Spare a thought for the 2 million people....

[stevo72]

Spare a thought for the 2 million people who cannot afford any heating this winter or have faulty boilers and cannot afford to have them fixed. And many in comfortable lifestyles wonder why so many people use payday lenders. But of course as a country we can afford £12bn a year on foreign aid. Shame it can't be used to heat homes in Britain.

 

[DrainMedic]

Never mind 'like' - there should be an 'absolutely love' button to click below each post!

£20bn EU membership on top of the £12bn foreign aid. It's no wonder we're in such a mess.

 

[thorn]

Makes you even more sick when you realise that several of the countries we give aid to have a better GDP than us!

 

[hammers4spanner]

Every person over retirement age who has contributed to the system should be given a nice winter sum for heating by the govt .
That will never happen tho as the scum end of society will get the freebies

 

[Rickster123]

I'd send the kids out to work. The country was a better place when kids were shoved up chimneys.

 

[IDCHAPPY]

Remember the big tax dodging individuals and companies that rob far more from this country than any 8 kids single mother ever can though. Them and the banks are the real criminals

 

[Ray Stafford]

Makes you even more sick when you realise that several of the countries we give aid to have a better GDP than us!

Only USA, Japan, China, Germany and France have a higher GDP than the UK, and I don't think we send any aid to any of them - apart from to lend specialist equipment for earthquakes and that sort of thing, which all the rich nations do for each other.

Having said that, it grates that we send aid to India, when their government is spending money on a flipping space programme for flips sake.

I don't have a problem with foreign aid. I think its good for rich countries to help poor ones. I just have a problem when it gets diverted into some war-lords pocket, or gets hijacked by some political or religious faction.

Its possible to pay decent pensions AND have a responsible foreign aid policy. It just means proper, honest government at home.

Oh - it would also help if everyone paid their taxes. And thats not just big companies with clever accountants. Interesting fact of the day:

[DLMURL="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364009/4382_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_2014_IW_v4B_accessible_20141014.pdf"]HMRC estimate[/DLMURL] that the "tax gap" for 2013 - the amount that they think they should have collected, minus what they actually collected, was £34 billion, or a bit less than 6.8% of all tax, or about 5% of government expenditure that year (they borrowed the difference)

Of that £34 billion, just over £9 billion was attributable to large business tax avoidance.
£5.4 billion was caused by criminal activity
£4.6 billion was down to individuals
and a whopping £15.1 million was caused by small and medium sized businesses.

 

[townfanjon]

£4.6 billion was down to individuals

i would have a word with APP about that ray

 

[Ray Stafford]

Remember the big tax dodging individuals and companies that rob far more from this country than any 8 kids single mother ever can though. Them and the banks are the real criminals

Just to put some perspective on this. Looking at the link I posted earlier, tax evasion, smuggling and "black economy" are the only illegal elements in the unpaid tax stats, and only account for £15.4 billion. Then there is £7.3 billion of either legal avoidance or failure to take due care, and the remainder is stuff that even HMRC are prepared to admit are either genuine error or open to legal interpretation.

In 2011 - 12, the last year that I can find a comprehensive break down, we spent just over £200 billion of various forms of welfare payments.
Of that, £88billion was on pensions and pensioner support, and £31bn on sickness and disability benefits. Just £5bn went on unemployment benefit.
£37 billion went on benefits for families with children, and £41 billion on support for low paid workers, of which £22 billion was on housing benefit.

So whatever you think of our priorities in that £200 billion, even if every single withheld avoided penny of tax was collected (and a substantial proportion of that would be from moonlighting benefit claimants) it isn't going to make a great deal of difference.

Personally, I would like to see pensions go up, and working age benefits come down. I also wish it was possible to separate the genuinely disabled from those who are working the system, but every attempt to do that seems to get dodged by the dodgers, and hurts the genuine.

 

[julesverne]

I dont have a problem paying tax and i dont have a problem with people claiming benefits.
i do have a problem when the top few percent of society pay less of a percent of their total income on tax than i do And the people who created the problem politicians and bankers get away scott free.

 

[rpm]

Politicans & Bankers? Hand in glove comes to mind.

 

[Ray Stafford]

i do have a problem when the top few percent of society pay less of a percent of their total income on tax than i do.

Trouble is Jules, whilst there may be some egregious examples of individual tax avoiders, in general, It's the top few percent that pay by far the most tax. The top 1% paid nearly 30% of all income tax in 2013/14, and the top 10% pay well over half of all income tax.

Its too easy to blame bankers and politicians. The honest truth is that we get the politicians we deserve, and that whilst a handful of bankers deserve to go to prison, the vast majority are just as innocent as you and me.

 

[rpm]

Wasn`t / isn`t there a "Deal" in place where people from abroad living here can pay a flat one off payment to HMRC instead of paying tax on earnings. Wouldn`t take a high flying accountant long to work out what`s best for their client.

 

[stevetheplumber]

trouble is money is wasted take the latest boiler scheme free boilers for anyone on benifits basicly sounds good so far until you realise that it applies to rented properties as well so millionaire landlords renting to the poorest people get free boilers and the lanlord gets to keep his nine percent return
i cant imagine any landlords are going to be shipping tennants around to get a free boiler in all their flats

 

[lame plumber]

stupid eco schemes and paying people incentives to install pv systems etc is my pet hate, if something is worth installing and is beneficial then it should be worth doing without the need for subsidies, especially bleedin wind farms, when they get paid more to shut down than to run, if I got paid for doing B'all, I would be a millionaire by now