UK Politics & Current Affairs Discussion & DIY Home Improvement Thread

[ilovebender.com]

2 hours ago, sivispacem said:

This is quite possibly the most absurd misunderstanding of both employment and tax law I've ever seen. Literally every single part of it is completely wrong.

It's literally 0 hours contract employ yourself stuff that in itself is nothing without paying dividends tax.

You could argue it's also about freedom and flexibility which is fine if you work in one industry not wanting to be tied down to one firm; but it's also a handy tool to hire yourself if you ever want to hire yourself without the all messing around with part time full time taxable income labour rights brew haha that's not bad in itself but can make somethings like hiring yourself if not for 0 hours contracts harder.

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

13 hours ago, ilovebender.com said:

It's literally 0 hours contract employ yourself stuff that in itself is nothing without paying dividends tax.

 

What a complete crock of bull.

 

You earn over £12.5K total, you pay basic rate income tax, plain and simple.... 

 

13 hours ago, ilovebender.com said:

You could argue it's also about freedom and flexibility which is fine if you work in one industry not wanting to be tied down to one firm; but it's also a handy tool to hire yourself if you ever want to hire yourself without the all messing around with part time full time taxable income labour rights brew haha that's not bad in itself but can make somethings like hiring yourself if not for 0 hours contracts harder.

 

Zero hours contracts do not get those on them out of benefits.  As I stated before, the employees drop their wage slips and timesheets into the job centre, so the missing and unemployed hours are made up by Universal Credit contributions, but since they run a month behind the employee statements, there's months where employees get little to zero money, then get 2 months pay after a busy month following.  Resulting in the reliance on payday loans and other emergency credit streams when the employment goes through a dry spell.
 

The worst problem is when those on multiple zero hours contracts end up with two employers requiring their services at the same time.  Employers don't take to being stood up on a regular basis, so zero hours tend to have a very high turnover rate, resulting in pretty much a zero chance of promotion for those on them.  Businesses see zero hours staff as pretty much disposable.

[sivispacem]

17 hours ago, ilovebender.com said:

It's literally 0 hours contract employ yourself stuff 

Which doesn't actually work in reality if you intend on doing any work for your own company (which is what I assume you mean by "employing yourself"), otherwise its tax evasion. 

 

It's also less efficient than paying yourself a small nominal salary through PAYE as you can't offset the wage bill against turnover to reduce your corporation tax. 

[ilovebender.com]

On 2/23/2020 at 3:31 PM, sivispacem said:

Which doesn't actually work in reality if you intend on doing any work for your own company (which is what I assume you mean by "employing yourself"), otherwise its tax evasion. 

 

It's also less efficient than paying yourself a small nominal salary through PAYE as you can't offset the wage bill against turnover to reduce your corporation tax. 

You think tax avoidance is tax evasion.

That's your problem.

It's tax avoidance, and who says you actually have to do any actual work?

That's what your day job's for.

Edited February 24, 2020 by ilovebender.com

[sivispacem]

1 hour ago, ilovebender.com said:

You think tax avoidance is tax evasion.

No, hiring yourself on a zero hours contract then falsifying your worked hours as zero to dodge personal income tax is tax evasion, plain and simple. That you think otherwise just goes to show how utterly clueless you are.

 

It's also f*cking stupid as it's less tax efficient than paying yourself an actual salary. 

 

1 hour ago, ilovebender.com said:

who says you actually have to do any actual work?

How does the company you employ yourself through create revenue otherwise?

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

1 hour ago, sivispacem said:

No, hiring yourself on a zero hours contract then falsifying your worked hours as zero to dodge personal income tax is tax evasion, plain and simple. That you think otherwise just goes to show how utterly clueless you are.

 

It's also f*cking stupid as it's less tax efficient than paying yourself an actual salary. 

 

How does the company you employ yourself through create revenue otherwise?

 

There's been several cases of high-flyers on local councils and such, using the exact same tax strategy to get paid as 'contractors,' to a council and them getting paid through a separate company they hire themselves out from.  It works because of the lower rates of corporation tax, compared to personal income tax for high earners.  HMRC also know about it and aren't really gleeful when they catch someone at it, especially if they discover the contractor is the sole company director and holding the company credit card....

 

Unless you're telling porkies and are really stashing millions somewhere, I can't see any advantage of running it yourself, since corporation tax rates are well above basic rates of income tax.

[ilovebender.com]

9 hours ago, sivispacem said:

No, hiring yourself on a zero hours contract then falsifying your worked hours as zero to dodge personal income tax is tax evasion, plain and simple. ...

