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British Tax System Uses Web Robots To Find Cheats
judgecorp writes "HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is extending its campaign against tax cheats with the news that it will use web robots to trawl cyberspace. The system will check eBay and Google to identify traders who aren't declaring all their earnings. From the article: 'The decision to target cyberspace to hunt down those evading tax comes as HMRC continues its campaign to recover around £7 billion lost to the Treasury each year. It is thought that this latest development, the use of ‘web robots’, will help HMRC track down rogue eBay and Gumtree businesses, as well as people earning second incomes by acting as private tutors. It will also help it hunt down so called cash-in-hand handymen and traders.'"
Damn and I thought Skynet was bad, or even the Matrix but tax collecting robots? Time for a revolution if you ask me. I won't support our robot masters!
If the government in the UK is anything like ours in the US they're just a bunch of shameful crooks baselessly wasting money to further their own agenda while completely ignoring their citizens.
You can't take the sky from me.
...I thought that was pretty much the job description of a government?
This reminds me of the US Senator who declared the necessity of an Internet sales tax on the grounds that people were "cheating the government" by not remitting tax voluntarily on their online purchases. This program seems to come from the same sentiments, and thus I feel towards it as I did towards that Senator: first, the government is not a legitimate entity unto itself. I can't cheat the government, I can only cheat my fellow citizens and myself out of some worthy use of those potential tax dollars. Change your attitude before you start bitching about what people do and don't pay. Second, between better handling the multiple trillions of dollars you already manage in a year and hounding the public for yet another thirty billion you feel you're owed in internet sales taxes, you seriously choose the thirty billion? Third, collecting money at retail is already the most regressive and indirect way of taxing the economy to run the government. You should be abolishing the sales tax entirely and making a more sensible personal and corporate income tax structure, not worrying about the fraction of the sales tax people do not pay.
Bottom line, systems like this are missing the forest in favor of getting self righteous and nit picky about the trees.
The idea that govt can only spend what it takes in is an obsolete feudal myth, disproved by the fact that the USA has had a deficit for almost every year of its existence (since Alexander Hamilton's doctrine of Assumption assumed the states' war debts). Japan's 200% debt-to-gdp ratio and a currency they consider too strong is another counterexample. The real question is why do banks get to have an exclusive right to create money and automatically attach debt to it?
"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild
I pretty much sell everything at a loss...
I don't see where eBay reports the "cost of goods"... and don't forget the 9% or eBay fee... or 3.x% for paypal...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The decision to target cyberspace to hunt down those evading tax comes as HMRC continues its campaign to recover around £7 billion lost to the Treasury each year.
How do they know how much is "lost"? Is it "MAFIAA accounting - type" again? Or is it, somehow, a "corporate mission" in disguise for the "target-collection for the next FY. Guys, this is how much we need!"? Or what? .
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Something about Lord Vader being warned by Princess Leia comes to mind here...
What these imbeciles haven't figured out yet is that their TAXES ARE TOO HIGH so people have to get creative to avoid the damn things... Make them more reasonable and fair, learn how to run the government on LESS MONEY, CUT THE BUDGETS, and they won't have so much of these issues...
As for the so-called "loss of 7 billion" - yeah right.. whatever. You don't have it now and are doing just fine. Chances are you'll keep doing just fine without it if you don't get it. CUT THE BUDGET... stop wasting money on bullshit...
if the governments stuck to their few legitimate functions or providing truly public goods then it would cost about 90% less
1. prevent foreign invasion
2. punish those who engage in fraud, theft, or threaten or commit violence
3. enforce property rights
4. provide a non-violent method of resolving disputes
anything else is politicians stealing from a group without favor to give to a group that has favor
appropriate fortune:Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time.
It would be interesting to see how much tax the British megacorps (HSBC, BP, BHP Billiton, GlaxoSmithKline, etc.) pay and how much the Rich and Famous remit every year. I bet the megacorps have their tax shelters and the Rich and Famous have their tax havens. This is just about squeezing even more out of the Lower Middle Class (I believe that's the correct British term, but please correct me if I'm wrong).
1) Gov: "Hmm, I see 1000 people a day picking their nose in the park - let's charge a $100 fine for picking your nose in public." That will raise $100,000!
2) Gov: Let's allocate the anticipated $100,000 nose picking fee to "disadvantaged children of bankers who need a free needle exchange so they stay high and don't nuke the gay whales"
3) Reality: people stop picking their nose in the park.
4) Gov: Crap - the budget is $100,000 short! let's get the taxpayers to agree to a hike, or we cut police and fire fighter jobs!
I feel like pulling a "Good Will Hunting" moment on you...
but I wont.... I wont.
the USA has had a deficit for almost every year of its existence
That's not only completely false, it would be misleading even if it were completely true. There have been several dozen years during which the debt was paid down at least slightly, and many others in which the increase in GDP far outweighed the increase in the debt. On that last point, I'm not saying anyone should ever count on growing their way out of debt (as a few of the more delusional Republican potential candidates, especially Pawlenty, seem to advocate today), but it's perfectly reasonable for a fiscally stable government to borrow some money in periods of preexisting economic growth, and of course there are times when you can cause economic growth by spending borrowed money in the right places.
So in a word, no. The US government has not spent substantially more than it took in throughout most of it's history, or when it did economic growth or fiscal responsibility closed the gap in following years. The only times we've had truly massive debt spikes were major wars, and the last thirty years of total irresponsibility. And that irresponsibility caught up with us about five years ago, truth be told. Most politicians are barely edging their way around to admitting the possible existence of a problem right now, but this crap reached crisis levels a while ago.
