Exit from Europe and impact on investments

Rollinghome wrote: »

Will the 24 million letters they're to send out tell us the cost of sending out letters containing information that could be just published on the internet? Or what proportion they expect to be binned unread?

Out of the 24m, I believe some 8m have filed online self-assessments, and their personal statements will only be available online. Longer term, I believe there is a plan that every tax payer will have online access to their own tax account.

My personal tax statement is available online. It hasn't got a colourful pie chart but it very helpfully has worked out the %ages for me ( 0.75% of my taxes went towards the UK's share of the EU budget. Excellent value for money afaic).

Overall, the cost of producing and sending these letters probably disappears into insignificance in the grander scale of things, just like the contributions to the EU budget and to overseas aid do. In a country that prides itself to be the one of the most democratic and most wealthy in the world, surely it is long overdue that people can know where their tax money goes?

You might object to the (unknown) cost of this attempt to give tax payers more facts, but why would you want to see people deprived of information, and aren't there more worthwhile causes to object to?

BTW, there are some sample statements on the government's Flickr page. According to these, the EU budget contribution for 2013-14 is as follows:

[B]Taxable income   EU contribution[/B]
[B](net after           2013-14
allowances)[/B]

£15,000               £15
£23,000               £34
£30,000               £51
£45,000               £90
£60,000              £138

Note those figures are on your net taxable income, not your gross income.