Revision to tax freedom day.

Via roughly half the blogroll I see that thought is being given to changing the format of tax freedom day in the UK to "whenever HMRC see fit to give you any of the money you've worked for". I'm still a bit tied up with other things and anyway there's little I can add to comments of Bill Sticker, Bucko, Captain Ranty to name but a few. It beggars belief, it really does. A government agency fucks up in such a way that millions have underpaid tax and millions have overpaid tax, and their proposed solution is to have employers pay your wages directly to the tax orifice and trust them - which would be the same them who fucked up in the first place - to give you the amount of wages that they believe you are owed in a regular, timely fashion and, importantly, without fucking that up too. Oh, but surely it's the employers payroll departments who've been fucking it up, not HMRC? Well, partly, yes, but HMRC and by extension the government bear a lot of responsibility for making it so fucking complicated in the first place. Every year I was on PAYE my tax was either wrong or I was on an adjusted tax code because it was wrong the previous year, and this was despite my dealing with the tax orifice personally and relaying what passed for their advice to the payroll department. Didn't matter who I worked for or whether payroll was in house or contracted out to payroll company (and I doubt they'd be thrilled at the idea of the government effectively nationalising the payroll business and leaving them out of it), there were minor fuckups every other year. This continued until I became self employed, which I'd highly recommend incidentally (and incorporation, since if it's good enough for a weapons grade cock slot like Richard Murphy it's good enough for everyone), and started doing my own returns. Frankly the only downside is needing to keep good records and spend a day form filling once a year. Oh, and that if you leave the country, and even if you tell the tax orifice that you'd prefer to treat yourself to a cheese grater back massage than go back and give them any more of your money, the bastards will probably still send you a return if they have anything remotely resembling a valid address for where you're going.*

So bearing in mind that they are frequently so inept that even being on the other side of the fucking planet isn't far enough to escape their tendrils of incompetence, hands up who thinks it's a good idea to let them be paid all of your earnings from your employer and to trust them to pay you what you're owed?

Anyone?

No?

Gosh, there's a surprise. Okay then, hands up who thinks in the unlikely event they fuck up tax paid they'd either (a) notice, and if so (b) be in much of a rush to tell you about it? Without the full payslip details PAYE taxpayers get at the moment how would they know that HMRC isn't helping itself (probably not deliberately) to an extra few quid a week?

Anyone?

Still no?

Funny that.

* I only gave them mine because I knew the bastards owed me some NIC back, though to give them credit they tried their best to persuade me to keep paying it. I'm convinced the whole thing will have gone tits up long before I hit retirement age, or they'll have only kept it going by having raised the age to 104. I politely told them where they could put their NICs and asked for a cheque to be made out in dollars or a transfer to a UK account, didn't mind which. Predictably, what I got was a cheque in Sterling that cost me 20 bucks to pay in.