Category Archives: tax

What will you hide behind now?

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I read with great interest that the OFT has decided that there are no shenanigans going on in the world of petrol retail in the UK.

It is of no surprise to me that the above linked article states that MP’s ‘reacted furiously’ to the report. I don’t think that the OFT reached a factually erroneous conclusion, but I’m convinced that MP’s, and the ‘honourable’ member for Tatton especially, were keen for the OFT to find that our petrol retail industry was a hotbed of cartel price fixing where fat men in suits sit around a table in a darkened room as they cackled like Disney movie villains at how they’ve shafted the public.

The report from the OFT is a clear confirmation of what we already knew, that being that pre-tax, the UK has some of the cheapest road fuel prices in Europe.

Without doubt the cost of crude oil has rocketed, and coupled with the value of the Pound which has been on a continual slide against the Dollar (the currency in which oil is traded) means that real cost of petrol and diesel has been pushed up.

However, when Ministers allege that the public is being ‘ripped off at the petrol pump’, I get the distinct impression that they had not developed a much needed sense of self awareness, and were rather hoping that the OFT were going to paint the retailers as the villains of the piece. The fact is, they just aren’t. Indeed the business of petrol and diesel retail is a game of minute fractions.

Many of those filling stations you pass on the road may be badged up with the logos and devices of the big petro companies, but they are in the main individually owned franchises, and they are operating on the thinnest of margins. The below illustrations from PetrolPrices.com shows how a litre of fuel is broken down:

As you can see, the retailer is earning 5p per litre, for the guy running the franchise this is not the road to untold riches. The obvious figure is the fact that the duty we pay on a litre is actually more than the cost of that litre itself, then there’s the matter of the VAT, in effect the tax on the tax is getting close to 50% of the base cost of the litre.

I get a real bee in my bonnet about this issue. Of course on a personal basis it is expensive and makes me cross, but unless it has escaped Osborne’s attention, we’re not exactly experiencing runaway economic growth at the moment. I’ll set ‘big business’ aside for now and concentrate on the ‘SMEs’ who do not have such an easy time incorporating this tax into their model. SMEs are lifeblood of our economy and no business model escapes having to factor in the cost of fuel at some point, even if they don’t have to move a product or a raw material at some point, the cost of fuel will have a direct effect on the wages that people need to able to afford to go to work.

I have no idealogical opposition to taxes, but the rapaciousness of government is killing this country’s economy. Fuel duty, and more gallingly, the tax tax, is the most hateful and immoral tax we have with the possible exception of inheritance tax.

Going off on a tangent for a second, I can think of no more disgusting form of tax than inheritance tax. It isn’t about multi-millionairres versus minimum wage slaves, it is about the individual working all their life, being taxed to the eyeballs, and then when they drop dead, the taxman rifles through their wallet before they go into the wooden box. It is an evil, horrible, indefensible tax and is akin to grave robbing.

Anyhow, back to fuel duty. This amounts to a tax on jobs, productivity, industry, retail, care,  food, clothing, absolutely everything we consume, use and need. I just don’t get why this tax routinely gets hiked up, especially when this tax is running at 167% of the cost of the commodity being taxed. I for one do not feel like giving the Chancellor a thank-you when he makes a big song and dance about ‘deferring’ a 3p rise in duty.

A deferral suggests that fuel duty HAS to go up, in the same way that day has to follow night. So addicted is this government to taking our cash that the idea of cutting, really cutting, duty doesn’t even occur to them.

It really makes my blood boil that a government can act so clearly against the interests of small and big business, not to mention the actual individual on the street.

No government that perpetuates this level of taxation can possibly claim to be business friendly.

I remember the harrumphing from MPs when this OFT investigation was mentioned, they cynically tried to kid on that they were on our side. They made sympathetic noises about how expensive fuel was, and insinuated that these horrible petrol producers were holding us up by the ankles and shaking us until all our change fell out of our pockets.

We all knew it was a smokescreen, but the MPs hoped that OFT would find a smoking gun. They haven’t, because there isn’t one. There is a smoking artillery battery, and each of those howitzers is stamped ‘property of HM Treasury’.

So George, the question is this; having made such a fuss and a song and dance at the time, now the OFT report has made it painfully crystal clear who the snake in the grass is here, what will you hide behind now?

Conservatives are the party of business? Don’t make me laugh.

Ghosts and ghouls and statists that go bump in the night.

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A hairy skellington, preparing to go out and frighten people tonight.