You are not falsifying a God damned thing.

 

 

Have your own company

Hire yourself at your own company

Pay dividends tax

 

Hire yourself at your own ltd on a 0 hours contract though just because 0 hours contracts are so perfect for this as you don't have to mess around with how many hours you put in a week or how much you pay to avoid a taxable income here, the answer is 0 hours contract.

 

That's one element though, after you've got your own company.

...

Paying dividends tax is another.

 

 

Each part crucial however, so pick shares in something you know's going to pay off, 'a safe bet' as it were - just so you pay your crucial dividends tax - must pay this tax and do everything else to get your income tax free, no matter how much you earn.

 

 

8 hours ago, Uncle Sikee Atric said:

 

There's been several cases of high-flyers on local councils and such, using the exact same tax strategy to get paid as 'contractors,' to a council and them getting paid through a separate company they hire themselves out from.  It works because of the lower rates of corporation tax, compared to personal income tax for high earners.  HMRC also know about it and aren't really gleeful when they catch someone at it, especially if they discover the contractor is the sole company director and holding the company credit card....

 

Unless you're telling porkies and are really stashing millions somewhere, I can't see any advantage of running it yourself, since corporation tax rates are well above basic rates of income tax.

I hate being a contractor.

 

 

I'd rather be under some umbrella company than a UTR messing around with contractor.

That's just me and my CSCS stuff that doesn't pay enough for me to do this, but when it comes to this; no one would become a contractor to do this, and who the Hell said you're paying corporation tax at your LTD?; Just don't have a profit at your LTD, it's very easy; live off your day job.  Anyway, the answer is 0 hours contract, I don't believe I'm familiar of these outed councilors you're thinking of.

I wonder, have you perhaps made this up or believe this to be true despite 'it being bull''?

HMRC can take a sh*t over an active volcano for all I care, f*ck HMRC; it's all legal, and those f*ckers are still getting your dividends tax anyway.

Edited February 25, 2020 by ilovebender.com

[Ned Bingham]

On 2/21/2020 at 11:46 AM, Uncle Sikee Atric said:

Universal Credit ends up funding those people for the weeks they don't work and those workers have to drop their weekly / monthly pay slips into the job center monthly.  This is because UC then supplements those people for when they have little / no work.

This is a complete nonsense which applies not only to Universal Credit but to any and all UK benefits.  My feeling is that people should either be in work that pays a living wage or out of work and claiming benefits. This business of being half in and half out is stressful and wasteful for all concerned.  There is though a case for child benefit and such like, claimed once and paid for the duration.  This business of dropping off payslips (often only dispensed online) and benefits being paid weeks or months later is onerous.

 

Then there's the other nonsense of zero hours contracts, acceptable perhaps for students and other young people but who can live like that month upon month, year upon year?

[sivispacem]

6 hours ago, ilovebender.com said:

you don't have to mess around with how many hours you put in a week or how much you pay to avoid a taxable income here, the answer is 0 hours contract.

You don't seem to understand how a zero hours contract works.

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

20 hours ago, Ned Bingham said:

This is a complete nonsense which applies not only to Universal Credit but to any and all UK benefits.  My feeling is that people should either be in work that pays a living wage or out of work and claiming benefits. This business of being half in and half out is stressful and wasteful for all concerned. 

 

The benefits system works by by making up the differences that keep individuals out of poverty, computed by a complex series of equations and calculations based around cost of living expenses, inflation, etc.  If your pay packet doesn't supply enough it's up to benefits to fund the difference. 

 

Quote

There is though a case for child benefit and such like, claimed once and paid for the duration.  This business of dropping off payslips (often only dispensed online) and benefits being paid weeks or months later is onerous.

 

I totally agree UC is a convoluted, confusing and ill-thought out system though.  Created by individuals for whom the idea of slumming it is paying less than £20 for a meal.  I'd love to see them manage on £6 a week when the landlord demands £90 of that....

 

Quote

 

Then there's the other nonsense of zero hours contracts, acceptable perhaps for students and other young people but who can live like that month upon month, year upon year?

 

Zero hours grew out of benefits like UC, because employers quickly learned that benefits would pay the difference if their employees had no work.  The entire system is flawed.

