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Not a penny more.

October 20, 2013

The consultation into MPs’ pay and conditions closes today, Sunday 20th October.  If you do one thing today, please take a moment either to email your thoughts to ipsa (mppayandpension@parliamentarystandards.org.uk) or add them in the comments here.

This is what I sent them.

You are consulting on proposals to increase MPs’ salaries and pay . My response is that MPs should have not a penny more during the life of the current parliament.

In Mrs Thatcher’s day the pay of MPs was tied to that of senior Civil Servants:

“On 21 July 1987, the House agreed a resolution that set Members’ pay at “89 per cent of the rate which on 1st January in that year represents the maximum point on the main national pay scale for Grade 6 officers in the Home Civil Service” from 1 January 1988 and maintained that linkage from 1 January 1989 onwards.” (from http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/)

The current HMRC Grade 6 London max is 74209 and 89 per cent of 74209 is of course 66046. This means that the current 66396 which MPs receive is very much the rate for the job and I cannot see any justification for increasing it.
Indeed the Coalition Government has operated under a narrative of an austerity crisis which overrides all other fiscal arguments: Francis Maude wants a Civil Service which is “fit for the future: faster, flatter, focused on outcomes not process, more accountable for delivery, more capable, more commercial, more digital, more effective in delivering projects and managing performance, more open, with modern terms and conditions, smaller and more unified.” Why shouldn’t this also apply to MPs? Let them have performance pay: if the economy improves, the welfare state runs effectively, the NHS works effectively, unemployment reduces and the happiness of the people increases, then they can have a pay rise. They have demonstrably failed to achieve any of these ends to date.

I reject your argument that MPs are “at the pinnacle of our democracy. This is a fact that we ought to record and respect.” I believe that MPs are public servants and should be rewarded and valued as much as any other public servant. In hard times, they need to understand they are subject to the same hardships as the rest of us, that we are “all in this together”. So: not a penny more.

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Stand by your spreadsheets

October 18, 2013

So whether there is one tax consultation outstanding or nine, we at least have some idea about what happens next.

A Ministerial Written Statement by David Gauke, issued yesterday (17th) tells us that the government now has consulted on “over 30” areas of policy since the Budget.  (I’d factcheck that if they published them coherently enough to tell – but I’d point you again to my spreadsheet of 23 consultations published in July.  I wouldn’t have called those 23 separate policy areas, although I suppose we could debate whether – say – “simplifying national insurance processes for the self employed” is actually a separate policy area from “national insurance and self employed entertainers”. And where are the other seven???)

Anyway, looks like the autumn statement will be around December 10th or at least that’s when all the paperwork will be published.  The statement says:

Draft clauses to be included in Finance Bill 2014 will be published on 10 December 2014, together with responses to policy consultation, explanatory notes and tax information and impact notes. The consultation on the draft legislation will be open until 4 February 2014.

So whatever’s open now, the next batch will be open for consultation (although only on whether the draft legislation actually works or not) between 10 December and 4 February.

Clear?

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Not waving…

October 18, 2013

Yes, I’m still alive.  No, I haven’t posted for over a month.  Long story short: had a ridiculously bad cold at the same time as a short term contract to deliver some training at the same time as the new  university term started.  Blogging, I’m afraid, fell towards the bottom of the “to do” list and, as I never got much beyond “Work.  Eat.  Take medication.  Sleep.” I’m afraid I’ve been out of the tax consultation loop for a bit.

So where are we now?

I started off with a quick gallop through the gov.uk consultations page to see what was open and if anything was coming to a close soon…

…which gave me some odd results.  The page tells me that government has 144 open consultations today, which is a substantial number, and that ten of them are HMRC’s.  But as I glanced down the list of ten I started thinking, hang on, this is odd – haven’t I already answered this one?

So I filtered again, by “all departments” and subject is “tax and revenue”, and got a list of nine tax consultations.

Eight of which are already closed.

Um… hello, gov.uk?  I left feedback on both pages, but I think your search engine is…. (looks for polite alternative to the word that immediately springs to mind.  Settles for:) in need of some remedial attention.

All right then, let’s go back to my own laboriously constructed spreadsheet from July 22, which shows no tax consultations with a closing date after October 14th.  And then let’s go back to gov.uk and search for “all consultations” published by HMRC after 22/7/13.

This brings up a list of 16 results: seven consultation outcomes, four closed consultations and five “open consultations”.  Good: now we’re getting somewhere.