The dichotomy of modern government is that the existence of ministerial pay-packets, pensions, perks and kudos relies on those incumbent in the offices doing things, whereas the most effective way for things to happen is for them to get out of the way and stop acting as a brake on every endeavour. They will never do this, or at least anyone who is a member of any of the big three parties won’t.

As is apt on Hallowe’en, a spirit from the past has risen up to try and give us all a scare.

Michael Heseltine has just popped back from the dead to give us the benefit of his wisdom by delivering an eighty something point plan for the government to ‘generate growth’. There are some crackers in there.

Local Enterprise Partnerships would be strengthened and given billions of pounds.

Right. And how is that going to generate growth? You take billions of pounds from one area of government and move it to another. Oh, there’ll be growth alright, the Local Enterprise Partnerships (and note ‘partnership’ as far as government and civil service are concerned is the private sector jumping through hoops for a few quid, becoming entirely beholden and subservient to the department handing out the cash) will grow, their staff numbers will increase, the little empires within will see their borders expanding and the budgets will run unchecked. Very little of that money will go to local enterprise. It would make more sense to not take the money off those same local enterprises in the first place. Growth in local, small, independent business? As close to nil as makes no difference.

Lord Heseltine also calls for councils to be given a legal duty to promote development

What does that even mean? Look, dickhead, it is the job of the council to make sure the bins are emptied, that the pavements are in a decent state of repair, that the grass in the park is cut. How the hell are they supposed to promote development? It means nothing. Nothing at all. Are we talking about publicising what a wonderful place Crapshire is for doing business? It’s easy for you, if you think that Crapchester would benefit from having the Dept. for toenail clippings and belly button fluff based in the town then you move it there, because truth be told it doesn’t matter where the department is based. For enterprise to succeed there has to be a demand for the service or product provided, this is why you can walk around the streets of Kettering all day long and not find a ship’s chandler – there’s no demand. Government and quangos cannot create that demand, it just can’t.

and for pay restrictions on the senior Civil Service to be lifted to attract private sector talent. He says it “takes too long for decisions to be made” by civil servants and ministers.

Oh for crying out loud. Look, try to get this through your thick skull; government cannot drive growth, it can only get out of the way and let it happen. We don’t need private sector talent immobilised in the tedium and administration of the civil service, we need them in the private sector generating wealth, it doesn’t matter if they are the greatest entrepreneur the world has ever seen, all the time they are in the public sector they will not generate any money, the public sector consumes it does not generate, accept this fact. The reason that entrepreneurs can make decisions is that they are in sole charge of their enterprise, they live and die by their decisions, thus those who are best at making decisions remain in business longer and make a lot of money.

In the civil service you can’t even get a light bulb changed without a committee meeting and agonising over the budget for the bulb, the budget for the wages of the person changing the bulb, the environmental aspect of the new bulb and the disposal of the old. It takes an age to do anything, because all these little empires have their little emperors, obsessed with protocol and grades and responsibility and liability, and making a decision takes forever, then once the decision is taken the paperwork has to be done so the fact that protocol and grades and responsibility and liability have been considered can be documented in case of the feared and mythical audit. The entrepreneur will give the office boy a fiver from the petty cash and send him down to Homebase to buy a lightbulb.

Ministers are even worse, they will not worry about whether what they have proposed is correct and desirable, they will worry about how it makes them look on Newsnight or in the Grauniad, how it matches with the PM’s statement on bananas or his launch of the new washing line policy, and more importantly will it get them re-elected or allow them to move further up the greasy pole? This is compounded by the fact that they are crippled with indecision because they know nothing about the subject their department is there to regulate and thus they must be guided by a group of civil servants who are obsessed with protocol, grade, responsibility and liability and can’t answer the simplest question without going away and setting up a project group and a steering committee, because they are scared witless that the ‘wrong’ answer, that being one where the response has an undesirable effect rather than it being incorrect in fact, will lead to their little empire being trimmed or swept away.

He believes that all money earmarked for economic growth should be collected together, with local partnerships able to bid for funding. About £9 billion of European funding for deprived areas should also be handed straight to localities to spend on kick-starting the economy.

Note that in that there’s no mention of money going to businesses, it’s all about vague political platitudes of kick starting. Like I said above, you can’t generate demand by spending money. You can build the world’s biggest cupcake shop, but if people nearby don’t want cupcakes, it ain’t going to make any difference, is it?

Furthermore, it isn’t £9 billion of European funding, it’s £9 billion of our funding, that was probably closer to £14 billion when it left these shores for Brussels. Money, and I really can’t state this often or clearly enough, that would be sloshing around our economy already had it not been taken off the taxpayer and corporations in the first place. Good God man, the £9 billion funding is a symptom of the malaise, not the cure.

