Taxed enough already

The more astute among you may have noticed that Cicero is not a big fan of Big Government.

Big Government usually means that a lot of people have to find ways to keep themselves employed so they dream up more and more ways to intrude and to take over our lives, depriving of us all responsibility for looking after ourselves and each other.

And Big Government means high taxes which means we lose the right to spend our hard earned bawbees as we would like to spend them. Instead people like the Two Caesars, their Acolytes and an army of Apparatchiks think they know better than us how our bawbees should be spent.

And so Cicero hates Big Government with a passion.

And too often our political leaders, when looking to score cheap points from the Plebian Mob, and here Little Ed and those left over from the Last Lot are especially good at this, seem to think it ok to bash publicly and seek to tax more those of us fortunate enough to have some bawbees in the bank for a rainy day.

This is so wrong.

For when it comes to tax it needs to be recognised by us all that not only are we all in this together but those with the bawbees are in it far deeper than most.

It is now calculated that the top 1% of all earners in this country pay a whopping 30% of the total income tax take. No your eyes are not deceiving you, 30% of the income tax we all pay comes from 1% of us. Indeed the top 10% now pay 55% of total income tax receipts and half of us contribute 90% of everything that is received.

Hopefully eye watering numbers like that show that we are all truly in it together. It is however doubtful whether Little Ed and his sidekick Little Ed 2 will see the justice, or maybe the injustice,  in these numbers. No doubt their friends at Unite think such numbers can be ‘improved’.

But before anyone seriously advocates this, consider this.

In 1979 when the top rate of income tax was 83% the top 1% only contributed 11%. In other words a fair for all but regressive tax system means that tax yield from the wealthy increases. Cicero bets Mr McCluskey and the Little Eds never thought of that in their determination to fight class war.

Maybe we should have a flat rate tax system and see what happens.

Cicero has long argued that it is not the rate of tax people pay that we should all focus on but the yield. By doing this there might be less heat and noise when tax rates for the rich are reduced; less hypocrisy from Nick Nick and his promise breaking party; and more tax paid. And surely that is what we all want.

Though maybe too it would be nice if Big Government became a mite smaller with fewer job creating taxpayer-funded Apparatchiks feathering and protecting their own nests and gold plated pensions. That would be a real win-win.

And one final thought-why is it that no one out there wants to pass comment on Cicero’s musings? We know these words are being read but you can’t all be shy. Go on, say something-you know you want to. It’s easy and so long as it’s not rude it will be published. Comment here or via Twitter @cicerospeaks. Cicero looks forward to hearing from you.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus. Semper. 

This is interesting...

Is it only me...but the Tax Apparatchiks didn’t need to do this.

One day last week I got home to find a letter from the Her Maj’s Tax Apparatchiks awaiting my return from a hard day at the coal face trying to earn enough money to pay my taxes to keep this country afloat and awash with hospitals, schools and benefit payments. It was therefore with a sense of trepidation, fear and concern that I opened the letter from Her Maj’s people.

Surely they don’t want more bawbees from me was my instinctive response? Have I not yet fully paid for the local hospital I never use? How many more Apparatchiks’ pensions must I now fund?

You can therefore imagine my delight, pleasure and surprise to be informed that instead of me giving yet more of my hard earned money to the Two Caesars and their legions of Apparatchiks, it had been decided that they owed me. It wasn’t much but in these straightened times every little helps and in my mind I am far better positioned to spend my money more efficiently than some cosseted Apparatchik.

I was a little puzzled as to why I deserved such largesse especially as I was sure that dealings between me and the Tax Apparatchik were all square. You can be assured that I promptly pay every bawbee that I am required by current tax legislation to pay.

And therein lay the problem. I had paid all that was owed promptly. Indeed I had paid too promptly, well in advance of the deadline and therefore I was owed interest.

Now it might only be me but this is an absolute nonsense.

You may have guessed by now that I am not a huge big fan of being deprived of money I have worked hard to earn by whichever lot is in power. (You may have inferred this conclusion by reading between the lines of my writings and musings-and you would be right.)

Notwithstanding this however I do accept the need to pay whatever taxes I am owed and as it suits me to settle up at the earliest opportunity that is what I do. I do not expect to be recompensed or incentivised for doing this. If I wish to pay early then surely all should applaud that-at least it means we don’t have to go cap and hand to borrow from the Chinese to pay for our schools, hospitals, pensions and benefits.

And we also have the rule of double jeopardy at work here-I get some money unexpectedly back and the Apparatchiks have to spend even more money calculating, raising and processing the refund which would far outstrip the face value of the cheque, given the cost of Apparatchiks these days.

No, the money would have been better spent reducing the cost of the National Debt rather than giving me the liquid funds to buy a coffee.
But I did keep the money! Even though this is a national scandal.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Taxing times

Is it only me...but this man has done nothing wrong...another one.

This has not been a good week for those of us trying to run businesses and doing our best to build customer focused enterprises.

Firstly Stephen Hester takes a kicking for having the nerve to take what he is entitled to; then, despite my pleas to the contrary, the Apparatchiks egged on by the Two Caesars and the Last Lot, decide to treat Sir Fred Goodwin in the same way as Anthony Blunt, Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceausescu and give him a right going over for doing the right thing for his shareholders; and now Ed Lester, CEO at the Student Loans Company, is being pummelled because he took action to minimise his tax bill, legally.

It is time to put an end to this hysterical lynch mob and learn to revere and respect our business leaders before they decide to jack it all in and retreat to living on benefits, albeit if they are capped at £34,000 gross.

All of us want to pay less tax. And many of us take whatever actions we can take to minimise the tax avoidance opportunities available to us. We save through tax free ISAa. We invest in tax free pensions. We optimise the tax benefits from things like nursery vouchers and the like. And don’t we all take of advantage of every allowance going that will reduce our tax bill. All perfectly legal and above board.

And this is all that Ed Lester did. He took perfectly sensible steps to minimise his tax bill. So why the fuss?

It is also worth pointing out that lest anyone think that Mr Lester is not paying any tax whatsoever, he will be paying VAT on any fees he receives, corporation tax on profits from his own private company and income tax on any dividends or salary payments he receives from said company. He will be responsible for his own pension provision and will not be entitled to any of the company perks and conditions of service that many of us think of as a right of employment. So it’s swings and roundabouts for Mr Lester.

And to make matters worse, parliamentary time is being used up to discuss and debate this issue. The Public Accounts Committee is to investigate. And Treasury Apparatchiks are combing every nook and cranny at our expense trying to work out who said what to whom and when. All perfectly acceptable actions to take if wrong doing was involved but while tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not.

Yet again another innocent man is hounded and pilloried and torn apart by a pack of political wolfhounds. Do you think our political elite might be trying to deflect attention from something? I wonder.

It might only be me but I would like to suggest that since this man and the other businessmen mentioned above had done nothing wrong, that our Politicos stop hounding those who are trying to do the right thing and they start to focus on the issues of import that I am paying you to address. And that does not include chocolate oranges, totally legal business behaviours or wonky weather.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.