They are:

  • Tax-Free Childcare – closed
  • Alcohol fraud: next steps – closes 28th October
  • Reform of an anti-avoidance provision: Transfer of Assets Abroad – closed
  • Residence of Offshore Funds – extending the scope of Section 363A Taxation Act 2010 – closed
  • Investment Management Exemption and Collective Investment Schemes: expanding the “white list”- closed

So, sorry gov.uk, but something is going wrong with your classification system.  And now I’ve run out of time to blog for today, too, and all I’ve achieved is to identify there seems to be only one open tax consultation.

Which is, I suppose, at least something.  Sigh.

Posted in Consultation, HMRC | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

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Wizengamot

September 11, 2013

So I was at a meeting of the Wizenagemot yesterday…

Ah.  I probably need to step back a bit and explain?  You see, it’s my belief that the debate about tax is divided between two groups.  There are the tax professionals on the one hand – people like HMRC and HMT and accountants, tax specialist solicitors and barristers, tax specialists in large businesses and policy thinktanks and lobby groups.  People who understand that a painting can be “plant” and whether or not a jaffa cake is a biscuit.  Let’s call them the tax wizards.

And then there are the people who don’t understand that “there is no equity about a tax” but think that there ought to be some kind of principle of “fairness” involved.  People whose “idosyncratic and ill-informed” views about tax are “a joke to those who understand the subject”.  The tax prats .  The citizen stakeholders.  People who pay their taxes and don’t understand why everyone else doesn’t seem to have to follow the same rules.  The tax muggles.

Well, if you’re a tax muggle you may not be aware that there’s an active debate in the tax wizarding world about this thing called the Tax Gap, which is the difference between the tax that HMRC collects for us, and the tax that they ought to be able to collect if everyone paid their dues and no-one made any mistakes.  And you don’t have to be a wizard to understand that this gap is never going to be zero because, after all, nobody’s perfect, but everyone is clear that it ought to be as small as we can reasonably make it.

Ah.  And there’s the rub.  Because David Gauke, the Minister for Magic doesn’t think there’s much of a problem with the tax gap at all.  He told the meeting that the UK tax gap was “relatively small by international standards”.  (Does anyone have a source for this, by the way?)

He also told the meeting that he made “no apology” for HMRC’s staff and budget being reduced, which was a bit of a brick considering that the meeting had been called by ARC, the section of the FDA that represents senior officials in HMRC, and that their agenda was to explain that they thought they could make a big hole in the tax gap if they could just have a few more people and some decent treatment for their members.

The meeting was at Portcullis House (and isn’t THAT a fabulous building!  Wow!) and involved tax wizards from HMRC and ARC, the Exchequer Secretary, his Labour Shadow and the Chair of the backbench Lib Dem Treasury Committee, as well as Richard Miller from ActionAid.  It was chaired by Vanessa Houlder from the Financial Times and was extensively tweeted here (although not at the time – no signal inside Portcullis House).

I am not sure there was any great meeting of minds resulting from the event.  The politicians spoke to their briefs, the campaigners argued the tax gap is bigger than HMRC’s calculation, and I sat there wondering (a) what does it matter and (b) when was ARC going to get back to the “give us more resources” point?

What does it matter?  Well, everyone agrees there IS a tax gap.  Everyone agrees that it is a good thing to endeavour to keep the tax gap as small as feasible.  There is some broad agreement on what elements are included in the calculation of the tax gap so we know where to direct attention.  So what does it matter in practical terms whether underpaid corporation tax is around 3-4 billion or 12 billion?  Can we just agree that it’s either “shedloads” or “a fuckton” and that in either case we’d like some of it back, please?

Which takes me back to (b).  I was surprised, frankly, that ARC didn’t drive home their point a little more strongly.  When your Minister says he makes no apology for cutting your staff and resources, surely you exercise right of reply and say, “yes Minister, but” and then hit him with your stats?  The stats you’ve politely buried in the Notes to Editors to the press release linked in the bibliography to the polite paper you’ve put together for the meeting?  Because, you know, he won’t have read that far.  Even his staff are unlikely to have read that far.  So when you have him sitting two seats away from you, you pass him another cup of coffee and give him your elevator pitch: invest £312.3m in us and we’ll bring you in eight billion quid (£8,260m)

As Saint Sir Bob apparently never actually said “give us the fucking money!”

Yes, Minister?

