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Hitting the little guy again
Just like this government's approach to on line security issues, the strategy seems to be sack HMRC staff, force ISP's to build back doors into encryption so crappy overpriced algorythimic software can drege up legions of evasion suspects probably most of whom will be false positives and prosecute them anyway. Meanwhile, carry on having cosy chats with global corps to agree derisory CT arrangements and facilitate continued off-shore tax avoidance on a massive scale.
Used to be called despotism in the good ol' days.
Any pretence this shower had of being business-freindly in the traditional sense has long escaped the stable.
HMRC business friendly?
When were HMRC ever 'business friendly'? Or does the poster above not understand the difference between HMRC and the ruling political party of the day?
High time HMRC tightened up on this area- small traders should not go on about 'the big guys getting away with it' whilst blantantly not declaring their own income.
I have a client that uses airBnB and am happy to say he's always reported the income (and expenses).
Multi national companies and their tax structures are extremely difficult to change as it involves getting the agreement of multiple countries to change the rules governing cross border transactions- most of the current structures are a direct result of the transfer pricing rules and certain countries offering little or no tax jurisdictions so they can pull in large amounts of tax to the detriment of other countries. Sometimes talking will yield results where the current system strictly yields nothing.
In the meantime those multinationals pay a lot of other forms of taxes so perhaps look at the entire picture rather than the dumbed down 'sales of 2bn and only 40m in coporation tax' or the even more stupid 'banks earn 10bn profits and pay no tax this year' (ever heard of losses brought forward, oh Guardian readers?).
HMRC business friendly?
Couldn't agree more, Ian. And, would also like to add the ability to claim capital allowances, allows taxable profits to be reduced, which interestingly suggests "investment" and as a consequence "growth", which should in turn lead to more profit and thus more tax and so on and on.
What I find telling is:
"HMRC plans to raise £285m of extra tax a year by 2021 using these new sources of online data to track down small businesses that are under-declaring their sales. Apple, PayPal, Amazon, Airbnb and online marketplaces like Etsy are likely to be the chief targets."
Confirmation that the small guy is the ultimate target, whilst the big multi-national avoiders are the enablers.
no profits
Funny, we used to do a lot of work with online traders, but I canned it as a revenue stream as invariably they didn't make any money which made them reluctant to pay us very much.
Once they hit the VAT threshold, it was almost impossible to compete with traders under it, and under the VAT threshold its just hobby level income quite frankly.
Taxable profit was very thin on the ground.
The main angle I would suggest would be VAT registration thresholds.
On the plus side it also shows if you want to keep under the radar, declare the turnover, just make up the costs as this is harder to track. Did I say that out loud?
What a crazy statement to make
Extract above
In a recent statement, the ACCA warned online traders to err on the side of caution and declare their income.
I should bloody hope they did. I would have thought you could have taken the above for granted, no need to issue a statement.
Yes that jarred with me as well.
Err of the side of caution and declare your income! I guess they mean even if it is minimal declare it anyway. Do I need to tell them I sold a T-shirt on Ebay?
small traders and tax evasion
Always happy to see the big boys hit but it's about time the little evaders were as well. The self employed plumber/decorator or whatever sitting in his £500,000 house on an income of £12,000 a year claiming income support, working tax credits and so on deserves no sympathy. And gets none from me as I am paying most of his share of tax. As for the online traders I heard of two that do not declare their income at all so more power to HMRC's elbow. As for the Footie stars and their tax fiddles - we are all paying their share for them which, frankly, I don't appreciate.
There are a huge number of small tax evaders fiddling the system and if they all coughed up the rest of us would pay less so who can argue with that?
Wishful thinking
There are a huge number of small tax evaders fiddling the system and if they all coughed up the rest of us would pay less so who can argue with that?
Concur with the sentiment but I think it is wishful thinking to believe that if others paid more we would pay less; if others pay more the total tax take will increase, and maybe service provision paid from taxes will improve, but I doubt I will ever see the day when a government says " We have been so fantastic at collecting taxes that we have decided to reduce tax rates".
Tax rates are only reduced (we are given some of our money back) when we are being persuaded to give one lot or the other lot five more years, government expenditure grows to meet the tax take like winter follows autumn.
Practice what we preach
Always happy to see the big boys hit but it's about time the little evaders were as well. The self employed plumber/decorator or whatever sitting in his £500,000 house on an income of £12,000 a year claiming income support, working tax credits and so on deserves no sympathy. And gets none from me as I am paying most of his share of tax. As for the online traders I heard of two that do not declare their income at all so more power to HMRC's elbow. As for the Footie stars and their tax fiddles - we are all paying their share for them which, frankly, I don't appreciate.
There are a huge number of small tax evaders fiddling the system and if they all coughed up the rest of us would pay less so who can argue with that?
Hear hear, tedbuck.
Of course, we can help ensure that we are not complicit in assisting traders to not declare their earnings. For example, not paying them in cash and insisting on a proper invoice/receipt.
For the record I never pay tradesman in cash, always cheque, and whilst it was particularly galling on £40K extension, when the builder thought I was mad paying the VAT, I was not prepared to give him the opportunity to fiddle.
A case of practice what we preach guys?
Two Sides to this Coin
By all means the government should ensure that HMRC collects taxes whenever they arise but they have a responsibility to see that the cash raised on our behalf is spent properly too. For example, between 2000 and 2010 public sector expenditure rose from £338bn to £663bn (+96%) to no appreciable benefit to the tax payer. Instead of cutting back this unacceptable inflation that expenditure has instead risen every year since 2010.
In addition we currently have a growing army of managerial civil servants in both central and local government earning more than the Prime Minister; in some cases many times more so - e,g, glorified town clerks on £200,000 + a year. That too is unacceptable.
SARS reports etc
How many times have you filed a return to alert HMRC as to wrong doing and nothing happens - they need to get on top of the exisiting system - easy money if they staffed it properly and followed up on the reports