Walking With Dinosaurs (UK taxation)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	UK taxation
Date:	12/10/02 (261 review reads)
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Have you ever stopped and wondered what the world would be like without politicians? I suppose it's a bit like imagining what your bum might be like without the hole (sorry, crude). Tax is a subject that nags at me like yer wife after you've watched the footie and celebrated down the pub with lads (ooh..erm..hope she doesn't read this). Thing is, I've just had my latest form to fill in to enable me to claim either child tax credit, working tax credit or both. As ever, it asks for a load of stuff already known to the Inland Revenue but required again. You know, earnings for the tax year, National Insurance number blah, blah. Trouble is, if you don't fill it in you lose out. Needless to say, it's the old adage of answering the same old questions over and over again (no, of course the left hand won't listen to the right hand but then hands don't have ears you know?)

Soooooo...I stop and ponder how many millions are getting this form? Hmmmmm....OK....how many thousands will have trouble filling it in? OK...the dependency culture is fuelled again as these poor saps look for a friendly face to (a) explain what the form is (b) help them to fill it out (c) tell them where to send it (d)"Oh.. and could you send it off for me?" Just how many civil servants are there out there ready to administer this latest mountain of paper when it comes back like a tsunami on a bad day?

Governments seem particularly adept at the deceptive art of bureaucracy. Despite the ever-increasing paperless revolution, more and more inventive ways are thought of to increase paper mountains. Don't get me wrong...I consider myself apolitical i.e. I think all the parties are dismal although I do usually bother to vote for the least worst. Our tax system is simply unfathomable but the one constant is the overall increasing burden every year. The number of days needed to be worked from 1st January before you start earning your own money gets l
onger and longer and you have to ask the question "Why?"


There are lots and lots of examples of horrendous financial mismanagement that even a 5-year-old kid running a lemonade stall couldn't manage. The notion of filing self-assessment forms over the Internet was an inspired one. However, initially the system didn't work so poor shmucks at the Revenue were having to print them off and input the details manually. Two years on and only 100000 people are bothering to use a system available to millions. Even with this small take-up, the deadline for filing has been extended beyond *30th September because the Revenue can't cope. Whilst it would be easy to point the finger of blame at the ever popular Inland Revenue, I honestly think that they are the fall guys in all of this. After all, it's the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cronies that concoct those increasingly divisive ways off fleecing mainly Middle England.

The current tax credit regime is in disarray. Of 5 billion pounds worth of aid available, a staggering £1 billion is being claimed under false pretences. People registering their kids for nurseries then withdrawing them but claiming a minimum 6 months of tax credits meant to help those who need child care in order to work, people claiming they are employed by family to claim working tax credits etc. An article in the Sunday Times last week, highlighted how the authorities were only too aware of the problems and, yet, seem powerless to act, whilst handing out huge chunks of taxpayers money to claimants under laudably false pretences.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of taxation is the annihilation of company pension schemes over the last few years. There was a time when people could look forward to early retirement and a constant round of holidays in Spain backed up by numerous trips to the golf course (my personal dream, I might add...well, everything except the golf course bit). Now, the official line i
s that the powers that be want to stop the cliff-edge at the end of the current working life. There seems to be a myth that the majority wants to carry on working until they drop. Or is this simply a way of (a) covering up the irreversible damage done to company pension schemes and (b) further justification for advancing the state retirement age to at least 70?

In case you missed it, pension schemes are huge investors in stocks and shares thus making them reliant on dividend income. Previously exempt from tax, the government soon put a stop to that by not allowing pension funds to reclaim tax on dividends. This had the effect of reducing the size of pension funds. The double whammy has been the poor performance of the stock market over the last few years resulting in the majority of pension funds showing a net liability i.e. they owe more than the fund has in it. Whilst the vogue used to be to pay a pension calculated on a percentage of final salary, these factors forced companies to switch to defined benefits schemes i.e. premiums were paid into an overall pot which would be used to buy a pension at retirement age but with no link to final salary. This has the effect of making these kinds of pensions worth probably 30% less than their final salary predecessors. Ironically, it's the government that's still banging the drum that folks aren't bothering to save for their retirement!

Personally, I would love to see us scrap all forms of Government and start again. A fact at the moment is that there are now more politicians and civil servants driving around in chauffeur driven motors than ever before. If government was a business it would have been declared insolvent years ago and represents one of the longest, saddest unfunny jokes in existence. You know, if you just stop and think about just how much money pours into government and perennial mismanagement on a scale that makes the Aberdeen Technology Fund look like this years sure-fire bet
, then I suspect that most people would simply stop voting or start thinking about revolutionising the present archaic system that belongs in a sub-feature of BBC's "Walking with dinosaurs". Perhaps you may have realised by now..I hate paying tax and I don't think much of politicians (apologies if you are one... well, a dinosaur, any how).

Thanks for reading
Marandina

*Assuming you want the IR to calculate any tax liability for you

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