard such nonsense.

What is the fault of some on here is that they believe stereotypes and add to the damage with their own little anecdotes.

Dinahmo specifically claimed that the self-employed who didn't receive support were at fault for not declaring all their income in previous years, which is offensive to those of us (about three million) who were caught in a trap.

growstuff, that was really nasty. Nobody has said that all self employed people are fraudsters. Not Dinahmo, not the Chancellor, nobody. I have already said that I was self employed (as a partner in a law firm), though I retired before the pandemic. It didn’t occur to me to take offence at what Dinahmo said as none was intended. I have never heard such nonsense. So like many you didn’t get financial help in the pandemic. Not everyone did but that’s not the fault of any of us here, nor was it because you were considered a fraudster.

Dinahmo

growstuff

The self employed are in for a big shock in the next year or so because the govt and HMRC have decided that they should do quarterly returns of their income and expenses in addition to the end of year tax returns. Many self employed are not very computer literate and either prepare hand written records or bags of receipts and statements.

I'm one self-employed person who isn't in for a big shock and isn't computer illiterate. Again, I resent the implication.

No implication on my part. If you were to read the accountants' forums as I do you would see that many other accountant's think the same as I do. Just because you are up to scratch doesn't mean that everyone is.

I am sitting here at my computer about to start work on yet another client who sent me their records in the last couple of weeks, despite several requests. These are the people who are in for a big shock. Most of them hate doing any paperwork - it's not in their genes. Whereas I, who cannot sew a straight line, using a sewing machine and certainly can't produce a prize winning artwork, actually enjoy what I do.

I've read forums for the approximately 3 million like me, who didn't receive a penny. The Chancellor knew, but he thought the same as you ie. we're all fraudsters, who hadn't declared our income and don't know how to fill in a form. But - hey - we're in the minority, so who cares?

Sorry to hear you’re still working but glad you enjoy it. Perhaps like me you and your husband had pensions with Equitable Life. So many professionals did - and were advised to contract out of SERPS until the house of cards started to fall down, so don’t get a full State pension either.

Believe it or not, I am still working (75 next month) because our private pensions are miniscule. We have now got to the point where my DH is unable to do tasks that at one time were no trouble to him and we now have to pay someone to do stuff.

My diabetic dog costs me around £1500 a year for her medication and regular testing. I want to continue to be able to have good quality lenses in my specs - last time I had my specs re-glazed they cost around £450 for one pair.

These are some of the reasons why I continue work. Luckily I enjoy it and it keeps my brain active.

ayse

It’s tax payers money ie OUR MONEY! Why are these thieves not being pursued?

Huge amounts of money are spent pursuing little people over benefit overpayments, incorrect tax returns and benefit fraud etc.

What is it that makes it ok to write this off?

Possibly because anticipating benefit overpayments/fraud has been built into the system and therefore pursuit has been better resourced over a longer period of time. The business loans were made via banks, backed by the government, so not so easy to trace fraudsters and how do you recover funds from businesses that went bust ?

growstuff

*The self employed are in for a big shock in the next year or so because the govt and HMRC have decided that they should do quarterly returns of their income and expenses in addition to the end of year tax returns. Many self employed are not very computer literate and either prepare hand written records or bags of receipts and statements.*

I'm one self-employed person who isn't in for a big shock and isn't computer illiterate. Again, I resent the implication.

No implication on my part. If you were to read the accountants' forums as I do you would see that many other accountant's think the same as I do. Just because you are up to scratch doesn't mean that everyone is.

I am sitting here at my computer about to start work on yet another client who sent me their records in the last couple of weeks, despite several requests. These are the people who are in for a big shock. Most of them hate doing any paperwork - it's not in their genes. Whereas I, who cannot sew a straight line, using a sewing machine and certainly can't produce a prize winning artwork, actually enjoy what I do.

growstuff

*The self employed who were pissed off were the ones who'd fiddled their tax returns and so had low profits.*

Some of them probably, but not all. I hadn't fiddled my tax return, but I received nothing. My self-employed earnings are a significant part of the overall pittance I receive, but they were less than half of my total income. There were others in my situation.

I resent being labelled as a fraudster.

I certainly wasn't having a dig at you Growstuff. Some of my client's were in the same situation - their state pension being higher than their profits. But I have come across many who don't declare all their income and who were pissed off.

Furthermore, many directors of small companies who pay themselves a small salary so that they pay NIC but take most of their income in dividends, were also pissed off because furlough pay was based on salaries and not income.

You’re not being stereotyped growstuff, any more than I am. I’m sure you’re tech savvy, honest and keep good records. As I had to. It’s just that not all self employed people are tech savvy, honest and good record keepers as I’m sure you would agree. Del Boy for instance and I doubt you’re anything like him!

Yet I was penalised for being self-employed and received absolutely no help from the government during the pandemic, despite not having enough income to pay my rent and bills. The government was aware of people in my situation, yet chose to do nothing.

I am reasonably tech savvy, have good record keeping systems and am not on the fiddle. I resent being stereotyped.

Germanshepherdsmum

Dinahmo is an accountant growstuff so speaks from experience of what some clients do. I was self employed too but didn’t see an insult in what she said. I accept that some people aren’t tech savvy and have hopeless record keeping ‘systems’, also that some are on the fiddle.

Well, I found her comments extremely insulting.

Doodledog

The problem with the 'those in need' way of doing things (anything, not just in this case) is that it is a very blunt instrument, and it is always likely to miss out those on low incomes who have scrimped and saved a bit of money, or who are just above an arbitrary threshold.

Being 'in need' is not just about income - there are numerous other considerations to take into account, and it is all but impossible to factor them all in. Households and families need to be kept afloat as well as businesses, so if the 5% will make little difference it seems to me sensible to cut it.

I agree. Means testing thresholds have always been set at punishingly low levels. Time we moved on to to a fairer and more humane system instead of one which perpetuates the widening gap between rich and poor.

* Some people are very quick to criticise. VAT on household fuel bills is only 5% and makes little difference to the overall bill. This is nothing at all to do with the VIP route either.*

The levies on energy bills make up about a quarter of the total bill. The government is planning to move green energy taxes from electricity bills and swap them to gas bills - this would add up to more misery for people on top of the forthcoming huge rises, and as usual it’s the poorest who will pay more.

Dinahmo is an accountant growstuff so speaks from experience of what some clients do. I was self employed too but didn’t see an insult in what she said. I accept that some people aren’t tech savvy and have hopeless record keeping ‘systems’, also that some are on the fiddle.

biglouis

Tax rises - the self employed will just raise their fees and/or prices and pass that onto clients and consumers. And/or they will find ways to declare lower profits on which to pay tax. Its the poor buggers on PAYE who will get hammered. Such as pensioners who HAVE to work (often in shit jobs for shit money), who are going to pay NI for the first time.

And some people are pensioners and self-employed. The reason I have to do self-employed work is because my pension (before receiving state pension) didn't cover my rent and bills.

The Chancellor was told about people in my situation, but did nothing.

The self employed are in for a big shock in the next year or so because the govt and HMRC have decided that they should do quarterly returns of their income and expenses in addition to the end of year tax returns. Many self employed are not very computer literate and either prepare hand written records or bags of receipts and statements.

I'm one self-employed person who isn't in for a big shock and isn't computer illiterate. Again, I resent the implication.