'Have you ever cheated the taxman?' Poll results/discussion

Nomad25

I'm with you 100% on this one earwig, so I won't be voting! Your comments re newspapers silly quotes are valid - all it takes is a no news, wet day and some bored journo .. bingo. Am actually quite surprised at Martin letting this through. Guess they must have thought it through at MSE towers.

chuckles1066

Nomad25 wrote: »

I'm with you 100% on this one earwig, so I won't be voting! Your comments re newspapers silly quotes are valid - all it takes is a no news, wet day and some bored journo .. bingo. Am actually quite surprised at Martin letting this through. Guess they must have thought it through at MSE towers.

Besides which, the values are small fry.

A bigger tax dodge is paying Bob The Builder £1,000 cash in hand for a wall that, if it goes through the books, is going to cost you £1,500.

And everyone does that, don't they? :rolleyes:

slicence

teddyco wrote: »

I, my wife, my family and friends are all waiting patiently here in Maidstone for the next election so we can:

VOTE CONSERVATIVE!

Lower taxes!
Make fox hunting legal again!
Nationalize the British Rail System and get Britain moving again!
Lower petrol taxes!
Fix all the pot holes in 90% of our roads!
Make foreign Lorry drivers qualify to drive on British roads!
Make the NHS mostly private!
Scrap the pre-war, out-of-date car tax!
Folks who claim state benefits must qualify every 6 month's to show that they are still unfit to work. Incentivize disability payments to get as many working again like they do in the USA.
Get rid of the sham that is the child benefits program! Lowering taxes for everyone benefits everyone equally.
Scrap the TV License!
Build more airports since all the smart people really know global warming is a myth!
High Speed trains for the whole of Britain!
Scrap ASBO's and bring back National Service!
Let kids wear hoodies or anything else they want because with all the cops on the streets under Conservatives, it won't matter what they are wearing.
Make smacking legal in schools so teachers can beat the living crap out of
naughty kids once and for all!
Bring back the London Routemaster buses with conductor's, and ditch bendy buses forever!
Get out of the EU Now!
Make the English language mandatory for anyone who gets UK citizenship or works at a UK call center.
Lower corporate taxes and CGT's and scrap death taxes!
Give all police guns and teach them them how to use them!
Widen the M25 and build more roads in the UK!
Get rid of stupid, senseless Labour targets in hospitals, schools and the police forces and allow the professionals to do their jobs!

Elect Boris Johnson for London Mayor! Woo Hoo!

The funny thing is, I can't even work out if you're serious or not:rotfl:

MagicBurd29

You will never prove who actually typed something at any given time

What's that whooshing? Ah, the sound of a point being missed ...

Armed with a bill-payer's identity or even just the IP address' physical address, HMRC can start an investigation of that bill-payer, and/or others at that address.

Have you been investigated? Quick bit of fun, was it?

Of course server logs don't prove anything. They don't have to.

And all this is beside my main point, which is the potential harm of this poll to MSE's reputation.

MagicBurd29

Nomad25 wrote: »

Am actually quite surprised at Martin letting this through. Guess they must have thought it through at MSE towers.

I did wonder if they'd meant to do this poll in a week's time. On 1/4

chuckles1066

earwig1928 wrote: »

What's that whooshing? Ah, the sound of a point being missed ...

nope, that would be the sound of the wind whistling through the empty space between your ears.

earwig1928 wrote: »

Have you been investigated? Quick bit of fun, was it?

Nope, but then I'm PAYE so I don't have a choice in what taxes I have removed from my earnings.

But if I can pay cash for a job to be done, then I do.

teddyco

slicence,

I'm glad someone thinks it's funny!

MagicBurd29

chuckles1066 wrote: »

nope, that would be the sound of the wind whistling through the empty space between your ears.

Out of arguments so resort to insults.

chuckles1066 wrote: »

Nope, but then I'm PAYE so I don't have a choice in what taxes I have removed from my earnings.

Out of experience so resort to irrelevance.

chuckles1066 wrote: »

But if I can pay cash for a job to be done, then I do.

Ah, that explains why my comments about MSE's reputation have passed you by.

MSE_Martin

Let me just reply to the newspaper headline comment which I found quite amusing. To be honest I was considering press releasing the poll result so newspaper coverage isn't something that scares me on this! All my polls are VERY public 5m people use the site a month over 400,000 on a typical tip day including many 1,000s of journalists.

MSE is a massive website - 1 in 8 UK adults use it is month. The vote doesn't represent "MSE users" its a good - though admittedly not random sample - of the UK population.

The vote neither represents me or the population, but shows how widespread evading taxes are. Of course its a crime. I'm aware of it and don't condone it. Yet as a piece of social measurement the poll is fascinating and exactly the reason I did it.

What it shows is a substantial number of people do evade taxes. This is an issue our society needs to be aware of and deal with. Brushing it under the carpet and not tackling it just isn't my style

Martin

A.Jones

teddyco wrote: »

I, my wife, my family and friends are all waiting patiently here in Maidstone for the next election so we can:

VOTE CONSERVATIVE!

Lower taxes!
Make fox hunting legal again!
Nationalize the British Rail System and get Britain moving again!
Lower petrol taxes!
Fix all the pot holes in 90% of our roads!
Make foreign Lorry drivers qualify to drive on British roads!
Make the NHS mostly private!
Scrap the pre-war, out-of-date car tax!
Folks who claim state benefits must qualify every 6 month's to show that they are still unfit to work. Incentivize disability payments to get as many working again like they do in the USA.
Get rid of the sham that is the child benefits program! Lowering taxes for everyone benefits everyone equally.
Scrap the TV License!
Build more airports since all the smart people really know global warming is a myth!
High Speed trains for the whole of Britain!
Scrap ASBO's and bring back National Service!
Let kids wear hoodies or anything else they want because with all the cops on the streets under Conservatives, it won't matter what they are wearing.
Make smacking legal in schools so teachers can beat the living crap out of
naughty kids once and for all!
Bring back the London Routemaster buses with conductor's, and ditch bendy buses forever!
Get out of the EU Now!
Make the English language mandatory for anyone who gets UK citizenship or works at a UK call center.
Lower corporate taxes and CGT's and scrap death taxes!
Give all police guns and teach them them how to use them!
Widen the M25 and build more roads in the UK!
Get rid of stupid, senseless Labour targets in hospitals, schools and the police forces and allow the professionals to do their jobs!

Elect Boris Johnson for London Mayor! Woo Hoo!

I hope they tax overuse of the exclamation mark too.