The effort should be overseen by a National Growth Council headed by the Prime Minister. Cabinet ministers would oversee different areas and senior civil servants would be hired by those with business expertise.

A. National. Growth. Council. Kill me now, just kill me now. So vain, so arrogant and so hubristic are these people, they think that if they form yet another talking shop they can somehow make people go and spend money they don’t have on a service they don’t need. You’re just replicating what happened before the crash, you stupid, stupid, stupid man. People with business expertise will not be interested in hiring civil servants, they’re too busy trying to generate money, despite the best efforts of the government to frustrate them at every turn, by running their business.

Dumber than a bag of hair.

Government can no more generate jobs and wealth than I can spin straw into gold.

Here’s a simple 6 step plan to get the hell out of the way and allow growth to happen:

1. Slash corporation tax.

2. Slash income tax.

3. Slash VAT.

4. Abolish employer’s NI contributions.

5. Stop taking all our bloody money, stop spending it, stop borrowing money that doesn’t belong to us, stop spending that money as well.

6. Sit quietly behind your desk and don’t touch anything.

Simple.

 

They’ve got a little list.

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Leg-Iron wrote yesterday about the fate of non-smoking drinkers. I can only echo his sentiments. Did you really think that smokers were the only ones on the list? They were always coming for you next.

The indicators have been there for a little while, exactly the same thing that happened to smoking is happening to drinking now, except faster, because now they have a template to follow.

Boris outlawed drinking on the tube (although even as a militant smoker, I accept that smoking on the underground isn’t perhaps the smartest thing someone can do), all the alcohol ads carry the ‘please drink responsibly’ tag line now, the advertising of alcohol is restricted and banned in some areas across Europe. The health warnings, in the shape of the little how many (completely arbitrary and totally made up) units are contained within are now commonplace. It won’t be long until pictures of diseased livers, wrecked cars and some bloke looking terrified having woken up in bed with an ugly bird start turning up on bottles. Oh, it won’t just be Asda own brand alcopops, it’ll have to be on that very expensive bottle of château bottled burgundy as well. We’ve already got stories of adults being refused sale of alcohol because they once met a child and could perhaps set up some sort of intravenous drip system for the little tyke. Similarly, pregnant women have been asked to leave pubs because they’ve had a sip of someone’s drink. Then there’s the tax. It’ll not be long until people will be forced to go and drink outside for fear that they give people alcoholism through passive drinking, and don’t even get me started on third hand booze, that’ll give you cirrhosis.

The restrictions will continue to be rolled out, and it will all be for our own good.

Don’t drink? Don’t think it matters to you? Feel happy because the filthy smokers and boorish drinkers are finally being brought to heel? Well, good for you. How about food, do you eat any of that? Because the screw is being turned there as well. Just think of the progression against smoking and drinking. Now look at this story:

Tougher action – including taxing junk food – is needed by all governments if the obesity crisis is going to be tackled, experts say.

‘Ah, but I don’t eat nasty junk food, carry on.’ OK. Just remember, they started on cigar and pipe smokers first. They targeted the niteklub set and their drinking promos before going on to all the other drinkers. Do you really think they’ll stop at the kebab eaters?

They said changes in society meant it was getting harder for people to live healthy lives.

You see, this is how they think we think. They honestly believe that we’re unable to pass a branch of McDonald’s without nipping in for a Big Mac, and fries, and a milkshake, and some chicken nuggets. And an apple pie.

And an ice-cream.

Really, because they are so intellectually superior to us, because they are incapable of making a mistake it obviously follows that as we are inferior, we are unable to make a good decision.

Who decides what is a good and a poor decision? Well, they do of course. You think we mere mortals have the ability to make a judgement like that?

I was watching Sky News this morning and had to rewind it and make a transcript of what the chilling authoritarian and utter (and I apologise, I’ve made a conscious effort to cut back on swearing in my posts, but sometimes there’s no alternative) waste of fucking skin, Klim McPherson had to say:

“People know that obesity is a real problem. People don’t know as individuals what to do about it. Governments do know, as governments, what do about it.”

 

(speechless)

 

 

No, prole. You don’t know how to stop getting fat. Only government and very clever people can tell you how to do it. Don’t believe for one moment that you belong to you. You are a chattel, a possession, a slave. It is your job to work and hand over the results of your toil without question. You MUST pay for your healthcare, but then when you need care, forget it, you’re costing money. The fact that you’ve paid for it is immaterial, that money doesn’t belong to you, you disgusting little peasant. How dare you not take care of yourself? If you’re ill, how are the clever people supposed to survive and pontificate? All the time you’re ill, you’re not producing the cash they need.

