Wednesday 2 March 2016

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (386)

We would no longer get fabulous headlines in The Daily Mail like this:

VAT inspector pocketed £1.2million from her buy-to-let property empire while not paying tax in scam with her husband
* Savita and Naveen Seth had buy-to-let empire but failed to declare income
* Couple were found to have owed £171,400 in capital gains and income tax
* The couple also falsely claimed £63,983 in Job Seeker's Allowance
* Naveen was jailed on Friday and Savita handed a suspended sentence


There'd be no VAT or CGT anyway, far fewer buy to let empires, those that remain would be paying most of their tax at source, and with a Citizen's Income-style welfare system, there would be practically no welfare fraud.

What a boring world that would be, eh?

5 comments:

Bayard said...

"What a boring world that would be, eh?"

I'm sure the DM would still be able to find criminals of foreign origin to display on their pages, though.

James Higham said...

Um, Mark, just how many of these LVT things will there be [compared to, say, cow posts or gear changes]?

L fairfax said...

Actually if you work for the inland revenue surely the need for less tax officials would be a good argument against LVT (if you are immoral and don't care about the other benefits).

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, there's always that.

JH, I don't notice as many cow stories nowadays, and I have used up my back catalogue of gear changes, so i can only post new ones as they are released (one or two a year?).

LF, agreed, that is also the argument against replacing the existing welfare system with a flat rate payment. My view is that a lot of the HMRC people would move to doing LVT valuations and LVT collection and administering whatever residual income/corporation tax we have properly. So not all would lose their jobs overnight.

Bayard said...

There is a school of thought that says that HMRC is always deliberately understaffed, so that rich people's tax affairs are not scrutinised too closely due to lack of resources.