 

 

 

 

[note: edited 16/9/13 to add a link to the FDA reporting of the event – first link in the article]

Posted in Bit of politics, HMRC | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

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Revenge of the old gits

September 2, 2013

I’m a pensioner now, you know.  (OK I took early retirement and I’m also a student, but still, I’m probably a member of the Geezer Class rather than the Bright Young Things).  So I really feel as if I ought to care about the consultation that closes today, into Pensions Tax Relief: Individual Protection from the Lifetime Allowance Charge

(Incidentally, would someone in either HMRC or the Treasury please take an executive decision on Random Capitalisation In Consultation Titles?  Sometimes they’re lower case after the first word, and sometimes (as here) they aren’t and instead have Initial Caps.  Update your style guide and do a copy edit, please!)

Yes, all right, I admit it, I found the document to be literally unreadable.  I read the beginning and the end and skipped through some of the impenetrable stuff in the middle.  Because, you know,

Individual Protection 2014 (‘IP14’) is intended to allow individuals to protect from the lifetime allowance charge (‘LTA charge’) any pension savings they have on 5 April 2014, which has been accumulated with UK tax relief with a value of between £1.25 million (the standard LTA from 6 April 2014) and £1.5 million (the current LTA since 6 April 2012)

Oh come on, you glazed over too, admit it!

All right then.  What we seem to be looking at here is a kind of grandfathering provision – the government has decided to bugger about with the amount of money you’re allowed to save for your retirement, and there are a few people who’ve saved a bit more than we’re now going to allow (but a bit less than we used to allow) who would be seriously pissed off if they were shafted by the changes.

I pause to change into my shiny ’80s Ben Elton suit and say “bit of politics” because buggering about with people’s pensions expectations didn’t seem to bother the government when they changed MY pension from being updated by RPI to being updated by CPI each year.  Nor does it seem to have bothered them that they’ve changed my former colleagues’ pensions by introducing what amounts to a Civil Service Tax so that they are now taking home LESS than they were when I left, because of the “contribution” they’re making to the pensions.  You know, the “gold plated pensions” we keep hearing about, that were supposed to make up for the below market rate salaries we got from (to my certain knowledge) the mid eighties when I joined up, till I left.  As I say, bit of politics.  Now back to your regularly scheduled consultation response.

So in general I’m not in favour of buggering about with people’s pension expectations, so protecting the people who get the fuzzy end of the lollipop on this occasion is probably a good thing, no?

Well, except, how many of these people ARE there exactly?  I mean, we’re talking about protecting people who would otherwise lose out when the upper limit is lowered from £1.5m to £1.25m, right?

Let’s turn to the impact assessment.  It’s an odd kind of consultation, because it conflates stages 2 and 3 of the consultation process – we’re being consulted about

Setting out objectives and identifying options. Determining the best option and developing a framework for implementation including detailed policy design.

Drafting legislation to effect the proposed change.

So we’re being asked about how to solve the problem at the same time as we’re being asked to look at the detailed legislation to implement the proposed solution.

The impact assessment is detailed enough that it’s been signed off by Sajiid Javid MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, as a “reasonable view of the likely costs, benefits and impacts of the measure” and who are we to disagree?

And what does it say?  Look at the Exchequer Impact:  It asserts that there will be an extra £100m in the tax take in 2014/15, £80m in 2015/16 and £50m in 2016/17.  Say what?  We’re going to get in a total of £230m over three years from the difference between £1.5 and £1.25 million?  How much tax relief does someone get at 40% on a quarter of a million?  40% x £250,000 = £100,000, right?  But £230 million divided by £100,000 is 2300, isn’t it, unless I’ve got my decimal point in completely the wrong place?

The TIIN says (in the “impact on individuals and households”) that

It is estimated that about 120,000 individuals will have pension savings above £1.25 million in April 2014. Of these, those who don’t have enhanced or primary protection will be eligible to apply for IP14.

I’m weirded out about why it isn’t going to save us fifty times the amount shown in the TIIN if there’s the possibility of affecting fifty times more people .  But I’m more weirded out by the assertion it’s going to cost HMRC £1m to administer – what, for this one change, affecting two to three thousand people?  What are they going to do, write to them individually, in iambic pentameter, on vellum, with a goose quill pen dipped in gold ink?

So no, I’m not going to respond to this particular consultation either.  Except to say, pick a limit and stick to it.  If the government hadn’t put the limit up and then brought it down again they wouldn’t be having to think of grandfathering provisions.

And I have a Modest Proposal on the “simplicity and fairness” front – wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to set a date after which pension tax relief is only given at basic rate in the first place? *ducks and runs for cover*

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Ice. Ice, baby.

