Do you play by the rules?

psdie

littlerat wrote: »

It's obvious somebody is playing it if they do a £500 job cash in hand for £450 ..

Could be discount for paying by cash instead of credit card, which saves processing fees. Often frowned upon by terms of their credit merchant agreement, but not illegal AFAIAA.

For those throwing arms up in disgust at the results, some considerations:

1. I answered "Once or twice" to a number of items from my teens, ~20 years ago (e.g., shoplifting a chocolate bar). I'm sure I'm not the only one - offences may not have been recent.
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2. Some breaches may be a form of social disobedience because the individual reasonably disagrees with that legislation. E.g., music sharing is free marketing for artists, which helps them sell tickets and merchandise. As that's how artists make their money, not music sales which are consumed by labels, so fans like myself don't see any issue with sharing. It's also not a criminal offence, BTW, despite the Copyright Lobby's best attempts to change this via ACTA et al.
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3. Tax - occasional cash in hand jobs, expense claims etc can be seen as the poor man's equivalent of tax avoidance schemes. Lower and middle classes already pay far more tax proportionately compared with corporations and High Net Worth individuals. Though obviously concealing large amounts of your income is another matter.
   
   Did you know the government takes at least ~46% tax from all basic rate salary above the Personal Allowance, once include Employer's NI (another disguised income tax)?
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4. Concessions - when cinemas charge £9.50 for a 2D ticket, it's not surprising people try their luck!
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5. Lied on your CV - every single competently written CV will paint the applicant in as positive a light as possible, without outright fibbing, including downplaying things that would reflect negatively. E.g., highlight good grades, omitting bad ones - just as the employer does in their marketing and annual reports. Outright made-up claims and incorrect facts, on the other hand, are dishonest.

TBH, the only ones that shock me are driving off after clipping a car, and shill bidding (grrr). Both cause direct harm to another individual, as opposed to marginal loss to a corporation.

stevemcol

It does make me chuckle when people rationalise and mitigate various forms of wrong doing in an attempt to demonstrate acceptability. I remember a burglar being interviewed on TV "...well there was no alarm and the locks were crap so they were asking to get burgled. If I hadn't done it someone else would".

aldredd

psdie wrote: »

Did you know the government takes at least ~46% tax from all basic rate salary above the Personal Allowance, once include Employer's NI (another disguised income tax)?

where on earth did you get that from?

on a 40k salary, you have 8k tax free, and will pay about 10k tax & NI on the remaining 32k

So 10k against 32k is 31%

Hardly 43% - unless you're earning 300k

And I'd hardly call NI a 'disguised' tax - they don't exactly hide the fact they're taking money out your salary each month.

stevemcol

aldredd wrote: »

where on earth did you get that from?

on a 40k salary, you have 8k tax free, and will pay about 10k tax & NI on the remaining 32k

So 10k against 32k is 31%

Hardly 43% - unless you're earning 300k

And I'd hardly call NI a 'disguised' tax - they don't exactly hide the fact they're taking money out your salary each month.

I would guess he's referring to the combined burden of Income tax, NI, VAT, fuel duty, alchohol duty, road tax etc. Not an issue as far as I'm concerned, tax is necessary to keep the wheels turning.

Uplink

aldredd wrote: »

where on earth did you get that from?

on a 40k salary, you have 8k tax free, and will pay about 10k tax & NI on the remaining 32k

So 10k against 32k is 31%

Hardly 43% - unless you're earning 300k

And I'd hardly call NI a 'disguised' tax - they don't exactly hide the fact they're taking money out your salary each month.

Employer's NI is extra to that. If you were to treat what the employer pays for you in addition to those supposedly just sliced from your gross, you might end up with a different figure.