These fuckers will not rest until we are all eating and drinking in huge refectories, lining up with a plastic tray to collect the menu that has been approved for us all. Well, not for us all, some will be eating venison with potatoes roasted in goose fat, they’ll have a nice pot au chocolat for dessert and a selection of fine wines. But that’s fine, because they know what they’re doing. Who do you think ‘they’ will be?

First they came for the smokers, and I didn’t speak out for I didn’t smoke. Then they came for the drinkers, but I said nothing as I was teetotal. Then they came for the wobble bottoms. . .

I tried, but I couldn’t.

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I tried to come up with a more ridiculous idea than this. I tried really hard. I’ve been pacing up and down the living room all evening trying to come up with something even more boneheaded than this suggestion, I’ve worn a hole in the carpet, I’ve failed.

I’ll just let this, I struggle to think of a term which doesn’t go from dim, through absurd, racing through insane before stopping at inspired as it completes the cycle breaking through the divide at the back. I’ll just have to use inspired.

I’ll just let this inspired idea speak for itself.

[Bob Crow] The General Secretary of the militant Rail, Maritime and Transport union was booed as he outlined his idea for a 1p tax on each email during an appearance on a late night comedy show. 

Errrrrm.

No. I’m speechless.

Well it’s failed every other time, so it is bound to work now.

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Should the UK tax high-fat junk food to cut obesity rates? 

Oh Jesus, here we go.

Because the increase in tax on tobacco, alcohol, petrol, flying, electricity and gas has slashed the number of people who smoke, drink, drive, take holidays, cook and heat their homes, hasn’t it? I mean, why wouldn’t it work?

In the same way as taxing cigarettes helped to reduce smoking and related illnesses, could putting up the price of junk food – as Denmark has done – cut obesity rates in the UK?

Whoa, hang on. Taxing cigarettes has helped to reduce smoking related illnesses? Has it? Come on, you are a correspondent for a ‘reputable’ programme on a ‘reputable’ broadcaster, so I’m assuming you’ve referenced or linked to your source material for that, have you?

*scans the article*

No, they haven’t.

I went on a day trip to Brugge (the French can sod off, it is a Flemish city, so I’ll use the correct spelling, thank you very much) last week. Very nice it was too. Just on the Belgian side of the French border is the town of Adinkerke, it has a most impressive collection of tobacco retailers, all patronised almost exclusively by French and British. Why? Because tobacco taxes drive them there. So I would say that taxing cigarettes has helped to increase the profits of those living on the Franco-Belgian border and reduced the income to the treasury in both the UK and La Belle France.

I digress.

The first thing that struck me on the taxi journey into Copenhagen was how slim everyone looked.
I really had trouble spotting anyone fat.
And the second thing that became obvious the moment I stepped out of the cab and was almost run over by a cyclist, was that the Danes are clearly no strangers to exercise. 

Oh, for the love of God.

I’ve been to Copenhagen as well. Lovely city, very nice people, the Danes.

One thing I noticed; the national sport in Denmark, alongside eating pickled fish, is . . . smoking.

Prohibition does not work. Minimum pricing is illegal. Taxing junk food, really? Who is to say what counts? Are you willing to take on the legal might of McDonald’s when you say their burgers are bad, but the burgers sold in the pub two doors down are ok?

I’ve an alternative, you could just fuck off and stop trying to make people into little grey miserable clones. Try it.

Oh, and BBC, Panorama markets itself as a news programme. Try covering some bloody news for a change, eh?

So much stupid.

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There are some ideas which are a bit stupid. Like trying to unscrew a plug with a paring knife.

There are some really stupid ideas. Like sitting on the branch of the tree you are about to cut off with a chainsaw.

Then there are some catastrophically stupid ideas. You know, the sort of idea which starts with Pa Prescott looking at his missus and saying ‘I’m feeling frisky, let’s have an early night.’

Then you transcend that level of stupidity and get an idea which is so monumentally, incomprehensibly bad, that it defies all belief.

This idea is thoroughly fisked by Thaddeus over at Anna Raccoon’s place, and involves the idea that obviously the current PAYE system isn’t working, as evidenced by the recent balls-up. The solution? Even though the Revenue is responsible for the chaos, it is clear that it isn’t their fault, so the whole thing has to be changed. This is a good one. Rather than having your employer taking the tax from your salary and passing it on to the treasury, your employer will cut out of the system and your wages will be passed, in totality to the revenue who will remove their cut and pass the remainder on to you.