August 30, 2013

Dear God but VAT is boring.  I mean it is, isn’t it?  I know my background is in direct tax and I’d probably feel differently about it if my training had been in VAT right from the start, but, be honest, all this stuff about the temperature of pies and when is a biscuit not a cake?  It’s just angels dancing on the head of a pin, surely?

So how would you go about simplifying it?  That’s one of the government’s priorities for the tax system, after all, isn’t it?  Simpler, greener, fairer and more competitive, remember?

Well in the words of the old joke you wouldn’t start from here, obviously.  There’s detailed legislation, shedloads of case law, and a lot of it is European anyway.  You wouldn’t start from there but go back to first principles.  Perhaps something like “if you’re a company, partnership or any other entity, or if you’re an individual in business with a turnover of more than £70k, then you have to add 20% to everything you sell, and hand it over to the government”

And then “if you’re obliged to charge 20% on your sales, you can net off the amount you have paid to other businesses or entities against the amount you receive on your own sales, and the amount you pay over to the government is the net figure.”

Too much “simplicity” and not enough “fairness”?  Maybe so.  Like I said, I know very little about VAT itself.  But I DO know, in a rational world you wouldn’t start from here.

I mean, the writers of the VAT treatment of refunds made by manufacturers consultation have done a bang-up job, so far as I can see.  It’s a sensible enough consultation document, asks the right sort of questions, even has a decent enough impact assessment at the end (yes, I know they’ve forgotten to do the small firms impact test, but the government has pretty much abolished that anyway in their latest guidance, and, yes, I’ll be coming back to that later)

So why am I not responding to it?

Because it’s rearranging the ice cubes in the silver buckets on the occasional tables next to the deckchairs on the port side of the stern of the Titanic.  Instead of, you know, dealing with the bloody iceberg

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The Guru-Murthy test

August 27, 2013

Goodness, is it that time already?  Sorry, I’ve been hard at work on My First Academic Paper (which will be delivered in September here) and I’ve missed half a dozen HMRC consultations in the meantime!  I wonder if they missed me?

Anyway, we’re still in time to look at modernising the taxation of corporate debt and derivative contracts, although I’m not sure they want the likes of you and me actually reading it: under “who should read this” it says “companies; representative bodies; tax professionals; accountants and accounting bodies”.  Well, tough.  We’re all citizens of the same polity, so we’re all stakeholders in how citizens – individuals and corporate citizens – are taxed.

Anyway, in this consultation “the Government’s aim is to provide simpler and fairer tax treatment, minimising the scope for abuse, reducing uncertainty and improving structural and legislative clarity as well as reducing administrative burdens” and I think we’re all on board with that, right?

Sorry?

Yes, I fell asleep round about page 34 (although I woke up again on page 36, or at least enough to spot that there’s probably a typo in the last of these two sentences:

For example, loan relationships are fairly simply defined, whereas the definitions of derivative contracts are longer and more complex. However, there is no obvious reason why a combined code should be able to accommodate differences of this kind.

Presumably there should be a “not” or an “un-” in the second sentence?  Sorry, it’s a compulsion.)

Round about page 56 I started thinking, I’m not sure I’ve understood one word in ten of the last thirty pages.  I’d like to hear someone explain this to an audience of small businesses.

And then I started thinking that, yes, their heart is clearly in the right place, and clearly the objective is to achieve a significant simplification of what appear to be terrifyingly complicated rules, if only for the very good reason that the complications open up whole worlds of tax avoidance opportunities.  So they’ve done the right thing, and stepped back to take a look at the big picture.

But wouldn’t it be splendid if the people working on this took the opportunity to take a step even further back?

I mean, they’ve stepped back far enough to see the big picture inasfar as  “companies; representative bodies; tax professionals; accountants and accounting bodies” are concerned.  But could you explain it to your mum?  Not a fair test?  Well, could you explain what the loan relationship rules are to (say) Krishnan Guru-Murthy, if you found yourself on Channel 4 news?  Or could you write an article in the Daily Mail that its readers might have a sporting chance of understanding?

In other words, wouldn’t it be a much better attempt at simplification if they thought to consult not just with the tax wizards but the tax muggles?  Wouldn’t the best way of simplifying the tax system be, not to talk to the tax wizards who earn a living out of understanding the difference between a loan relationship and a derivative contract, but to the tax muggles who pay what they’re told and wonder why there’s no money left?   Viva the citizen stakeholder!

