Interesting report BT. The report says that private companies are hardest hit - £144 billion per annum.
I think we can all agree that fraudsters, spongers and tax evaders are costing us all a lot of money and every sensible effort should be made to bring them to book.
But Sinkov, your report quotes £40 billion as an accurate figure. The one above has the figure at around £13 billion.
The big figure in the one that BT put up was "procurement fraud" - affecting mainly private companies. This was estimated at £144 billion.
We have to compare eggs with eggs here.
Whether it's £40 billion or £13 billion, it's still worth chasing up.
Tax dodgers, tax havens, zero hour contracts, the "Black Economy" etc. etc. are all signallers of a deeper malaise, everyone is now looking for a way out of contributing to the good for the many, not the few.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1...black-economy/
Everyone should man up, show their tax returns and amount paid, take it on the chin like Jeremy Corbyn just did and not in the manner in which Theresa May singularly refuses to do.
But many of Jeremy’s supporters don’t pay much tax, they get tax free benefits or reduce their taxable income by asking for cash payments or by not putting sales through the till or books or not declaring tips. Some even go begging on the streets and take the money home.
This is a two way street BT. Spongers are just as bad as avoiders and both take money out of the economy. Though some avoiders do sa legally. Tax evaders are the real target ... as are spongers.
I see Luis Suarez has plead guilty and accepted a 16 month suspended jail sentence in Spain for dodging nearly £1m in tax.
He has paid the money back (two weeks wages) and will only serve his time if he goes astray again
Of course it's all worth chasing up 59/60, if anyone is illegally evading paying tax then go for them. The point of that piece though is that the amounts that were allegedly out there waiting to be reclaimed were wildly exaggerated. All those doctors, nurses, new hospitals etc that it was claimed could be funded by a clampdown on rich individuals and corporate tax dodging, turns out it was just Labour getting their sums wrong again.
It's lefty hypocrisy OC, the lefty bible the Grauniad only survives because of the tax dodging activities of it's parent company GMG. Labour millionaire MP Margaret Hodge was Chair of the PAC investigating the tax affairs of multi-national companies, while her family firm Stemcor was engaged in tax dodging on an epic scale. You couldn't make it up
I know nothing of the Duke's affairs NZ but if he can legally avoid paying the iniquitous Inheritance Tax good for him. I do know about my sister though, she had a good job and a handicapped daughter, her husband had buggered off years ago and her life consisted of work, caring for her daughter, and watching Burnley's home games, and that was it, no holidays. She died a few years back and left her money to her son and daughter, but as she had been unable to spend much of her wage over her lifetime it had gone over the threshold for Inheritance Tax. She worked all her life, she paid her taxes, what moral right did the government have to take from her estate, her money which she wished to leave to her children ? Inheritance Tax is nothing more than legalised theft imo.
Yes Sinkov, I agree with you that Labours funding plans for their great spending bonanza are badly flawed as you point out.
I think the only thing we don't agree on is the impact of leaving the single market and customs union, at least without putting something similar in place, as we leave the EU. Both main parties seem happy enough to let this happen, but I can only see a further black hole in our budget forecasts if this happens.
In fact, the treasury itself has pointed this out but many politicians don't accept, or don't want to accept, this report that was actually commissioned by the Government.