What could possibly go wrong?

Do head over and read the whole thing. It’s kinda important.

The One That Will Probably Go To France. . .

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November is less than 24 hours away, and with November comes an increase in the money taken from people by holding them upside down and shaking them when they arrive at a UK airport.

planned rises in APD [. . .] will add up to £4 to the cost of a short-haul flight and up to £90 to the cost of a long-haul flight.

£90? Jesus, if you are a family of four going to Disney in Florida, that amounts to buying a ticket for a fifth member of the party and just tearing it up.

This is the new tithe to the religion of Warmism. I’m pretty bloody far from convinced about the whole shooting match, but even if it is right, what good is this tax going to do? The planes will still take off, full or empty, they have to, it is in their contracts with the airports. Nor do I see the connection with taking money off people and what that money actually does to ‘save’ the planet.

From Novmeber 2010, they are set to rise again!

It is a cynical attempt at emotional blackmail to take money off people to bankroll the explosion of public sector non-jobs that have proliferated since the economy went south.

Mrs. Snowolf and I were going to go to Gatwick and fly to North America in the spring.

We’re probably not going to do that now. If they think they’re getting any tax out of me, they can think again. We’ll go to France instead. I can get a foot passenger ticket from Dover to Calais for about £4 each, and then for about another £20 can get a TGV ticket from Calais Ville to Paris CDG airport. They do flights to North America from there you know, plus I can have a fag in an indoor lounge whilst I wait for my flight to take off as well.

Those of you living in the South West and Wales would probably save £40 by going Pembroke – Rosslare and getting the train to Dublin. Those in the North could save cash by going Stranraer – Dun Laoghaire and then hopping over to the airport.

It’s bit of extra faffing around, but I’m buggered if I’m going to give the government my cash if I can get away without doing so. Then of course, there’s the e-borders scheme, in my experience the ferry ports will be a good deal behind the airports in its implementation, so you get to remain a private citizen rather than a chattel of the state.

Fuckers.

The One That Is Blessed With Clairvoyance. . .

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I blogged a little while ago about an entertaining conspiracy theory surrounding the Government’s intentions for t’internet.

Well, bless my barnacles. . .


A controversial broadband tax should be law before the next election, according to Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms.

Now there’s a surprise. Didn’t see that one coming.

The 50 pence a month tax applies to everyone with a fixed line telephone.

Speaking at a debate in London, Mr Timms said the tax will be presented to parliament as part of the Finance Bill.

So, £6 per year, doesn’t sound that bad does it?

I’m betting any office will have to pay for each and every phone on their premises, even if it is on a switchboard. More cost which business won’t have to bear, because it will be passed on to those who use their services or buy their products.

And what will the money be used for? Making sure everyone has broadband. The next stop will be a modem licence.

Why?

So they can get us all on to Cloud. That means that ALL your files, contacts, emails and browsing history will be centrally stored, and you’ll only be able to access websites which the controllers feel is appropriate for you to access.

It’s coming people, and it won’t just be us, this will be global.

The One That Does Not Understand. . .

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I know we’re skint, I get that.

What I don’t understand is why, even when times are good, tax on consumables goes up.

Why, every year, do we see the Chancellor stood at the despatch box saying ‘petrol and diesel are going up 2p per litre, I’m putting 10p on a packet of fags, 5p on a pint of beer and 3p on a bottle of wine.’

Why? In what other area would this be acceptable? These products cost the government nothing, they have absolutely no involvement in the production of these goods. This is akin to standing outside Sainsbury and rifling through people’s shopping bags as they leave the store. ‘Stick of celery madam? That’ll be 11p please. Oh dear, multi-packs of Andrex just went up today, you’re going to have to give me 8p a roll, cough up. Is that a rolling pin? That’s being taxed now, 4p, please. That’ll go up another tuppence next year.’

‘What if I don’t pay?’

‘I’ll stamp on your foot.’

The woman would call the police, and I be nicked for demanding money with menaces. Rightly so.

Why on Earth does everyone just grumble and accept it? We know it all goes on buying them BBQ’s, porn movies and paying their stamp duty. Where is the end of it? Will we see the Chancellor in 20 years standing up and saying ‘. . . duty on petrol will rise a further 3p to £21.37 a litre, on wine duty will rise 6p to £8.21 a bottle, so much as look at a cigarette and we’ll take your house and violate your wife and kids.’?

Can anyone explain it?