(Oh and, while you’re about it, check out page 98?  The “tax impact assessment”?  Didn’t David Gauke issue a written ministerial statement in March 2011 saying that “This new tailored tax impact assessment process will be used throughout the development of tax and NICs policy”?  And “This new approach will consider a wider range of impacts and cover a broader range of policy changes than the existing impact assessment regime for tax.”?  And is that fulfilled by saying, in effect, ‘don’t worry your pretty little heads about it, it won’t cost any more, raise any more, or make any difference really.  But please tell us if you think that’s not true.’

Because, mate, I think there might be smoke emanating from your trouser area…)

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Living in the future

August 8, 2013

Why can’t HMRC communicate by email?

Well, why can’t they?

I spent what seemed to me an unreasonable amount of time hanging on for an HMRC helpline today.  And then answered a series of questions to confirm my identity.  And then discovered the person I was talking to couldn’t actually resolve my problem, I needed to write in.

Now, why can’t I email?

Yes, yes; identity fraud, impersonation, insecurity of sending personal details electronically, blah blah blah.  (Incidentally, I can manage my bank account via a mobile phone app.  Maybe HMRC could get one of those!)

But I’d already established my identity to HMRC’s satisfaction during the phone call.  And there’s a thing called PGP – pretty good privacy – that will encrypt an email, if you’re paranoid enough to be bothered.   (Disclosure: I’m not, so I’ve never actually tried it)

Having established my identity, the operator could have given me an email address (hers for preference, or at least some kind of postbox for authenticated email) and the necessary “key” to operate the dual key system.

And then I could have sent her an encrypted email and she could have decrypted it and actually dealt with it, in the knowledge it actually came from me.   Or something.  But don’t tell me that in the twenty-first century, communicating with a government department via email isn’t possible.  It might not be convenient for the government or its departments – no doubt in this day and age the requirement to send snail-mail acts as a preliminary filter to stop those of us who might otherwise have emailed more often than the department might like…

Remember how long it took for the old Inland Revenue to adopt the technology of the fax machine?  (Those of you under thirty; it’s an old-time machine that acted like a cross between a networked printer/scanner and a landline.)  It’s time to make another leap of faith and embrace email.

Well, OK, it’s also time for me to fix the damned printer…

Posted in HMRC | 1 Comment »

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Once more, with feeling

August 5, 2013

I wouldn’t usually blog twice in one day, but having sat down in front of the telly with twitter on my phone, I spotted a tweet from the Spartacus group reminding people that the consultation on the hard-won further consultation on the mobility element of the PIP closes tonight.

We have been here before, of course.  But I thought it worth sending another quick response.  You have just got time to do the same yourself: email pip.assessment@dwp.gsi.gov.uk before midnight if you can.  All you really need to say is no: it’s not reasonable to reduce the distance at which you get the kind of enhanced financial support that might enable you to get out and about from “being able to move 50 yards” to “being able to move 20 yards”.  Come on!

Here’s what I sent, although I’ve redacted some personal stuff about my own experiences of mobility issues.

My view is that it is unreasonable to set rigid limits, whether 20 or 50 metres, in deciding whether or not a person is entitled to the advanced rate of PIP.  In my experience disability is a fluctuating condition and fatigue is, in particular, difficult to quantify.  A person might reasonably be able to walk 30 metres one day and 10 another, for example.  They might be able to move about under some circumstances – early in the day, in familiar territory, with the use of aids – and yet unable to move the same distance under different circumstances – late in the day, in a strange place where there is additional stress, or under circumstances which include other stressors, for example.

I believe a more reasonable way of deciding whether a person should receive PIP at the lower or higher rate is to use a test analogous to that used in determining tax avoidance.  Under the General Anti Abuse Rule there is a “double reasonableness” test (see B12.1 middle bullet) Under this test, tax avoidance is not deemed to be “abusive” unless the double reasonableness test is met:

This requires HMRC to show that the arrangements “cannot reasonably be regarded as a reasonable course of action”.

This test could be adapted into the PIP regulations for existing holders of, and applicants for, the higher rate of PIP or analogous mobility allowance by specifying that the PIP will be paid at the higher rate in respect of mobility unless this “cannot reasonably be regarded as a reasonable course of action”.  In other words, rather than testing and (forgive me) harassing fellow citizens with disabilities as if they were trying to pull a fast one, you regarded them as having a legitimate need for the higher rate allowance unless it was reasonable to regard any other course of action as reasonable.