 

---------

 

EDIT : Given the content currently, I thought this was interesting.  Looks like the DWP might be trying to cover it's tracks over failures around UC :

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-cover-up-storm-after-21578870?fbclid=IwAR3qn1FVanO_RBq2ttlqi2GK27WBfbPjim8G_toRj_GndgbnTUFRbRb7phQ

[jpm1]

Hi, i'd really like to know what would be the consequences for the UK, if the royal family suddenly resigned, or disappeared. as a French i always wondered why that great people that are the British were hijacking humans like that. i mean it's a kind of kidnapping. you take a human at his/her birth, and you declare whatever you may think, you'll be this, and that, hear queen, or king. Don't you think it finally could be time for the British to freed these people, and change the system. What would be the UK, if such thing happened tomorrow

Edited February 27, 2020 by Uncle Sikee Atric
Didn't need a thread of it's own in D&D.

[Svip]

Hey, why do you get the Bonaparts back?  Or the Orléanists?  Or maybe - oooh - the Bourbons?  Those guys knew how to party.

[Ned Bingham]

3 hours ago, jpm1 said:

..as a French i always wondered why that great people that are the British were hijacking humans like that. i mean it's a kind of kidnapping. you take a human at his/her birth, and you declare whatever you may think, you'll be this, and that, hear queen, or king.

You got it in one, on the surface they are rich and privileged and masters of all they survey, but inside they they are tormented and heartbroken, mere puppets, papier mache (a French term) figureheads of the Perfidious Albions, who would never dream guillotining such useful idiots.

[jpm1]

what would be the consequences for Jamaica, or Australia for example if the monarchy suddenly stopped. these governors are liable to the queen right. what i'm trying to know it's is the queen purely symbolic, or does she really have a political, and social weight in the UK

[Svip]

Depends on why the left.  Suppose the UK became a republic through either a forceful overthrow of or a public referendum abolishing the monarchy, then the most likely scenario is that the royal family would move to Canada.  Of Commonwealth nations that are not the UK, Canada is where the royal family has the most residences anyway.  The UK would likely be expelled from the Commonwealth in such an event.  But that's a trickier can of beans.

[jpm1]

expelled, why? AFAIK Commonwealth is an interest of countries, not a disguised monarchy. plus nothing forces the commonwealth countries to have a monarch at its head

and aren't most of the RF properties, property of the British people. I mean the RF gets its money from taxes right

[Svip]

Except the ousting of the royal family would be a significant change.  The Head of the Commonwealth of Nations is the Queen.  It of course all depends on the manner in which it occurred.  But generally speaking, the assumption of a republican Britain also reflects a change in foreign policy, where the Brits are less inclined to maintain a positive relationship with their Commonwealth allies.

 

And even if that is not the case, the new British regime may want to impose new rules upon the Commonwealth as an organisation that could also lead to its removal.  All of this is hypothetical of course, but any change from monarchy to republic has always been violent in some fashion.  And therefore the international alliances where which the British are a part would likely shift significantly, in particular the Commonwealth.

 

In a regime change like this, the royal properties would likely fall to the state or be seized by the state.  Regardless, the royal family would definitely be moving to Canada.  That seems the most likely scenario.  The properties for the royal family in Canada is not own by the British state, but rather owned by Canada.

 

I cannot think of a time when a monarch peacefully stepped down to change for a republic.  Abdication usually happens to prevent upheaval.  And conceding to constitutional rights is merely a concession, not an abolishment.  Of course, changes that would usually be considered for violent uprising can these days be solved with referendums.  But Scottish independence is probably less significant than abolishing the monarchy.

[jpm1]

so if i understand what you're saying, the Brits should continue hijacking these people, hear the royal family. because (if i read correctly) if the royal family doesn't have a significant political weight in the UK, it still has an important cement value in the commonwealth. this is a bit weird, don't you think

[Svip]

The Commonwealth of Nations is largely bound by history than anything else.  And a large portion of that history has been the British monarchy.  The other aspect is that the Queen appears non-political, and therefore she is an acceptable figure to lead the Commonwealth.

 

The problem would probably be the British being in opposition of the Queen remaining head of the Commonwealth, if they became a republic.  Whether they were expelled or left voluntarily is really two sides to the same coin, but it seems very unlikely that Britain would remain part of the Commonwealth after becoming a republic.