No government can spend more than it takes in for any impressively long time, and it certainly isn't the regular order of things.
Well, yeah, nobody's saying a government can't spend more than it takes in - that is obviously false. What they're asking is, is it sustainable behaviour? Just like a family living on credit can spend far more than it takes in - until it's interest repayments start outpacing it's total income. From what I know, the cost of servicing the US debts has long since exceeded the amount garnered from taxing the income of its citizens, and its only getting worse.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
First they came for Taxes, then they will come for your Death! Muahahahahaha!
"We the people ... " says enough about "our" government. If you think you're not part of your governance, then revolution is appropriate. Problem is, most people are more scared to be "on their own" than under the care and watchful eye of Big Brother. Just look at the Tits, Scrotum and Ass feeldowns at the Airports. If you REALLY want a change in governance then SPEAK UP LOUDLY about everything you don't like, and persuade people to your cause. Yes, there are too many sheeple voting, women voting for the "cute guy", young people voting for the "cool guy", poor people voting for the guy who is going to give them money and so on.
We have the government we deserve.
By comparison, Orwell was an optimist, and the Terminator was much too charming. These really make Hell pointless.
people earning second incomes by acting as private tutors.
Ah, yes. Because we all know it's the teachers who are responsible for the budget shortfalls. Wisconsin recently proved that. [/sarcasm]
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Well, I think Cameron really wants to sort the UK's finances out but he may not be doing exactly the right thing - it's all about delaying the inevitable financial meltdown a la Argentina but it's going to happen eventually. We don't exactly have the US corporate-owned system but it's not far off however we have a fairly free press and television still and there isn't nearly as much partisan commentary (on TV at least) so it evens out.
My real problem with the UK Government using IT to turn up tax cheats is that it'll be pissing money into a bottomless pit and whatever extra revenue they dig up won't come close to compensating the effort, just like criminal asset seizure and the Child Support Agency.
if the governments stuck to their few legitimate functions or providing truly public goods then it would cost about 90% less
1. prevent foreign invasion
2. punish those who engage in fraud, theft, or threaten or commit violence
3. enforce property rights
4. provide a non-violent method of resolving disputes
anything else is politicians stealing from a group without favor to give to a group that has favor
What of
5) Education
6) Health care
7) Transport infrastructure
8) Unemployment benefits
9) Old age pensions
10) Parks and community recreation facilities
11) Emergency services
and, no doubt, many more I just can't think of at present.
Hammer everyone to the letter of the law. Get them all, for every last penny they're "supposed" to owe.
Then watch people finally, finally get fed up, get off their apathetic asses, and fight back.
From what I know, the cost of servicing the US debts has long since exceeded the amount garnered from taxing the income of its citizens, and its only getting worse.
Wrong. Total revenues for fiscal 2012 are of the order of $2.6 trillion, total budgeted expenditure is $3.7 trillion, leaving a deficit of $1.1 trillion (figures from Wikipedia). Interest on debt for 2012 is budgeted at $474 billion. It's a sad fact to be spending close to a fifth of income on interest repayments, but then I can imagine there's more than a few families out there shelling out a lot more on repayments for mortgages.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
What you "know" is incorrect. The interest we pay on the national debt is $251B. The total revenue from income taxes is $1121B. And that doesn't count other taxes, such as corporate or excise taxes. If you tally up all of the United States revenues (excluding Social Security taxes), you get $1633B, more than six and a half times the debt interest.
Additionally, the long term trend (average over the previous decade) is that the debt is for the interest payments to grow at half the rate at which revenues are growing.
There's a lot of fear mongering going on about the American economy. It's very persuasive, but most of it is based on lies. We should absolutely reduce spending. We should also raise revenues. Repealing the Bush tax cuts, trimming back on military spending, removing the tax cap for Social Security, and applying some form of means testing to SS & Medicare are all reasonable approaches. Just don't find yourself falling for the FUD that we need to privatize everything right away or go bankrupt, because it's simply not the case.
Source
> If the government in the UK is anything like ours in the US they're just a bunch of shameful crooks baselessly wasting money to further their own agenda while completely ignoring their citizens.
Our government in the US is huge. There are crooks and there are crooks, and there are also good people of varying degree. Some spend their lives in public service because they like helping people. Have you ever met a defense attorney good enough to get a much better job, for example?
There are also a lot of functionaries, some of whom are useless and some of whom are trying to do the right thing and some of whom are trying to improve the system.
And yes, there are a lot of crooks. More crooks on the local level, bigger crooks on the national level. There are places in the US you can't get a water meter or approval of good architectural plans without a bribe.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The thing is you don't need a "robot" to do it. You just need to ask - by which I mean introduce or use existing legislation to force - eBay to supply details of all UK registered sellers.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I mean surely the ebay seller accounts will invariably be traced to the correct individuals, right?
Because governments all work on the delusion that everything belongs to them and that they're being kind by letting you possess some money or non-monetary objects.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Just a reminder folks. -1 Troll != -1 I disagree
Learn how to properly moderate or fuck off.
Is that debt interest just interest payments on the debt, or debt repayments, including interest?
Can you say that 15% of the money that the government takes from you goes just on debt interest? If so, that seems like good value for money.
Relevant link for that interest-on-debt figure: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Greece is in trouble AND taking the EU with it because among its many faults one thing it doesn't have is an effective tax system. Tax evasion is rive. Now, it is possible to run a state with a minimal tax collection but then the citizens NEED to pay for everything out of there own pocket. Greece also has very big welfare state and countless state projects with lots of kickbacks. The money has to come from somewhere.