Kind regards

Posted in Bit of politics, Consultation, DDA, Equality | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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A Modest Proposal

August 5, 2013

The problem with actors is that they never know whether they’re going to make any money or not – like a minimum wage worker on a zero hours contract.  The work they do is usually significantly more enjoyable and fulfilling than zero hours contract work, and there is the faint but real possibility of making lottery-winner money out of one successful contract.  After all, someone has to be Obi Wan and walk away with 2% of the Star Wars gross, even if most of us know our fate is to be the equivalent of the unfortunate stormtrooper who bashed his head on the doorway.

But think about this for a moment.  Alec Guiness died in 2000.  His estate still receives his 2%.  But should the payer deduction National Insurance before they pay it?

Yes, you may boggle.  The vexed question of actors, musicians and other entertainers comes up again in the HMRC consultation (which closes tomorrow) on “National Insurance and Self-employed Entertainers“.

What’s it about?  Well, actors are usually self employed for income tax purposes… but because they often need to claim benefits in the early stages of their careers when they are between engagements, they are employees for National Insurance purposes, so that they build up sufficient contributions to be able to claim JSA.

But, well, times change.  There’s a fundamental question about whether the royalties Sir Alec Guinness’ estate is receiving now from Star Wars is actually income from his engagement on the production (the work of acting itself) or from the intellectual property inherent in his performance.  And – not to put too fine a point on it – there’s a growing tendency for films and tv productions to be financed by special purpose vehicles (companies set up just for the duration of the production itself) and for the income stream then to come from various sources like dvd sales and downloads, and there’s an argument that making a cable tv company in Seattle, say, pay a few pence of residuals to an actor in Notting Hill under deduction of NICs is both administratively burdensome and damaging to the UK creative industries’ competitiveness.  And since the government has just introduced a tax break for the creative industries, it makes some sort of sense to make sure you’re not giving with one hand and taking away with the other…

Actually it’s rubbish.  There are two fundamental difficulties with this consultation: the difficulty of distinguishing between employment and self employment, and the difficulty in having different rules for Income Tax and National Insurance contributions.  Instead of faffing about with a piecemeal change like this one, how about doing something radical about simplicity?

So I have a Modest Proposal.

Abolish the differences between employment and self employment.

All of them.

Employment is under PAYE and self employment under SA , and the government couldn’t do without the steady cash flow it gets from PAYE receipts?  Easy!  Make PAYE a requirement of Limited Company status – if you’re a limited company, you can’t pay anyone – and I mean anyone – without deducting the tax first.  If you’re an individual, you don’t have to operate PAYE, you pay any employees gross, full stop.

Expenses are calculated differently for employed and self employed people?  Easy!  Make them the same.  Currently it’s expenses “wholly and exclusively” incurred if you’re self-employed, and “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” if you’re employed.  Abolish “necessarily”.  But if you work for a company and you are paid under PAYE you won’t have to make a tax return… unless you want to claim expenses.  And if you want to claim expenses they’d better be legitimate expenses, because HMRC will have a new squad of auditors who will examine a random selection of PAYE expense claims and you’ll be heavily penalised for, well, taking the piss.

Tax and National Insurance have different rules?  Abolish them!  Abolish the different rates of National Insurance, and instead decide what National Insurance is for.  Does it actually still pay for pensions, maternity pay, unemployment benefits and sickness pay?  Fine.  Calculate how much that came to in the last tax year, divide that by the amount of employment pay and self employment turnover there was in the last tax year, and multiply by 100.  That gives you what percentage NI will be charged at.

Hypothecate it.

Charge the NI rate that will produce the sum you need, and the tax rate that you think you can get away with (where “you” = “the government of the day”)

Employees have different rights from the self employed?  Why?  If I’m employed by a multinational and a piece of their equipment falls on me, I’ll sue them and (depending on the circumstances) they’ll pay me compensation.  If I employ a cleaning lady for a couple of hours and my stepladder breaks under her, she’ll sue me – and my household insurance will cover me (if I read the small print correctly)

Benefits?  You get jobseeker’s allowance, to be replaced by universal credit, if you lose a position as an employee, but not if you’re going through a bad patch as a self employed person.  Why?  (And, if we went with a Citizen’s Income, instead of universal credit, it would be even less of an issue.)

Now wouldn’t THAT be a simplification worth having???

Sigh.

(Here’s what I sent in response to the consultation, if you’re still interested…) Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Consultation, Employment, SFIT | 6 Comments »

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