[jpm1]

15 hours ago, Svip said:

The Commonwealth of Nations is largely bound by history than anything else.  And a large portion of that history has been the British monarchy.  The other aspect is that the Queen appears non-political, and therefore she is an acceptable figure to lead the Commonwealth.

yeah, actually what i see, it's that Britsh (and lot of Anglo-saxons countries) political system isn't achieved. because there's a little bit of contradiction into actual system. first in 2020 you keep hijacking a family which are whatever we may say humans. then you say the queen shouldn't have any political weight. But we keep her because we need her to be the political substratum of the commonwealth, which benefits (economically, but also politically) to the UK

i'm not judging the Anglo-saxons here, i'm just trying to understand how GB works

[Ned Bingham]

GB works by being vague about almost everything but at the same time having a spine of HS2 running through it.  We don't have a written constitution, instead having a general notion of what should and shouldn't happen based firstly on precedent, tradition and culture, and if those don't furnish an answer, hard-nosed real politik.

 

Having a written constitution has its virtues but can lead to endless argumentation and nit-picking.  I often think of written versus unwritten constitutions as being analogous to flexible capitalist economies versus state-planned economies.  People would often like everything worked out in advance, but life isn't like that. 

Edited September 30, 2020 by Ned Bingham

[jpm1]

i agree with you on the fact that nothing beats freedom in term of getting things well done

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

The Electoral Reform Society has published it's results from the December General Election and driven home the message this Tory Administration is very lucky to be in the situation it is.

 

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2019-General-Election-Report.pdf

 

32% held their nose and voted for another party than they normally would.

71% of voters have been ignored, up from 68% last time around.

 

It's been classed as a 'grossly disproportionate election,' with absurd inequalities in representation.  Not a good result for first past the post.

[sivispacem]

Elsewhere in "abject disappointment" news, the much vaunted UK-US trade deal framework is out, and it's so underwhelming they might as well not have bothered.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51706802

 

Less than 0.2% of GDP by the treasury's best estimates. And the UK's expectation that the US will accede to opening their notorious protectionist service markets to UK companies is hilariously delusional.

[Smith John]

At this point it's difficult to determine who is more happier (or miserable); Brexiteers who got what they 'wanted', or remoaners who desperately want Brexit to fail. Either way, the middle man has to put up with both of their sh*te.

[sivispacem]

Is this an attempt to recast yourself as ambivalent or are you just being querulant for its own sake?

[Smith John]

I'm just being querulant for the sake of it.

 

BTW, what does querulant mean?

[Tchuck]

5 hours ago, Smith John said:

who desperately want Brexit to fail.

I don't think anyone wants Brexit to fail. People want to see their country do well. 

 

It's just that they know it will fail, based on every prediction/study that has been conducted so far. There was no way for Brexit to turn out well before, and there sure as sh*t ain't no way for it to turn out well now.

 

This kind of logic is the same used in Brazil, where people critical of the current administration are admonished as "oh you're just wanting him to fail so you can be right! You should give him your support and hope it all works out!". Which is just absolute bullsh*t thinking.

[Smith John]

C'mon man, this section of a GTA forum has been full of pessimists and salty losers since 2016. Normally I wouldn't bring out the insults (I used to reserve that stuff for The Pit), but given the rhetoric we've seen in here the past 3+ years, it's sometimes difficult to resist.

 

And forgive me for taking ANY predictions seriously - at least in regards to Brexit - at this point. I mean we've got poll "experts" like Svip who have been regularly wrong, which is why I personally believe some people on this board want outcomes to fail simply to heal a few wounds.

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

6 hours ago, Smith John said:

C'mon man, this section of a GTA forum has been full of pessimists and salty losers since 2016. Normally I wouldn't bring out the insults (I used to reserve that stuff for The Pit), but given the rhetoric we've seen in here the past 3+ years, it's sometimes difficult to resist.

 

It would be easier to be optimistic if this wasn't the case, even coming up to 4 years since the referendum :

 

Quote

 

And forgive me for taking ANY predictions seriously - at least in regards to Brexit - at this point. I mean we've got poll "experts" like Svip who have been regularly wrong, which is why I personally believe some people on this board want outcomes to fail simply to heal a few wounds.

 

It's difficult for you to understand, but very few experts are supportive of Brexit because they look at evidence.  The few supporters there are tend to be at the more theoretical end of thinking, resulting in wild plans and euphoric optimism, but nothing solid to base the theory on.  You need evidence to convince those that don't listen to euphoria.

This level of one-dimensional thinking reached new heights in the last few days, when Number 10 tried to stop Professor Mary Beard becoming a trustee of the British Museum, 'due to her Pro-European views.'  If the Tories are eager to shut down a Professor of Classics due to her modern views, you can see why they ignore the real experts on Brexit as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/01/british-museum-put-mary-beard-on-the-board-despite-downing-st-veto