Basically, tax evasion is not something harmless and cute, it makes those who pay taxes legit pay for the income of others. And gosh, don't it seem the case that those who evade taxes also benefit the most from state protection? Like politicians living on the state still cheating on it? People living in council funded housing? Employing minimum wage slaves who need their income supplemented by the state because working a full job doesn't pay enough?
Just take a look at Greece to see what happens if the state becomes totally ineffective in collecting taxes. And do you think any greek is going "oh well, we did it ourselves, we will have to sort it out ourselves?" No... every single last one is demanding the rest of the world bail it out after having spend decades already on a money drip.
Tax evasion? We should do it old style. Tax is the price for the privilege of living in a country, don't want to pay? Then the privilege is revoked. I at least am willing to pay the extra tax for the bullet of revocing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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(1) Debt != Deficit. Carrying debt is not an issue - old loans get paid but new ones also get made, all based on the goodwill of the American Government being able to honour its debts at some point in the future.
(2) Most of Japan's creditors are in fact Japanese institutions and citizens - the government owes its own people, and they're obviously still willing to lend it money.
(3) Where do banks have an exclusive right to "create" money? Or are you attacking the principle of fractional reserve banking that's been at the core of capitalism since the Medicis of Florence?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
bailing out the insurance companies
foisting a ponzi-scheme fraud bank privitization scheme, complete with payed-for glowing papers written by bought-off US ivy league academics, on a small, defenseless nation (iceland) and then declaring them terrorists when they refuse to pay you protection money, as though you were some 3rd rate mafia knee-breaker
providing a 'back office' for american companies like AIG to conduct unregulated business activites, like writing credit default swaps against CDO tranches of subprime mortgage securities. of course many experts in the industry call CDS 'gambling' and the CDO business a "ponzi scheme", but don't let that stop your regulators from ignoring what was happening.
when your regulators are actually needed to bend the rules, and prevent a Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, which would toss the entire planet into chaos after it makes the Primary Reserve Fund money market fund lose money, freaking out just about everyone whose job it is to manage money, well, you take your financial regulators, and instead of helping the US prevent this, instead you act all of a sudden like you need to actually care about regulation.
did i mention that the british taxpayers had to take over some of the british banks, pay their debts off? i.e. pay the armani wearing maserati driving hedge fund managers, bank executives, etc, who caused this CDO / CDS mess in the first place?
but god forbid you sell stuff on ebay without reporting it properly.
The UK Revenue come up with these kind of big statements now and again but I think they will make more money out of the FUD factor than from the actual bots - that is if they can get a working system. Without information from ISPs etc it will be difficult to tie most eBay identities to an actual tax payer, the amount of information to trawl and reconcile will be enormous and the SNR very high.
Of course, a better solution would be to make Vodaphone and the other mega-corps actually pay the bills that they owe. HMRC does not have a good record on that. *Private Eye* has been keeping track. So, this is just specious propaganda.
While undoubtedly everyone should do their duty and cough up a percentage of any income they make to ensure the streets sparkle, the hospitals cure and the schools educate, I wonder if it wouldn't be more immediately worthwhile to go after slightly larger evaders of tax. I Am Not A Tax Advisor, but if Private Eye is to be trusted (and of course I do, blindly), large corporations evade on such a huge scale that HMRC might have found one third of the £7B in a single company - Vodafone: http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1289
Except that HMRC struck a deal with them to recover only a fraction of the tax they evaded. And no interest. You will read the article, I am sure, so I don't need to also point out that another big fish that apparently got off the hook is Goldman Sachs, owing £20M in interest alone. How many thieving Gumtree sellers does that equate to, I ask myself.
(Posting AC only because I can't remember/recover my password.)
An effort should be made also to perfect the system of spending public money. Not only collecting.
Squandering of public money, corruption, etc. make people unwilling to give away the hard earned money for a waste.
If you are correct artor3, a little under one sixth of our tax revenue is spent on interest payments which do nothing for us.
I don't need much mongering to fear that... We aren't in the previous decade, we're in this one.
It's one thing to borrow beer money, it's another thing to borrow rent money.
Is that a lie?
Don't worry about FUD, I don't believe we need to privatize everything or go bankrupt.
I agree with your entitlement reform ideas, except for the repeal of tax cuts.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
Never mind the six billion quid HMRC let Vodafone off for free. You can now measure cuts to services in percentages of a Vodafone.
Or George Osborne's personal tax evasion.
No, it's all the eBay traders. Yes, they must be the problem.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Is what they are doing legal and does it break ebay's T&Cs?
Dirk
THE OSBOURNES, Bog Society, Sunday (NTN) — A survey by fraud investigators has revealed the top ten worst excuses used by the evil benefit cheats depriving you, yes you, of valuable pennies you could have put toward your next pint.
"Benefit fraud is no joke," said welfare reform minister Lord Fraud, "and yet our investigators are routinely dealing with barefaced cheek and ridiculous excuses for stealing money from the taxpayer.
"Fortunately, they're mates of George's, so we can get on with scapegoating victims we're fairly sure probably can't fight back. You weren't limping on the way in here, were you?"
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Honestly? Trawling the web for tax offenders?
I don't know how long it is going to take to rig false information to point to thousands of innocent people, but I think that will be measured in days at most. The UK tax office has the rather bizarre ability to tax you for some arbitrary amount at which point you are required to prove they have tit wrong (in contrast with your human rights where you are innocent until proven guilty), which is a feature they enthusiastically abuse - whilst not getting their own house in order..
bunch of shameful crooks baselessly wasting money to further their own agenda
I pay my taxes, why shouldn't someone who makes his living on ebay pay his as well.