Let's give it a try:

So, you earn 40k this tax year. You get 8105 free, leaving 31895 for the tax man to dip into. They take 6379 basic rate tax and 3888.96 NI from you (total: 10267.96). That's an effective tax rate on your gross of 25.67%. But they also take 4486.66 NI from your employer. That makes the true figures like so: your real gross is 44486.66 (as far as your employer is concerned), and your real tax rate is 33.17%. That's against your whole gross by the way. Just noticed that you computed your figures against the taxable portion only (that's not really right). Not sure how to apply the same reasoning when I take into account what they charge your employer, but I'll try: I consider your real gross rather than your apparent gross, and I get 40.56%.

For comparison, if you're self-employed and get 40000 gross, your taxes are: 6379 basic tax rate, 2915.55 Class 4 NI, 137.80 Class 2 NI, making for an effective tax rate of 23.58%. Using just the taxable bit here, I get 29.57%.

So the tax man takes 14754.62 on 40k for one on PAYE, but only 9432.35 for a non-incorporated self-employed person. But do consider that self-employed persons can have business expenses deducted as well, so they'll pay even less if those come out of this 40k, but these are the numbers if what they're left with, after expenses, is 40k.

I'll plug Romania for a bit: there, unlike here, if you're self-employed you get slapped with the employer contributions as well, so a lot of people are a bit surprised when they get their tax bill, because as an employee they don't see that bit going out. PAYE keeps the common folk's impression that taxes are lower than they really are.

Also, if you wonder how I got decimal precision: I used http://www.uktaxcalculators.co.uk/ So if they got the figures wrong, so did I. But I calculated the percentages myself.

You should realise why people attempt to avoid tax by now But at some point the 30% tax for everybody will be here, removing these discrepancies (I guess).

aldredd

Yes, re-reading would suggest he's referring to the employers contribution, hence the disguised part I guess.
Still, 46% is still some way off - especially as whether it's based on the before or after tax-free allowance is fairly irrelevant.

And not really an issue as far as I'm concerned - I agree a salary with my employer - they pay it minus any tax & NI due at a rate I know is due. If there's more 'tax' beyond that, I don't consider my concern, more a further expense on the part of the employer in employing me, in the same way they must pay insurance, equipment costs etc.

lukeuser01

Anyone worried about security should be able to take things into their own hands (heard of Tor?), but in most cases that would be being paranoid. Even if you said you claimed 'extras' like whiplash, that doesn't prove that you didn't actually get whiplash, in the unlikely event that the authorities got this information.

LimeLight

i'm worried about the 1 person who regularly clips cars!

psdie

psdie wrote: »

Did you know the government takes at least ~46% tax from all basic rate salary above the Personal Allowance, once include Employer's NI (another disguised income tax)?

aldredd wrote: »

where on earth did you get that from?

on a 40k salary, you have 8k tax free, and will pay about 10k tax & NI on the remaining 32k. So 10k against 32k is 31%. Hardly 43% - unless you're earning 300k

And I'd hardly call NI a 'disguised' tax - they don't exactly hide the fact they're taking money out your salary each month.

Re-read what I wrote Gov takes ~46% total income tax + NI on salary ABOVE the Personal Allowance. That's 20% basic rate Income Tax (more for ~£35k+), 12% employee NI, 13.8% employer's NI = 45.8%. No, I'm not including other taxes like fuel duty, VAT etc - only direct tax on salaries.

The employer pays 13.8% of the ~46%, but it's a direct cost of employing you that could otherwise be included in your salary. If you're an owner manager, it's a straight out ~46%+ tax on your salaried earnings - hence why most use dividends instead (20%).

National Insurance: I said "disguised income tax" - NI is acknowledged as Income Tax by another name. It's not ring-fenced to be spent on NHS, so no different from normal IT. Gov can spend on a war in Syria if it wishes.

rickbonar

I put "none of the above", but there was another option missed .... "all of the above"

I wonder what Bob Diamond, Cameron, Clegg, Prince Phillip, Fred Goodwin, Jimmy Carr and Lord Ashcroft would have put?