Todays' Strikes - Food for thought

If you were that successful why didn`t you just register for VAT and come to an arrangement with HMC&R to pay off your arrears?

 

because they knock on your door, remove your computer ... shut your ebay business .... and take 18 months to investigate .... there is a section called 'hidden assets' ... they dont play games

they are even cruising around carboot sales on sundays .... see your goods, recognise that you are a dealer, take your van/car registration and record it on computer .... after a few months, if your car reg appears often, you are a dealer and will get targeted and investigated

just hope that you are declaring all your earnings with your gardening jobs Dai .... mess up once and get a 'funny client' and you will suffer big time when they blow the whistle?

 

As the saying goes, if you can`t do the time.

 

and Benjamin Franklin said: time is money

so listen to what everyone says .... be carefull and pay all your taxes Dai .... not worth mowing that lawn and not declaring it .... you never know who you are working for .... P*ss them off and you will be reported and 'investigated'

 

No fear of that Dim. I have my NI number, I`ve done my returns for 2010-2011, The taxman is happy, I am happy. I don`t earn enough, through choice, to register for VAT. If I did, I would and I would happily pay it.

 

nice one Dai .... I'm up to date now with taxes ... got a hefty fine but had a good lawyer ....

I will start ebay again in march next year as a sideline , but will keep it low key .... a few good small antiques per week (not 80 items per week).... I understand this market and am passionate with this sort of stuff

what I was trying to say is that it's not worth risking a full investigation for trying to dodge a few small cash in hand jobs, as you are never sure who you are working for ...

one slip up and you will get grilled .... they check you back several years, speak to your clients and try find out who referred you ... who else you work for etc ....these guys dont play games and are very sharp....

get a good accountant, and you can claim (legally) to the max and pay a slightly lesser tax... not worth the risk .... take a tip from a mug

 

I have a small, exclusive, client list. They consist, mainly. of solicitors, barristers and property developers. With the odd medical practitioner thrown in. There is also a magistrate in there somewhere.:D

 

Do not forget the bit where we take you into a room and the YALE lock is err back to front
ie:-YOU can not leave the man with the key can :-)

Jack McH

 

Uhhhmmmm..............

Government debt stood at about £950billion in 2010.
Outstanding figure of the bank bailout after repayments in 2010 according to the National Audit Office was £456billion.

Go figure.

The banks should have been better regulated, yes. But they should never have been de-regulated in the first place.
Yet despite the rhetoric, they still have not been regulated. Until we say that you cannot operate with theoretical money nothing will change.

 

The banks are regulated. They were regulated during the reign of Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair too. The regulatory body is the FSA (Financial Services Authority) which is a government quango. It is their job to ensure that the banks not only operate fairly, but in the best interest of their customers and shareholders, don't do anything illegal, and don't do anything that jeopardises UK interests. The regulations are quite strict. Even dictating to some extent who may be employed in an FSA regulated company. The aim in that sense being to ensure that nobody got in who didn't know what they were doing, or who might deliberately do something dangerous or wrong.

The banks ignored the regulations. The last government knew this and turned a blind eye to it, because the gambling appeared to be paying off for them. Many high ranking government bods owned lots of spare property, and were sitting back watching house prices rise at silly rates. This is why the government turned a blind eye to what the banks were doing. This is not conspiracy theory, the information is in the public domain. Anyone can pay a small fee to do a search against the land register.

 

Thanks, Shiney - yes, it all depends what you mean by regulation. Margaret Thatcher's government lifted many of the controls on borrowing. The strict limits on mortgage lending were relaxed, with disastrous results. I believe they used to be something like a maximum of two and half times joint earnings OR three times the main earner's salary plus 1 x the secondary earner, whichever worked out more. In addition, I think I'm right in saying that you couldn't hold more than one mortgage. Getting rid of this rule led to the ghastly, venal culture of buy-to-lets - but I better not get started on that one.

Few of us have benefited from these changes, save a few speculators and individuals who were lucky enough to be sitting on properties which were paid for long ago. I am certain that the rampant house price inflation we've suffered in recent years is directly linked to the amount people can borrow, so we have ended up with families having to work twice as hard to own something which their parents' generation may well have been able to buy on one relatively modest salary.

I was half-listening to something the other day which mentioned how much extra families with an average mortgage will have to pay if the interest rates go up by just 1% - a very modest rise compared with what borrowers had to contend with in the 1980s. Alas, I can't remember the exact figure, but it was terrifying. The whole thing could still implode in a spectacular fashion.