Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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!
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.
It's an estimate based upon how much money the suspect is being underreported or unreported and the tax which would be applied if it were properly reported. It's something that most if not all government's do, it's a way of keeping an eye on whether or not they need more enforcement or audits.
It's difficult to really know since no government ever gets 100% of what they should and the tax is by definition not collected.
MAFIAA accounting OTOH is overtly fraudulent and is made solely so that they can cry poor whenever they need more help enforcing their rights. The HMRC in this case is at least in theory trying to be a bit more even handed about it. I know in the US there are similar figures estimating how much more money the government is theoretically entitled to but can't for whatever reason collect.
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.
Damn and I thought Skynet was bad, or even the Matrix but tax collecting robots?
They are probably more concept than substance. A bundle of gobshyte to scare people into declaring their earnings from auction sites and freelancing.
At least in the UK I would think the majority of people already pay 'every last penny they're "supposed" to owe.'
We have something called PAYE which every employer uses to (hopefully) correctly take income tax at source.
Interest and dividends are also taxed at source and for basic rate taxpayers there will be no additional tax to pay. People who don't reach the income tax threshold can submit a form R85 to their bank/building society to receive their interest without tax deducted. Dividend tax cannot be reclaimed any more - this was "Gordon Brown's great pension heist" that is oft talked about.
Higher rate tax payers do have some extra tax to pay but HMRC applies a "fudge factor" (tax coding) to the PAYE system to balance it out. For example my tax code consists of a component for the tax free allowance, a component for tax relief on pension contributions, a component for tax relief on charitable giving and a component for the tax due on health insurance benefits. You get a letter from the tax office explaining how your tax code was calculated and you can ask to have the calculation redone if you think the numbers aren't correct.
At the end of the year, for most people, this is so close to being right that nobody, neither HMRC, nor the taxpayer, wants the hassle of "fixing" the errors of a few pounds here and there.
For some people HMRC requires them to submit a tax return at the end of the year. For these people there will be a balancing payment made or received and the tax will be exactly correct.
Additionally, anybody is allowed to submit a tax return if they want. I would estimate that for a standard employee (maybe with multiple jobs) this amounts to about 1-2 hours of work total - your employer is required by law to give you certain forms, P11D, P85, and you just have to copy these numbers into your tax return. Then it's just finding all those bank accounts and totting up all the interest (again, the bank should give you a certificate of interest paid and tax deducted but with modern online banking you tend to have to remember what accounts you've got rather than receive something through the post to remind you.) Ditto dividends.
Do it online and you get the tax calculation instantly. If you owe tax then you'll have to pay it by 31st Jan of the following year. if you're overpaid tax then, IME, you'll get the money paid into your bank within a month of submitting the tax return.
It's only when you have other sources of income that fall outside the PAYE system that there is even the opportunity for tax evasion (short of outright lying - for example you could claim to make 10K of charitable donations but not make them which would only be caught if/when the taxman does an audit)
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
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.
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.
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.
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.