where is the money. where have all the unpaid taxes gone

lesley1960

Arcaine wrote: »

Because any VAT registered company claims the VAT back from the Government on its purchases and pays the VAT it collects on its sales to the Govenment. So by not charging VAT on the sales they will be a net recipient of money.

I didnt look at it from that point I am so used to handing money over with my return lol .

bubblesmoney

lesley1960 wrote: »

Vat registered companies dont actually lose out on vat , all we do is collect it in for the government , its the end user, ie average man on the street who pays the vat

same reason why it should apply for the securities transactions as well, so that the companies (end users of these securities transactions) registered in tax havens cant avoid the transaction tax in the uk. if the common man on the street pays such taxes as VAT, then the companies should be paying them as well when they are the end users.

Arcaine

bubblesmoney wrote: »

same reason why it should apply for the securities transactions as well, so that the companies (end users of these securities transactions) registered in tax havens cant avoid the transaction tax in the uk. if the common man on the street pays such taxes as VAT, then the companies should be paying them as well when they are the end users.

We use derivative financial instruments, things like currency hedges and interest rate swaps, to mitigate risk even in a company our size. I am a little confused as to what you want. Should we pay a tax for using those? We already pay corporation tax on our profits? We currently pay the bank to set these up, but in terms of cost there would be no point setting up a contract if we had to pay 5% of the total contract in tax, just to hedge a position. Therefore we would lose the ability to set a rate for our future currency cash flows leaving us at the mercy of exchange rate movements.

bubblesmoney

Arcaine wrote: »

We use derivative financial instruments, things like currency hedges and interest rate swaps, to mitigate risk even in a company our size. I am a little confused as to what you want. Should we pay a tax for using those? We already pay corporation tax on our profits? We currently pay the bank to set these up, but in terms of cost there would be no point setting up a contract if we had to pay 5% of the total contract in tax, just to hedge a position. Therefore we would lose the ability to set a rate for our future currency cash flows leaving us at the mercy of exchange rate movements.

i was just suggesting a way to put some sort of transaction tax for offshore companies (that dont pay any uk taxes) that transact in the uk and not for extra taxes for companies like yours already paying tax in the uk

harryhound

Arcaine wrote: »

Because any VAT registered company claims the VAT back from the Government on its purchases and pays the VAT it collects on its sales to the Govenment. So by not charging VAT on the sales they will be a net recipient of money.

Technically speaking the trader can be exempt from VAT - as a one man band pensioner I am exempt from VAT and so are 99% of the people reading this.

The people in the food business ("have you ever seen a farmer on a bike?") and several other worthy industries like newspapers & worthy people who manage to EXPORT, are zero rated. That is they charge VAT at zero percent to their customer and get to claim back the VAT they have paid.
Year and years ago the then government decided to tax "luxury" food. Look at your supermarket receipt it may well have a VAT indicator to show what has VAT on it and what does not.
The cake joke all goes back to the luxury food issue. Biscuits with chocolate on the outside have to pay the VAT. So there was a huge case to decide if a "Jaffa Cake" was a luxury biscuit or a staple food like cake (I'm not making this up - in the end I think great brain power decided to continue to subsidise Jaffa Cakes)
I think I'm right in saying that crisps of potatoe pay VAT but "Pringles" don't.

I leave you with a couple of thoughts:

Do you think that all these taxes make sense given the number of people and time devoted to avoiding them, collecting them and then spending them buying votes?

Why should companies pay taxes? What do governments do for companies....pay them pensions? .......send them to school?.........give them free health care?
(bail them oit when they make losses?:rolleyes: unfair question its not taxes paying for the bank bail out (yet?!) it is the printing presses)

Harry.

bubblesmoney

harryhound wrote: »

Technically speaking the trader can be exempt from VAT - as a one man band pensioner I am exempt from VAT and so are 99% of the people reading this.

The people in the food business ("have you ever seen a farmer on a bike?") and several other worthy industries like newspapers & worthy people who manage to EXPORT, are zero rated. That is they charge VAT at zero percent to their customer and get to claim back the VAT they have paid.
Year and years ago the then government decided to tax "luxury" food. Look at your supermarket receipt it may well have a VAT indicator to show what has VAT on it and what does not.
The cake joke all goes back to the luxury food issue. Biscuits with chocolate on the outside have to pay the VAT. So there was a huge case to decide if a "Jaffa Cake" was a luxury biscuit or a staple food like cake (I'm not making this up - in the end I think great brain power decided to continue to subsidise Jaffa Cakes)
I think I'm right in saying that crisps of potatoe pay VAT but "Pringles" don't.

I leave you with a couple of thoughts:

Do you think that all these taxes make sense given the number of people and time devoted to avoiding them, collecting them and then spending them buying votes?

Why should companies pay taxes? What do governments do for companies....pay them pensions? .......send them to school?.........give them free health care?
(bail them oit when they make losses?:rolleyes: unfair question its not taxes paying for the bank bail out (yet?!) it is the printing presses)

Harry.

wasnt it M&S who took the govt to court over the jaffa cake issue. heard they won one case but that it was on appeal, dont know what happened later. think it was a similar argument in the pringles case as well. smaller firms dont have the muscle for all these cases so end up paying taxes whether they need to or not. the bigger fish many times get away without paying taxes even if they were supposed to.

most govts waste a lot of the taxes especially in some types of taxes where more is spent collecting them. would be better to stop a few such useless taxes and cut the cost of enforcing and regulating them.

am curious about this option of 'fair tax' being bandied about in usa. dont know how it is supposed to work properly yet. am reading about it at the moment. these FAQs about Fair Tax seems comprehensive as are the other links on their website