HMRC twattery

I posted an application on paper to HMRC five months ago.

Today they sent an email saying that that particular department no longer accepts paper applications, asking me to send 'electronic copies' by email instead.

They had lovingly scanned every page of my original application and attached that to their email.

Outbreak of common sense at HMRC

From Landlord Today:

An accountancy firm is warning Airbnb landlords they may be investigated following a decision by the short lets platform to share data with HM Revenue & Customs.

The Grunberg & Co accountancy practice says that in reporting its tax affairs to HMRC - in the shape of its accounts to December 31 last year - Airbnb has also agreed to share data for the two preceding tax years.

Alexander Kossoff, a partner at Grunberg, says so-called ‘hosts’ for Airbnb may wish to ensure their tax affairs are in order as a voluntary disclosure to HMRC could help to reduce any potential fines.

The comments are surprisingly supportive of the move, but there are those who don't get it:

Paul Barrett: Short term holiday lettings could easily transfer to spareroom.co.uk or other short term letting sites although spareroom does all types of letting. If the AirBnB platform isn't used then lettings cannot be detected.

Robert Brown: In that case, HMRC will (eventually) turn their attention to spareroom.co.uk. I know that they do occasionally focus on small local holiday letting agents where there are lots of holiday lets and flex their muscles. I enjoyed witnessing this happen in a popular Open Golf venue a few years ago, with a healthy six or probably seven figure sum extracted from many home owners cashing in on five figure rentals from golfers and spectators.

Why HMRC haven't always been trawling all these possible data sources - letting agents, banks which do buy-to-let loans, HM Land Registry (to identify owners of multiple homes), local councils and insurers (where council tax bill or insurance bill is sent to a different address), housing benefit departments - remains unknown.

I work in Pensions and Still I Think that this is Wrong headed.

Here ....and it's not a 'raid' you numpties.  You haven't got anything to 'raid' until you've made the contribution.

The fact is that higher rate taxpayers mostly use pension contributions as 'tax planning'.  Given the new access freedoms for pension funds this will likely lead to obtaining contribution relief at higher rates and tax payments on benefits taken at the basic rate and a potential double benefit of tax free transfers on death.

In fact only a relatively small number of taxpayer benefit from higher rate relief for pension contribution.

I for one would wholly support restricting pension contribution tax relief to the basic rate.

More on 'Spreadshit Phil's' NIC Changes

The level of understanding among the Powers That Be as to tax incidence is woeful.

Case Study

I am both self employed and an employer, as are an awful lot of self employed.  (BTW, It would be correct to include the owners of small businesses who chose to trade through a limited company as 'self employed').

I pay my own NIC's

I also pay all my employees NICs.

How come?

There are two market clearing prices for employees.

From their perspective that price is the pay that they actually are motivated to turn up for. That is their net take home pay.

From my perspective the market clearing price for their services is the total cost of employment. That is the sum of their net pay, their PAYE and their NICs and my employers NIC.

NICs and PAYE are a tax on employment.  And if you put high taxes on things you get less of it.

Someone point this out to the witless wankers in Spreadshit amd Tessa's government - and the state bureaucracy.  Please.

Update

As Shiney says in the comments:

You need to add employers workplace pension contributions, non reclaimable SSP, SMP and statutory holiday pay as well. Plus the cost of ruinning the bloody payroll and dealing with attachment of earnings orders and shit requests from HMRC. If I could just pay all my people their gross pay and say 'your problem' that would be great. Seconded.

Dear Phil....

...if this is your Bright Idea I'd like to point out that for my company to set up an ISA for a client I am supposed to produce at least 110 - yes one hundred and ten - pieces of paper as required by your regulations. Without your regulations I could provide all that the buyer really needs to know on one sheet of A4, double spaced, 10 pt, Verdana.

And I'd also like to point out that the FCA uses its Handbook to specify these regulations, and at the last count there were over one million, yes 1,000,000, paragraphs (and here) in that alone.

And what about the UK tax code?

Look to your own house you wanker.