OT Tax cut madness

[Geoff Parkstone]

The tax cut madness is now getting very personal to me. The plummeting value of the £ has seen my OAP drop 9.2% in the past 2 months when it hits my € bank account. Add to that the latest NL inflation figures, announced today..... 17.1% (using the European calculation method, whatever that is) and I'm a lot "worse off" than I was just a few months ago.

Sensible purchasing policy has seen us unaffected thus far.

In my "unsympathetic mode" I would say that is of course the risk that you take when you deliberately chose to have income in one currency and expense in another by moving abroad, as you did. Shane you couldn't have foreseen all this and hedged against it - then you could have been smiling at the profit you could have made, but 20-20 hindsight is a useless thing!

[ramAnag]

In my "unsympathetic mode"...

Do you have any other?

[Geoff Parkstone]

True, you didn't but you do blame lockdowns and post that "The lockdowns are coming home to roost as well now. Al, that debt/lack of productivity etc.
Yet don't forget, Labour wanted more of them and harsher."

We had 4 or 5 lockdowns over here. Inflation is a sod at the moment but we don't have an economy that is spiralling ever further into the abyss. NL is NOT letting the oil and energy firms get away with their excessively obscene profit levels. That is true for the entire EU. They are going to levy a windfall tax which will be spread pro rata over the EU. The companies are getting nothing back. Sunak finally crumbled and levied a windfall tax but also promised the companies tax breaks 2 or 3 years down the road which would give them more back than they had just lost. Now the current incompetents (LT and KK) are taking £150Bn off the oil and energy giants but the taxpayer will have to reimburse it all over the next 15 to 20 years.

IMO, typical Toraidh double standards have been shown over the past couple of years. Pensions should have gone up by about 9% last year because of the triple lock. That was curtailed by the Toraidh because "one off accidental and exceptional circumstances" has caused the circumstances where pensions would rise by that much. They suspended the triple lock and pensions went up by 2 and a bit %.

The oil and energy companies have amassed HUGE profits, also due to "one off accidental and exceptional circumstances". IMO it would be showing both consistency and compassion to tax those profits at a premium rate and not pay it back down the road.

With UK inflation around 10%, the triple lock should see pensions going up by about 10% this time round. The bloody Toraidh will again claim "one off accidental and exceptional circumstances", suspend the triple lock again and give pensioners 2 and a bit % again .

One rule for major companies, another for pensioners.

Like it or not, that is the way of the world today MA. Pensioners are little use to any government going forward, just a debt burden. Oil and energy companies on the other hand are extremely handy to keep onside. Bear in mind these are mostly multinationals and owe no fealty to any one country. Just like Starbucks, MacD etc they can shunt their profits around and if anyone hits them too hard they will simply move elsewhere. 20% of something is better than 40% of nothing.

I'm not saying I agree with this perspective, but those are the options available to multinationals right now, and governments have to "give and take" or lose the option to "take". A global minimum taxation / tax harmonisation and fairness agreement would enhance this (there is something out there but until all nations ratify it it wont work).

[Geoff Parkstone]

maybe once a year but I soon realise my mistake

[MadAmster]

I may be wrong, it did happen once before....... but no company is going to move away for tax reasons provided money generated in the UK is taxed in the UK. Moving away sees them stop UK trading and they lose all that profit. Trade in the UK then you pay UK tax.

[ramAnag]

maybe once a year but I soon realise my mistake

Let me guess...on your birthday!

[Geoff Parkstone]

Let me guess...on your birthday!

No, not my birthday, ist not something I celebrate - bah humbug. Maybe my Mum's

[Geoff Parkstone]

I may be wrong, it did happen once before....... but no company is going to move away for tax reasons provided money generated in the UK is taxed in the UK. Moving away sees them stop UK trading and they lose all that profit. Trade in the UK then you pay UK tax.

Where there is excess demand over supply - as now - the energy companies have many wiling buyers and it only takes a moment to redirect tankers or LNG carriers elsewhere. They don't, at the moment, need our marketplace as much as in the past, or as we do them, so have to be treated with kid gloves.

[ramAnag]

Where there is excess demand over supply - as now - the energy companies have many wiling buyers and it only takes a moment to redirect tankers or LNG carriers elsewhere. They don't, at the moment, need our marketplace as much as in the past, or as we do them, so have to be treated with kid gloves.

Ah...the old law of supply and demand. Your favourite...the one you and AF claim I don’t ‘understand’.
Seems though that I do...isn’t it the case, as I’ve suggested before, that it’s nothing more than a contrivance...designed to enhance and engineer more profiteering with little, if any, regard for morality...and isn’t that exactly what the gas and oil companies are currently guilty of?

[Trickytreesreds]

Unfortunately, morality doesn't come under prioritys for 99% of profit making companies.
RA, you had the good fortune, to work in a career, where morality had its place and could be used as a tool.
Morals don't come into it, when you are placed in a position, with sacking/suspending/fleecing a workforce etc.

If you did, you wouldn't be in the job very long. You have been spared that.