2020++ - smiling and waving and looking so fine

mark55man

Obviously I  disagree with you !!.   Boris is more of a joke than any of the current labour front bench who are all serious people - you say how much worse it would be under Labour - we've had 10 years of the Tories and its been a complete disaster for all of them from Austerity to Brexit to CoVid. How much worse would it be - we would have locked down earlier, shown more concern for people and not business, not left the children hungry, and not having actually offended and setting out to continue to offend the predicted leader of the USA.  That Labour are now ahead in the polls after a 80 seat defeat only 4 months ago shows you the direction of travel and that my view is commonly held

I don't disagree that Boris will be looking to clampdown on anyone he considers to be getting away with it from a tax perspective (except the megacorps obviously).  I distrust his ability to do it fairly.  As for LL and the govt - I can tell you are one of the good ones, but mainly there are (still) too many who take the mickey and spoiled it (in the sense of being so bad that self-regulation was inadequate) - so you bought that attention on yourselves

Anyway - I think I would prefer not to turn this diary into a political broadcast, so can we leave it there please 

enthusiasticsaver

Great report Mark and hopefully the CC debt will be gone next year. £30k overall reduction over the year is awesome. Even better the kids are now self sufficient financially. 

I agree wholeheartedly with the comments above.

ceremony

Just caught up on your diary. Amazing progress on all fronts! Love the 'passing zero from below'.

I've been reading about the Ltd company stuff and I have mixed feelings. I'm in a self-employed partnership and we were going to do the limited route now things have started going better for us. We'll have to do a lot more research now. The SEISS was a really valuable lifeline for us early on in the pandemic though and it does need to be 'paid for' so on that front I can't comoplain because at least we still have a business to get taxed...

alt80

@ceremony going off on a tangent (sorry Mark). If you go ltd and apportion salary/ divs in the usual way you’d have seen about £500 per month for furloughing yourself not even joking as most tax efficient way is to pay to NI threshold and rest dividends - government wouldn’t account for dividends in corona payments so you can only claim 80% of your PAYE component. Yet it’s ltds he’s coming after with hikes in corp tax likely and def hikes in cgt (that might not be relevant to your business / you tbf). SEISS was sole trader/ partnership only maybe LLP idk but definitely not ltd directors. Personally managed to get away with furloughing staff (property so shut down effectively) and had enough to pay myself as usual fortunately we were one of first industries to open up too so no nightmare here. However, I was told by my accountant had things got bad only way I could keep any sort of personal income would be to pay myself corona loans presumably as a salary (can’t pay divs if loss making) so interest on the corona loan and full employer / employee NI, 40% tax etc etc on a !!!!!! loan I’d have to pay back to government with interest or £500/m to furlough when my outgoings were £10k+/m at that time and employees getting 80% up to £2.5k/m. FML. Few on here asked me why I intend to keep open over £120k of limits on cards open - that’s why. All government does for anyone they deem as doing ‘ok’ is take take take. Tenants currently 6 months to get one out - 6 months no rent, no income from that property but still expected to pay my mortgage on it and expected to keep tenant in the life they’ve become accustomed to. Personally I can deal with this but some LLs with 2/3 units could destroy them.

It’s a joke - conservative government meant to be pro business. Nothing pro business about this lot, they’d rather sink us all. God forbid might pay a bit less tax for greater risk eh? Make a few quid you’re automatically scum in the governments eye but the tenants and the low earners won’t be putting much coin into the machine just take take take.  

mark55man

feel free @alt80 as long as you say what you mean

mark55man

@ceremony - thanks for the note - I think you are doing well on your diary as well 

doingitanyway

All sounding good here

alt80

@mark55man I tell it like it is mate can’t help myself ha. 

Seriously the amount of tax we pay as “higher earners” is beyond belief. Ltd used to be a good way to mitigate a little (certainly not the levels a lot of people think) but if corp tax goes up possibly be better to take a salary. Governments are very much the first to bite the hand that feeds them imo. 

t2rry

I love My aim is to overtake £zero from below and zoom a long way past.  I too have this aim, I need to think of a witty version of my own!! 

mark55man

Well @t2rry - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and you have my permission (as if you needed it) to take the phrase and do what you want with it.  Difficult to change £zero, but the other words could do with a tweak, or a regional word.