Blain's Morning Porridge - UK Budget - utter BS.. shot to the foot..
Blain’s Morning Porridge – March 9th 2017
“I’ve been doing fjords all my life. For a fleeting moment they became fashionable and I got a major award.”
I usually don’t bother to comment on the UK budget – I’d normally leave that to the personal tax advisors, accountants and others. However, I can’t help but think yesterday was a load of b*lls**t.
Apparently, Spreadsheet Hammond’s objective was to put money in the kitty lest Brexit prove to be a rainy day – so our esteemed chancellor put up taxes on the self-employed.
These would be the same self-employed who are only self-employed because their former employers put them “off-balance” sheet to save employment costs – and effectively makes low paid delivery, maintenance and manufacturing staff even lower paid. These would be the same professionals the banks and big firms now employ by the legion as consultants – easy to hire and fire on a whim with no employment protections. These would be the same entrepreneurs who would drive our economy forward – if they weren’t crippled by the double tax burden of unfair money demands and tax bureaucracy.
They are all voters.
Yet, at the same time as Spreadsheet is snuffing out the embers of small business growth, he’s taking about cutting big business corporation tax and reforming business rates. Big business remains free to “optimise” tax offshore, washing cash and orders through tax-havens, the fiction zero-hours minimum-wage slaves are “independent contractors”, all so they can pay their directors bazillions.. offshore, of course.
GET A ******* GRIP.
I’m all in favour of free-markets – but not on this basis. Government and the corporate tax lobby would do well to remember consumers need cash to consume. Put money in their pockets – after all that’s what they did with the banks.. (not that it worked particularly well…)
Instead the little people are assailed on every side. (Note to pin to Mrs May’s forehead: Remember they have the votes.) The government would do well to consider the effort chasing the self-employed to the bankruptcy courts because they miss-claimed a petrol allowance would be better spent relieving some corporates of the dosh they’ve been hiding.
But that won’t happen. The tax mandarins care about the size of their budgets and departments. So while it might take 30 very smart tax inspectors to investigate offshore tax scams and save the country trillions in unpaid taxes.. Not going to happen…. The tax authorities would rather we hire a thousand low paid drudges to go chase the (largely) innocent. You can probably get away with it if you can persuade the electorate that a self-employed builder who hasn’t paid VAT on time to avoid a cash flow crisis is tax-dodging scum… while Philip Green gets to keep his knighthood.
The UK budget might have been sold to us as “prudent”, but taking cash out consumers pockets is not going to get us over the challenging times to come. Real incomes are being slashed by inflation and increasing tax burdens from National and Local government. Yesterday’s budget was tinkering, and picking on a vulnerable slice of the economy.
It’s was time to change the focus of the tax burden.
If it wasn’t for the fact the UK labour party is just so unelectable… stuff the Tories and Teresa May….
Meanwhile…. Back on Planet Mongo… the ECB meeting today… yawn. Continuing my theme about Europe from earlier this week, there is a great article from Marcus Ashworth of Bloomberg Gadfly about Europe and Germany.. Well worth a read… https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-03-09/europe-s-markets-need-draghi-to-fight-germany-s-dominance
Out of time and patience..
Fastnet Race Charity: http://www.sail4cancer.org/fastnet-2017-bill-blain