Posts by Offnow

EU announces common corporate tax plan

Re: Tax Consumption

Since VAT is a tax added to the selling price and taxation amounts to 40-45% of GDP, then an equivalent VAT would be about 80-90%. We really pay tax out of our take home pay, since employee income tax is included in the selling price of goods and services today.

When government and its employees spend the tax received; their purchases are tax free. This means that government can spend almost twice as much as the tax received making its gross expenditure on a par with the productive economy.

Income tax and all taxes on business are a great way to hide a huge consumption tax in retail prices. If consumption was taxed explicitly at the point of sale voters might see the cost of government and the welfare state in somewhat different light.

Tax Consumption

I would propose dropping income taxes altogether and simply taxing consumption. Taxation in the end taxes consumption since who really pays tax if it is not ultimately the consumer. However taxes are imposed it really falls at the same average rate on the consumer whether rich or poor. Taxing incomes is politically useful to promote various ideologies and gain power. Relieved of this burden, companies and entrepreneurs would flock to set up in the UK. Getting in first would be a profound advantage for UK prosperity.

Could our fear of fracking be appeased with CO2 sequestration?

Insanity

Carbon Dioxide is the stuff of life. It is one of the three essential ingredients of photosynthesis that our food chain depends on, that include only water and sunlight.

It appears that plants crave more carbon dioxide for growth than currently available in the atmosphere, suggesting plant adaptation in a previous age of plentiful carbon dioxide, in which life on earth flourished and the world did not suffer catastrophic climate change as some predict today.

The great irony is that burning coal, gas and oil undeniably promotes more growth and more food production around the world. The insanity of burying carbon dioxide, and our carbon based life with it, is beyond parody.

Why so tax-shy, big tech firms? – Bank of England governor

Common Tax Delusions

Companies do not pay taxes, these are in every case paid in full by the end buyer as are all the costs incurred in supply. Taxes on the supply chain simply inflate prices to the end consumer. That companies are using current international legislation to minimize the amount of consumers' money being passed on to tax authorities is to be welcomed as otherwise consumer prices would have to rise. No one in the supply chain pays tax as they only act as unpaid collection and transfer intermediaries for government.

But the great majority of the public are under the delusion that these corporations are committing if not heinous tax evasion certainly "willful avoidance". Those who say this must be under the same delusion or possibly somewhat disingenuous.

Tax Systems: The good, the bad and the completely toot toot ding-dong loopy

The Real Tax Fraud

"We don't think that the tobacconist is paying the duty on our cigarettes, nor the tobacco company that buys the stamps. Instead it's the consumer who does. Same with the barman and beer duty, same with our paycheques and the income tax that is taken out of them."

Unfortunately, the barman and practically every employee regard income taxes as being paid out of their hard earned gross income, that is what would be their due reward if income tax did not exist.

If we converted payroll taxes to a VAT on net pay, then it would be clear to all that the employee recipient is not the principal taxpayer. Actually this would immediately make exports more competitive as every exporter could claim back his payroll VAT payments. As an intermediate stage to tax reform, this could be a great advance for voter understanding and a great economic benefit for the country. It might turn out to be the easiest way forward too.

That companies and their employees are real taxpayers is a delusion that governments like to encourage to hide the real scale of taxation we all pay. Thus government inflates the prices of goods and services by taxing every productive sector. Voters become confused as to who really pays tax and who should be that isn't. It provides a multitude of opportunities for politicians to tinker. The success of this disinformation is that everyone believes it. By this means the huge cost of the state is hidden.

The true rate of tax on our personal consumption is about 45% of the cost of goods and services on average, whether we are rich or poor. But if implemented in full view at the point of sale, we would really know who pays tax - we all do and it is too much.

So much for democracy, when people and voters neither understand what they really earn (their disposable income) nor the tax that they pay (when they spend it). This is the real tax fraud.

Climate: 'An excuse for tax hikes', scientists 'don't know what they're talking about'

The Last Word on Models

What could be greener than coal; formed of ancient greenery, when burnt produces the very gas that is needed to produce new greenery. But I digress.

