How to raise £100 billion pounds

[jake-the-peg]

Would that be handy do you think?

That's the same amount as the NHS?

About the same amount as the EU budget

5-10 times the DHSS budget

What is it?

The Black economy http://www.res.org.uk.../july04/lyssiotou.pdf

Why are we only focussed on the Governments outgoings and not on it's incommings

With figures like this surely we should be making sure that the Government is collecting the tax it's due before we start swinging the axe against Policemen and Nurses and the rest of the public sector

[joeluke]

You're asking a lot if you think we are going to be able to collect more self-employed taxes - the last government recently axed thousands of workers in tax offices across the country

Also. lets be honest here, who would declare all their income from self employment on their tax return when they can easily get away with putting in lower, false figures

[jake-the-peg]

Isn't that the point?

Perhaps if there were more investigations and harsher penalties there'd be more revenue and fewer public sector cuts.

False benefit claims and false income tax returns are both the same

Both robbing you and I

[joeluke]

I agree but how can we expect more taxes to be collected and investigations into self-employed liars tax returns when there are no HMRC staff to do this?

The government has cut off its nose to spite its face

[rov1200]

Maybe we need another way of collecting Income Tax. Compare the £100bn avoidance with that of VAT where there is (only) £1bn avoidance annually.

[boxtops]

That link dates from 2004 - I wonder what the real picture is now, six years later.

[ABerrant]

'Tis indeed a shame that Government failed to implement the recommendations of Lord Grabiner's report into the black economy, requested and received by Gordon Brown a decade ago...

http://webarchive.nat...ov.uk/press_36_00.htm

At that time Lord Grabiner was not happy with the scale of the hidden economy being estimated at 5%-8% of GDP, let alone the 10-plus% concluded by the Cypriot research published 4 years later in the Economic Journal, however the size of the notional figure is of lesser importance than putting processes in place to reduce that figure.

[modeller]

. When I was teaching I saw waste, abuse and bad business practices everywhere but whenever we pointed it out nothing ever happened. The same waste continued year after year after year. I don't think it will ever change until the goverment says we are cutting your budget by say 20%, now you come up with ways of saving it. It's a blunt instrument but it's probably the only way.
Most people know how money could be saved in their place of work and to save their jobs they will do it. Already the number of sicky days have dropped by 25% as the fear of losing ones job is growing. .
jake collecting money is very expensive and extra inspectors isn't the answer it can often cost more to collect it than the amount collected.
Look at the cost of the child support scheme where absent fathers are required to pay their wives who were left to bring up their chidren . For every £1 they obtained it cost the taxpayer £5 to administer the scheme. So what's your solution if you don't want to touch the public sector. ?

[jake-the-peg]

That's rubbish modeller

Any company that took the attitude that it was just too expensive to persue people who owed them money wouldn't be around long.

Would you take that attitude with people that owed you money? -I think not!

I aggree aberrant - this has been a failing by successive Governments - but now seems a particularly good time to revisit it

What is outrageous is that it seems on nobodys agenda - We are telling everybody about the pain we will endure while were so cash strapped whilst millions are cheating on their taxes and laughing at us

[modeller]

Oh it's rubbish is it. that why millions are written off every year by companies who decide against pursuing through the courts. That's why the tax authorities will settle for a smaller amount rather than the cost of taking it further . That's why many retailers do not prosecute shop lifters . Debt collecters live by taking a percentage of any money recovered . It is cheaper for a company to give a debt to a debt collecter rather than going to law where the debter may get off on a technicality or is
frequently told to pay a trifling amount back each month which they then don't do so and its back to court.
The next time some owes you a £5 I hope you take them court , You might then learn something .

[youngmafbog]

Jake

Take your rose tinted Noo labour specs off.

The world is not perfect and Noo Labour trashed the economy with massive spending. Stop trying to point the finger at other things.

And as modeller says millions is written of in the private sector or at the very best sold off to debt collectors.

The big problem with the black economy, and I dont like the slates on the self employed it is more those on benfits doing work or living illegally in the country andother noo labour legacy, is that you dont know where it is or really the true extent. If it was easy you could go after it, but truth is, that it is not.

The way to prevent this is to keep taxation low so it is not worthwhile risking the wroth of the Men With Small Joy-sticks (aka the IR). Of course that would go against your solilist principles would it not ?

[Garmard]

How the hell did it come to this, owing all this cash...Especially when the last government were on about spending our way out of the recession?

[deggers316]

cancel trident
ok its a deterrent but do we need it ? where s the Scandinavian or mainland Europes equivalent ??? or are they depending on our nuclear "deterrent to protect them if so let them chip a few hundred million

[Everhelpful]

modeller is making a lot of sense.