We complain about goverment cuts, but then when the goverment probes freely avalible information to claim their lawful income we also complain.
Pick one, you can have a functioning govement with money to act and improve your services, but you have to pay tax, or you can give up the NHS, and all the other functions the govement carries out. Most of which are taken for granted by the general public as its much more fun to complain about the things that are wrong.
The federal government doesn't repay any debt. They have done so in the past, but not in the last 70 years or so.
So it's intrest-only, and there are no plans to ever repay it. That would require so much money that we'd have to shut down all social programs for 25-30 years, or shutting down the army for about 70 years (and obviously in both cases spending must not grow as a result of cutting either, so e.g. this is in the assumption Sarah Palin becomes the next president and ObamaCare gets repealed before you can say "not reelected").
Trying to get cash in hand handymen and other small traders to declare their income would likely backfire. As soon as these guys start to do their taxes properly, they will claim back expenses and input VAT and the treasury will likely end up out of pocket instead of the other way around as they are hoping.
Hmmm, so they'll use the tools of a well known tax avoider to go after other people avoiding their fair share of taxes. Nice...
(1) Debt != Deficit. Carrying debt is not an issue - old loans get paid but new ones also get made, all based on the goodwill of the American Government being able to honour its debts at some point in the future.
This is of course the big problem with increasing debt. You would think that if, say, debt doubled, intrest payments would double. But this is not true.
The federal government has loans, on average, of 3 years, at x%. So every 3 years the federal government takes on new loans, at the new intrest rate. So if debt levels rise, the intrest percentage on existing loans rises within 3 years, and so the intrest payments rise accordingly.
So a doubling of debt would do something between rising intrest payments a factor of 4, or it might raise them a factor of 10. Most people think government debt can't spiral out of control in a year's time, but what happens in practice is that with a doubling of intrest rates, the federal government's intrest rates go up 33% for 3 years. If that happens, the federal government will have no choice but to cut half it's social programs in 3 years time.
Incidentally, this is exactly what is happening in Greece. Next year will be worse for Greece than this year, and the next year will be worse still. After that, things *might* (assuming they're not bankrupt) get better.
This just sounds like another game where they're focussing on the little guys whilst ignoring the big tax avoiders.
Like this guy, who's a member of the House of Lords (comparable to the Senate, except half of the members get inn through birthright): http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/04/lord-ashcroft-vat-conservative-polls
It wasn't really until Reagan that the National Debt took on a life of its own. It was tiny enough in the past that it was never really an issue, but Reagan, for better or for worse, decided to win the Cold War by spending so much the Russian government wouldn't be able to feed its citizens if it tried to keep up. The military industrial complex being what it is, we've never really drawn back from that unreasonably high level of spending on our military. Meanwhile, it's supporters engage in all manner of frantic arm waving to try to distract the public's attention towards lesser costs like money for the arts, NASA, social welfare programs, and health care initiatives. Never mind that the positive externalities of these programs more than justify the costs--they make easy targets to a public that wouldn't understand the notion of a cost-benefit analysis unless Garth Brooks wrote a song about it.
While I appreciate that some so-called "Libertarians" see past this and want to cut military funding to the same degree they want to cut everything else, I find that too often they have a naive sort of blind faith in the free market and a weak understanding of the game theory underpinnings of modern political science. Most government spending is worthwhile in the sense that it generates more benefit to the public than it costs, the cost per person is low, and that it would be unaffordable without the pooled collective spending power of an entire nation (that is to say, the fixed costs are such that the unit cost can only be reasonable with a full buy-in from the entire tax-paying public).
In short, you are correct that government spending is simply too high to sustain long term--but not by such a large margin as you may think. The current tax rates are fine--even those under Clinton (which only were higher for those making far more money than myself and likely you as well) were not too burdensome for industry. Despite the protestations of some libertarians, Atlas Shrugged, if it could happen, would never happen at our current modest tax rates. I think we could easily work our way to a surplus through Military cuts alone, though I can't be bothered to go look up the exact numbers--and to make our spending completely sustainable, all we need is a $1 dollar surplus.
I find it interesting when governments start emphasizing on petty fraud, while they are still not equipped to deal with major fraud of corporations. I guess someone is after quick wins and short term rewards, rather than dealing with something meaningful. The UK government is still not able to handle, let alone understand accounting practices of large corporations. Perhaps they would like to get the money where it can be found, but that takes effort of course...
UK uncut already found quite a few billion of tax avoidance. maybe the gov should have a look at that.
The government's never done shit for me, why should I pay them a single cent?
And meanwhile Dave Hartnett is letting multinational companies get away with tax fraud on an enormous scale. Vodafone, who actually saved the money for the interest on the tax bill they knew they should pay, have paid none of it. They even declared the amount 'saved' as a windfall profit. Apparently HMRC got no less than every penny they could from Vodafone. http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1289
They're just the biggest one. There are several cases where Hartnett, who doesn't seem to know a lot about tax, has made agreements with companies to settle tax bills against the guidance, or without the knowledge, of the actual tax experts who work for him. £0.95 Billion from Vodafone was sitting there to be taken - because they'd actually been reasonably honest in a sense - and somehow that got ignored. But it's OK, we'll make up the difference by pestering people on ebay over the amount of money they made on some junk they bought from ebay.
Anyone want to wager that the tax recovered probably doesn't cover the cost of landfill and environmental disposal for most of the crap that will get binned rather than sold on ebay?