Believing Six Impossible Things before Breakfast, and Climate Models.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvhipLNeda4#t=2956

Margaret Hodge, PAC are scaring off new biz: Treasury source

According to the NY Times 2012/07/01:

"President Obama has criticized outposts like the Caymans, complaining that they harbor giant tax schemes. But here in Wilmington, just over 100 miles from Washington, is in some ways the biggest corporate haven of all. It takes less than an hour to incorporate a company in Delaware, and the state is so eager to attract businesses that the office of its secretary of state stays open until midnight Monday through Thursday — and until 10:30 p.m. on Friday.

Nearly half of all public corporations in the United States are incorporated in Delaware. Last year, 133,297 businesses set up here. And, at last count, Delaware had more corporate entities, public and private, than people — 945,326 to 897,934.

……

Delaware today regularly tops lists of domestic and foreign tax havens.”

Businesses in the UK also have similar opportunities to do similarly, some closer to home than Luxembourg.

In doing this, corporates save money and can offer lower prices to customers for goods and service supplied. Governments lose tax money, but could simply raise the lost income by imposing additional taxes on sales, except that they wish to avoid exposing the reality that the end consumer always pays every cost and the cost of the state is extraordinarily high. The indirect methods of corporation taxes and employee income taxes keep the voters happy in the belief that they aren't really paying those taxes when spending their take home pay. Honest and transparent tax policies would not include using companies as tax conduits by the back door.

Hey, G20. Please knock it off with the whole tax loophole thing - we're good guys, really

On whom taxes really fall

The real delusion that governments like to foster is that income tax is a tax burden on the individual worker or company concerned. In fact, all taxation incurred in the production and supply of goods and services can only be paid out of consumers' money since only the end buyer can supply the total amount of money out of which all expenses of supply can be covered. To produce a transparent tax system, we should abolish all income taxes on the production and supply side, as they are a massive burden on consumers that consumers simply do not appreciate. Instead we should impose an equivalent consumption tax, that is what we already pay implicitly, but explicitly made fully visible at the point of sale, to show starkly the huge real cost of the state to every voter and consumer. There are territories which have this tax regime, but they are improperly called tax havens. In fact, becoming a "tax haven" ourselves would be a tremendous benefit for the UK economy.

Clap Google, Amazon in irons to end tax shenanigans - MPs

Only consumers pay tax

I imagine hardly a single MP realises that all company production costs, profits, dividends, business taxes, payroll taxes, are paid with VAT on top of them, entirely out of 'after tax' spending money received from their ultimate customers at the end of the supply chain: individual consumers. Who else is there? Government spending is made with consumers' cash. The consumer sees only the VAT and not the whole list of hidden taxes that are also included in retail prices.

Real income is money that can be spent and the more we spend the more tax we pay, whilst so-called taxpayers are merely unwitting intermediaries in the process of passing consumers' tax money forward to HMRC. Whether we are rich or poor, we contribute at the same average rate; not quite the redistributive socialist scheme that we all thought.

Our complex tax system is simply a charade, in that voters have no real perspective on what they earn or the tax that they pay. For every £2 we spend, £1 goes to be spent by government. It is as if when we buy a vacuum cleaner someone paid by government gets one too. The ultimate twofer.

Forget fluorescents, plastic lighting strips coming out next year

T8 Fluorescent tubes are still hard to beat

Modern 1.5m T8 fluorescent tubes are more efficient than ever and have good colour options. With modern inductive ballasts they neither buzz nor flicker except on starting, but there is a recent UK patent GB2436402 on a retro-fit fast starter that beats all the rest and could save electricity by encouraging people to switch off more often because switching on is as fast as an incandescent lamp. Many of the huge number of installed battens, have another twenty years of life left, and with few components are highly safe and reliable. Why should this proven technology be discarded for no substantial cost effective advantage? Or is it just to satisfy our green credentials?

'Real time' PAYE pilot goes live at HMRC

You might hate PAYE even more when you realise that you are simply an unwitting intermediary in the transfer of the end customers' money to HMRC. That this money is generally believed to be really paid by the employee is the greatest illusion of our times.

Consumers pay all taxes. Remember that, when you begin spending your hard earned cash.