User-agent: HMRC-Spider
Disallow: /
I wonder if it will follow the rules??
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
So let me get this straight. The statement you are contesting says "the USA has had a deficit for almost every year of its existence." Your reference to "misleading" aside, you say the statement is "completely" false. Well, it is false for any reasonable definition of "almost every", but suppose it had said "a majority of the years" instead of "almost every year." Then it would be true, wouldn't it? And it would certainly be true for "almost every" when restricted to the range from 1960 through 2011, with covers the entire lifetimes of a majority of slashdot readers. Anyway, the simple fact is that, while significant deficits have been run in the past to cover the War of 1812, Civil War, WW I, Great Depression, and WW II, since 1970 we have had a huge run of deficits incurred without any such excuse, simply to cover normal operations.
As for the rest, let's leave tweedledee Democrat and tweedledum Republican out of it, shall we? Both have been approximately equally destructive and craven in the way they will not face reality.
There is no need to be vague or uncertain with the facts; the information is readily available right here. Here's the summary one can make of that data:
Longest run of DEFICIT years: 28 (1970-1997), integrating to 81.91% GDP
Longest run of surplus years: 18 (1875-1892), integrating to 72.30% GDP
Do you see a trend in terms of timeline?
First year of DEFICIT >10% GDP when not fully mobilized for an existential war: 2009. Didn't happen in the Great Depression, or at any other time since the founding of the Republic. We're going to duplicate that feat again this very year.
Integrated value of (DEFICITS as %GDP) since the founding: 301.69
Integrated value of (surpluses as %GDP) since the founding : 40.52
Years of DEFICIT since the founding: 117
Years of surplus since the founding: 104
Years of DEFICIT since 1960: 46
Years of surplus since 1960: 6 (SIX) (1 Bush 2, 3 Clinton, 1 Nixon, 1 Eisenhower)
Decades of net DEFICIT since the founding: 13
Decades of net surplus since the founding: 8
Decades of net DEFICIT since 1960: ALL OF THEM!!!
Decades of >10% integrated value of (DEFICIT as %GDP): 8
Decades of >10% integrated value of (surplus as %GDP): 0 (ZERO)
In the following tables all DEFICIT values are expressed as positive numbers and surpluses as negative numbers.
NOTE: I couldn't include the tables because slashdot has a STUPID AS SHIT lameass lines-too-short filter. I'll see if there's some way to put them in my profile.
The more you tax, the less you get. Apparently all the US government gets to have is 18%. No matter what the official tax rates are. I wonder what the figure is for the UK, but there has to be some equilibrium point where people who are already finding ways to evade tax will simply get even more creative. What does happen, however, is that law becomes more oppressive.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
some sort of mandate of financial transparency to the public? ie: is there a webpage or something where the UK populace can look up to see where there money is going (or went?) for any given year?
Great! I am so happy that HMR&C will be using their muscle to extract more taxes so that the UK government can send it straight to Portugal, Ireland, Greece or just fund the Common Agricultural Policy (i.e., subsidise France). If we are really lucky they'll send it to India who can afford aircraft carriers when we can't even afford the planes for the ones we have got, China who is extending it's high speed rail link, Uganda so Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni can buy the top-of-the-range Gulfstream G550 private planes, or anyone else interested in Freebies handed out by our loony government. Oh yes! and let's go on strike and deny the middle classes the services they are paying 4. Brilliant Britain.
Yes, all makes sense. Also Greece being a part of the Euro zone makes it stupendously expensive for Brits to holiday there. Greece has a high dependency on tourism and by making themselves an expensive destination for a country that historically has been a huge consumer of Greek holidays they have slashed the 6th richest nation off their menu. Smart. I'd like to go but a/ can't afford it and b/ can find better value for money close by. I would far rather we contributed to their economy in the time honoured fashion of fair competition instead of self indulgence and bailouts.
Don't kid yourself. HMRC are lazy. Lazy. Even when you offer to pay your tax they still won't let you. Yes, that's right, a TAX OFFICE THAT REFUSES TO ACCEPT TAX.
Not the brightest bunnies in the world.
This is a non-story. Or pure fantasy. Or both.
This will be totally unfair without a review human going through each case. On ebay when you sell your crap, that's treated as liquidating your assets and you don't pay tax on that. The idea being that you don't pay tax on something you've already payed tax on in the first place (if its cd's, movies, computers, etc). So really to distinguish between a trader and somebody clearing out there house, you need a human for that. But even then.......................
It's got to be a joke living in the UK everything is rising in price and less jobs about something is going to snap.
The taxes are really ridiculous though and hidden everywhere and they will use any excuse under the sun to fine you I wouldn't mind so much if they had any sense with the money but it seems to mostly go to Europe and Immigrants.
You get taxed. It pisses you off. You keep a closer look on money they took from you. If they waste it, you become furious and come up with torches and pitchforks and demand blood and heads to roll!
Alternatively, you evade tax and then you don't really care. Meh.
If former method doesn't work for you, it is obvious that you'll be inclined to latter, to save your health and sanity.
Consequently, the more your government steals, the laxer they are about your tax evasion (if they know what is good for them or if they feel lucky, punks!) - they are bribing you to not revolt.
Therefore, in the long run, stricter taxing is better for the people. However, it could also be a bluff.
The government calls them cheats but the government is a pirate. It is all a matter of perspective.
Perhaps more people would pay taxes for such things if the administrative load was less ridiculous.
Why spend several hours filling out forms just so you can pay a few bucks tax because you sold some second hand crap?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Most of the stuff I sell on ebay was purchased new for personal use, never depreciated, and now sell on ebay for pennies on the dollar to find it a new home. Do I get to take the loss?
No, some of them are in it for the bitches.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I would like to see IRS do the same. In particular, we have loads of housing contractors who use sub-contractors that are essentially fronts for illegal aliens. These companies offer their services on the net. The hard part is that they will change the business name each year to avoid IRS AND ICE detection. As it is, I know of two groups that have done this (they are oh, so proud of themselves that they avoid IRS and they do not consider ICE a threat ).
Reagan was first, and this has been SOP for every Neo-Conservative since: borrow and spend, let the next guy in office sort it out. Personally, I don't like the term "Neo-Conservative" since it muddies the waters and makes people think that these idiots are even remotely conservative. I prefer to call them "fascists."
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Time for a flat tax and also gets the drug dealers (not from the deals but from the other stuff they buy) you can make some stuff like food tax free.
Off the top of my head, the two things I've massively benefited from are:
Compare and contrast that with the US, and I can see your point. On the other hand, CA has nicer weather. I doubt I'll retire in this country (we'll probably go back to the UK) but it's a nice place to live, even if I do have to be sexually molested every time I come into and out of the country.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Because there simply is nothing worse than people earning their own living, who for one reason for another don't wish to contribute to a failing, inefficient, bloated, unethical fascist bureaucracy(?).
It's a significant key-point to observe when the priorities of any governmental system are to criminalize citizens in order to self-sustain and further expand it's own cannibalistic mass.
Further, this is occurring in one of the most heavily taxed nations on earth. The growth of a decentralized parallel socioeconomic system is an expected organic response to the burden of a parasitic government, and a considerably Darwinian response at that.
We live today in a technologically and individually empowered global anarchic superstate, juxtapositioned with various self-serving, tyrannical entities trying desperately to wall-off their geographically designated wage-slave colonies from socio-evolutionary progress, liberty and social globalism.
These entities have several weapons usable against the people it designates as their blood-and-money-obliged property:
1) Criminalization: This works primarily as a fascist implementation owing to fear of being classified as a criminal, subjugated and enslaved to long-term punitive effects. Secondarily, this is an incredibly effective method for generating [read: extorting] revenue from extremely large population segments. Frequently laws are enacted for the SOLE purpose of bleeding money from 'citizens' to patch budget holes by means of mass criminalization. For example seat belt laws were tabled in Washington State (among others) almost exclusively by virtue projected earnings, which means that in order for the bill to succeed, huge numbers of people necessarily must to be punished and fined for exercising personal freedom. While taxation may be endemic to the system, it is utterly unforgivable to criminalize people for profit and/or social control.
2) Communications Limitation: At it's most subtle we're barely aware it exists; where dissident thinkers and conscientious objectors become branded as enemies/communists/criminals/terrorists/etc. and therefore socially acceptable to silence, subjugate, imprison and even assassinate. Anyone remember COINTELPRO? America is the new PRC. At it's most blatant you see governments shutting down cell networks and internet infrastructure (this is achieved primarily by corporate compliance to tyrannical edict) in order to prevent people from recognizing and exercising their own sovereignty and civil liberties.
3) Infiltration and Destruction of Social Architecture: This article outlines an example of infiltration of social constructs, again, for the purposes of plugging a budgetary hole and results in severe criminalization of a population segment who, primarily, seek independence and freedom from exploitation in a free market economy. We're not talking about a unethical corporations using social architecture to exploit workers and seek tax shelters (because that's legal). No, we're talking about factotums, teachers, gardeners, laborers, artists, musicians -- real people. Real people who embrace a forbidden freedom, idea. People who are being hunted by government moles and spies across social infrastructure that the government has in no way helped to create, but instead tries to turn into a weapon against the people. Various politicians and state governments are actively engaged in efforts to destroy Craigslist.org and have created internal positions (in a growing number of states) to infiltrate and monitor the site in order to sue and prosecute people for mowing lawns and making small private sales. These cases come to our attention frequently. It's bad enough that social networks like Facebook data mine you for profit, it turns out that several state supreme courts (and the FBI) do not recognize social networks as being intrinsically private and therefore do not require a warrant, subpoena, probable cause or anything in order to peruse any and all of your information, regardless of your pri
For as long as the general public accepts politicians describing tax cuts as money that is lost, they will continue to believe that this is money they are owed.
except the US government isn't like that. But hey, lets not let facts get in your way.
By all objective measurements, the US government has very little waste.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haha, by the time Reagan got into office, the USSR was pretty much dead.
Reagan used it to increase military spends and raise taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think we could easily work our way to a surplus through Military cuts alone, though I can't be bothered to go look up the exact numbers-
Wow, this is a problem. Why would you be bothered to make such an assertion without even doing a basic wikipedia search? Smart people like you who draw conclusions without looking at data are why people push stupid ideas. A quick look at this graph will quickly show that military spending is not the only problem. Also note that a large portion of military spending is in pensions, and thus can't be easily cut even if you wanted to.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All of your outrage would have been unnecessary if you'd actually read my post:
The only times we've had truly massive debt spikes were major wars, and the last thirty years of total irresponsibility.
I know quite well that for most of our lives the budget has been totally fucked; I was contesting the claim that the federal government has run a deficit "almost every year of its existence", as in almost every one of 200+ years. That contention is, in fact, absolutely wrong. Look at graphs of the raw debt and you'll
You can be as indignant as you like about the last 60 years, it doesn't change the fact that the US did a pretty decent job with its debt for the first 150 years of its existence and most certainly has not, throughout history, run a deficit "almost every year of its existence".
And come on, this quote?
"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild
He's was a banker, of course he had an over-inflated sense of his own self-importance. What do you expect? Can you really not think of a law that might hurt him?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My physics B.Sc. was free,
No, it wasn't. You, and everyone else, paid taxes so you could get that degree. The same goes for healthcare. It's not free, someone has to pay for it and that someone is you and your neighbors.
The problem is there are those who will not get a degree and so are paying for your education. Is that fair?
This mindset that education, healthcare, etc is free is completely wrong. Everything costs something and someone has to pay for it. Just because you don't pay a chunk of your own money to go to school or go to the doctor does not mean it's free. The money has to come from somewhere and in your case it's taxes.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
At the time, I hadn't paid any taxes at all (being, you know, a student and all) - so yes. It was free, gratis, libre, whatever you want to call it. Subsequently, of course, I paid my taxes just like anyone else, and you know what, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with paying a tiny amount over a long period of time (and since it's deducted before I see it, I don't really miss it. It's tough to miss what you never had) to get zero-cost-at-time-of-gain rather than racking up ridiculously, cripplingly high front-loaded debt on an individual, thereby severely limiting his/her choices in how to approach the rest of his/her life.
It comes down to a difference in approach. In the UK, this selfishness that I see in the US does exist (of course), but it seems far less prevalent - there's more of a "we're in it together" rather than a "screw you, Jack. I'm not paying for you unless it benefits me" attitude. Example: I don't live in the UK any more - I haven't for several years now, but I still pay my national-insurance contributions over there. That's the tax that lets other people get free healthcare, pensions, education etc. There's no gain to me (they'll have abolished pensions by the time I want to claim one) but I'm fine with helping other people out - it's a low cost (to me) and a relatively high gain (for them).
I've heard the same argument over and over about how it's unfair on those-who-pay to pay for those-who-don't, and it's bullshit. Sure, if human lives were as impersonal as figures in a ledger, the equation doesn't balance, but that's not how things are. We're not numbers, we're humans, and there's at least two things that ought to be "free" (as in: supplied, and billed to the society in general) in any sane, civilised society: one is education, the other is healthcare. Any society that doesn't provide those two is fundamentally lacking in common decency and humanity. Just IMHO, of course, but a shared view of pretty much anyone I've talked to in Europe.
Even from the perspective (warts and all) of a US citizen using the NHS, the money quote is
.
"Healthcare in the UK is Free" might not be literally true - everything is paid for somehow (again, obviously!) , but it's still a lot "free-er" (in terms of liberty here, not cash) than anything in the US. It's a lot less partisan, a lot less divisive-of-communities, and a lot better for the have-nots, speaking as someone who probably counts as a "have". I think that's a good thing, and I'm happy to pay for it.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Most government spending is worthwhile in the sense that it generates more benefit to the public than it costs,
I disagree. Certain government spending does indeed generate benefits, such as pure scientific research which later can have commercial applications (the Apollo missions are a good example of this at a large scale--many technologies developed for Apollo created huge economic returns for the nation). However, most government spending seems to actually harm the economy overalll. Military spending, for instance, is usually a big negative: that money could be doing more productive things that making ammunition, and the people employed by defense contractors designing fighter jets could be doing more productive things like designing better passenger jets or other commercial products and technologies. Welfare is generally a big negative too: it pays people to NOT work, and to have more children they can't take care of, and to not get married, because a woman on welfare will lose her benefits if she marries a working man, but she gets a bigger check if she has another child out of wedlock. This doesn't help society, it destroys it. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be some sort of social safety net, but handing out checks does far more harm than good. I'd rather see a system where people who are at the end of their rope can opt to be taken to a work camp, where they'll get free housing and food and child care in a dormitory-style environment, and given a small stipend in return for picking crops or whatever. They can leave any time they like, but they only get paid if they work, instead of getting paid to sit on their ass and watch TV.
It's worth pointing out the US did at one stage eliminate its debt entirely. It led to financial chaos.
[FUCK BETA]
Most of the people I have known that had to go on Welfare were trying like hell to get off it. And that was before WorkFare. Welfare Queens are the exception, not the norm.
You're right on one point: benefits of all types should be structured such that you never make less money *because* you work or do something else desireable. Things like the marriage issue are an example of "perverse incentives" which good legal reform can (and sometimes does) eliminate. It's something people across the political spectrum would support, if those that did not want to just eliminate social programs entirely could be sidelined long enough for the adults to have the floor.
Someone had to do it.
No. Please look at the spending under FDR, both during the depression and WWII, and under LBJ's "War on Poverty". Not new under Reagan. And Congress must create and pass a budget. Reagan wanted to reduce spending, simplify the tax code to remove loopholes, and reduce the size and quantity of tax rates. Congress would only allow the last two.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why do you assume that raising taxes (this is what "repealing the Bush tax cuts" means: raising taxes on everyone) will increase revenue? Heard of the "Laffer curve"?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Because that's the only person who matters, right?
Oh, I think I can find ONE example, right here on Slashdot.
Americans are among the most charitable people on earth. What most of us don't like is when someone else takes our hard-earned money from us by force, and distributes it to whatever cause they see fit. That's not charity. Taking money from people doesn't turn them into generous people any more than putting a suit on a bum makes him a businessman.
The three essential rights are life, liberty, and PROPERTY. The last is being stolen, and that should be a concern to the thieves who extol "charity" much more than the victims.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Not sure of your point here - as I pointed out in the part you failed to include in your selective quotation, it was indeed free to me at the time, and I did indeed pay the collective taxes that everyone does afterwards. I don't really see how you get a snide comment from that, but never mind.
Yep, your words: "The problem is there are those who will not get a degree and so are paying for your education. Is that fair? ".
My words: " I still pay my national-insurance contributions over there. That's the tax that lets other people get free healthcare, pensions, education etc".
You really ought to be nicer to your fellow man. I'm telling you, it feels good. Honestly. You should try it.
Say what ? Who mentioned charity ? I'm talking about state-sponsored programs, funded by the taxpayer, to benefit the country as a whole, and individuals specifically. I'll just ignore the rest of that 'charity' stuff as irrelevant to what I was talking about...
My mother was diagnosed with cancer a year or so ago, and in the same week my uncle was rushed to hospital for open heart surgery. No-one in my family at home is what you might call "well-off". My father and uncle worked on the docks, my mother had several small part-time jobs. There's no way they'd be able to afford the treatment (they couldn't even afford the premiums! They paid off a house loan of £25k over 30 years, and it was enough of a struggle) over here. In the UK, they both got prompt treatment and they're both doing well today. It's entirely possible they'd both be dead now if they were from the US, and if they weren't, they'd be destitute because the best figures I could find for that sort of surgery was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No-one in the UK has to worry about changing jobs and keeping medical coverage. No-one has to worry about pre-existing conditions. No-one worries about limits on care, or co-pays. No-one, as a result, thinks twice about going to their doctor, which fact has other knock-on benefits (problems are found earlier, people live longer). I'd love to see the US actually care for its people. Currently, I think the situation is shameful, and attitudes like yours are forcing the country farther and farther away from a compassionate society. That's very sad.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Why not make it a bit fucking easier for an honest citizen to pay the right amount of tax, instead of moving directly to borderline illegal harrassment the second anyone dares to suggest YOU might have got it wrong?
Are you just talking out of your ass?
The government doesn't have "loans on average of 3 years", they issue bonds with various terms, from 1 month to 3 months to a year to 10 years. There's even 30 year bonds issued. The interest rates are fixed at the time of sale - there's no variability of the interest rate over the period of the loan. The government pays a coupon (interest payment) every 6 months on long term bonds, paying out the principle at the end of the term.[1]
The variable rates you're thinking of apply to the loans banks give out - and those rates are determined by the market. US Treasuries are just about the most valued, so their interest rates are low because bond buyers will accept less because of a lower perceived risk - Greece is in trouble because it needs to borrow without having a source of income, and so lenders are charging a hire rate in proportion to the risk. Greece needs income - but its people don't pay tax and so there's no income. That's why Greece is in trouble - not because of profligate unnecessary spending, but because the people don't pay tax and yet still expect government to pay for services.
(sound familiar?)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasury_security#Treasury_bill
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
No no... they can cut pensions if they wanted.
They do it to teachers, police, and fire all the time.
Really? That's interesting. I've heard of the pensions being cut for people who haven't retired yet, but I've never heard of teachers, police or firemen who've already retired getting their pensions cut. Do you have a citation?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They could cut pensions, if they passed a law to do it. Otherwise it would be tricky. The federal government can't declare bankruptcy like a large corporation can--or perhaps it could (again by passing it as a law), but I doubt that's a road we want to go down.
I was only suggesting that I believe our current deficit spending is less than our total Military spending, thus we could balance the budget without cutting anything other than military expenditures. Since I was too lazy to do that before, I did it just now and confirmed that to be correct. I suppose that does oversimplify the situation to a degree.
Social Security is a whole other matter. I'm sure it will have to be tweaked here and there to keep costs reasonable. No doubt the retirement age will be increased by a couple of years at minimum . . . If that doesn't fix it, then we might look into investing into Soylent Green technology . . .
The problem is the government carries over it's debt. When one loan is about to end the government takes out a new loan - at the new conditions to repay it's obligations for the ending loan.
In effect, this means that for ${old_loan} the intrest rate "is actualized" (which for the last 2 years meant "goes up", and will for the forseeable future). This happens all the time and is a feature of our financial system for decades now.
Because the government has no hope in hell of actually paying for the loans of any given year with tax money, if this carryover were to become impossible (because, say, your country's loan rating is too low for the amount of debt requested), then the government cannot pay, and the only remaining question is who exactly doesn't get their money (employees ? homeless ? social programs ? banks ? ... all have consequences).
Greece is doubly fucked since it can't "print" (inflate) it's way out of a debt situation the way the US can, or any sovereign state can (none of the EU "states" are sovereign anymore), at least not without the approval of their "betters" in Brussels. These "betters" are of course not exactly inclined to agree since doing that would seriously hurt their own economies (Germany, France and UK). So Greece will be outvoted if it tries to inflate. It could of course leave the union, and threaten to have it's banks print euros without permission (which they can), but ...
Given that the average length of a government loan is 3 years (in the US, I doubt it's that different in Greece), that means that the intrest rate rises, for most of the federal debt, to the current level in about 3 years. Yes there are loans on 10 years and 30 years, but they make up much less of the total than 1,2,3 and 5 year loans. Why ? The shorter loans are cheaper for the government.
So then what happens if average intrest rates were to rise to, say 6%, a little over double what most govt. loans have now, debt interest would rise in about 3 years to just below 50% of all tax income. That means there is no possible way to pay for the *current* social programs after that happens (even if you fire everyone on the federal government, including the president, and shutter the army, there still wouldn't be enough). For "ObamaCare" ... let's just not go there.
Are you familiar with Social Credit? C.H.Douglas is the greatest economist ever!
Social Credit would solve everything...