Last year more than 200,000 people were prosecuted for not having a TV licence.
More than fifty - many of them women - went to prison for it.
But HMRC say it is not in the public interest to prosecute tax criminals and the bankers and accountants who set arrangements for them.
How can that be?
Which minister wants to explain how we go to this absurd position?
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Not one person has ever been sent to prison for not having a TV licence.
Anyone who has been sent to prison is sent there for not paying the fines imposed for not having a TV licence, just as anyone who did not pay fines handed out by HMRC wruns the risk of ending up in prison.
How would you deal with non-payment of a TV licence?
I see you are now moving to only posting people who agree with you or butter up your ego so I guess this won’t be posted but I know and you now know that what you have said is not true, not that this seems to matter to you any more.
Oddly I never resorted to imprisonment to get my business debts paid
But you think prison for minor debts is fine
Keep digging the hole you’re working on
Or would you like me to delete you before it gets too embarrassing?
Clap trap BaulB!
People do go to prison for not having a license (something that has to be purchased and has not been and is therefore causual) and also for not paying the fines loaded onto the outstanding debt which was the purchase price of the license in the first place. You are surely being pedantic when trying to separate the two. One begets the other.
This happens all the time in the real world – for example, if you are a council house tenant and you are in rent arrears, if the court finds that you have not paid your rent and consents to you being evicted or orders you to pay off the outstanding rent (plus current rent of course), the court will attach costs to the rent you already owe – thus adding to your financial problems.
In my opinion, ordinary people get treated worse than business people reagrding debt. I know that business people work hard and take risks but I still think it unfair.
It is also true that the sums involved in tax evasion are truly well beyond the cost of a TV license so it is also a question of proportion and in this context the siutation is just not justified.
Thanks Mark
Leona Helmsley: “Taxes are for the little people.”
The most revealing soundbite ever uttered by a OnePerCenter.
“But you think prison for minor debts is fine”
He didn’t say that. Try again.
Nuance is beyond you
He said “Anyone who has been sent to prison is sent there for not paying the fines imposed for not having a TV licence” and then “How would you deal with non-payment of a TV licence?”
I take that question as meaning that Richard or any body else could not possibly think up any way of dealing with non-payment of a TV licence better than fining people and then imprisoning them if they did not pay the fine.
I infer that PaulB does indeed approve of imprisoning people for not paying the minor debt of a fine imposed for not having a TV licence.
Tax Corporate Revenues, Not Profits;
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/impose-tax-corporate-revenues-not-profits/FyVqClLl
Sorry – and absurd proposal that increases one of the unfairest taxes of all – VAT
Agreed. Every time the Tories prattle on about being the party of tax cuts, they should be asked: what was VAT in 1979 (8%)? What is it now (20%)?
Cui bono? Cutting the top rate of income taxes, and funding it by a 250% increase in VAT, is a direct wealth transfer from the poorest to the richest.
What we really need are a land value tax, a tax on buy-to-let properties (in conjunction with laws giving tenants German-style rights) and taxes on wealth and inheritance – in addition to aggressively pursuing avoidance/evasion of income taxes.
Want to cut the deficit, George? Follow the money, and tax the wealth.
Of course, the Tories don’t really want to cut the deficit/debt; it’s just a handy excuse for flogging off the State (Royal Mail!) to their chums for a song, and for punishing the poor for the financial crisis caused by their funders and backers.
Finally, it takes a special sort of myopia to obsess about public debt while completely ignoring private debt. Steve Keen had a great post about this, regarding Australia, but the same holds true for the UK.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2012/10/29/global-financial-crisis/why-back-future-budget-will-fail
(see the first graph)
Tories obsess about the tiny debt at the bottom. The enormous debt at the top? OBviously that’s the wealth creators, risk-takers and entrepreneurs at work!
Dennis Skinner has just asked Gauke why 3200 DWP istaff were working clamping down on benefit fraud when there were only 300 HMRC officials investigating tax evasion.
Brilliant.
Sobering too.
Yes it is sobering. I was disappointed recently to learn that my ex brother in law has been told that his fairly large tax debt has been dropped and he is now free to return to the UK – to harass my sister and their children who have enjoyed a period of freedom from his bullying (he left the country rather than declare himself bankrupt to avoid the threat of prosecution and also to avoid paying the divorce settlement and other obligations). Contrast that with the way people on benefits are treated – people who are legitimately entitled to benefits, even people with disabilities whose only ‘crime’ may have been to have arrived late for a DWP appointment. Their benefits are often stopped with no concern for their welfare. I suppose it’s much easier to take action against the ‘little people’ as they can’t fight back
Not following the money, obviously.
“Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” –Rothschild in 1744.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer
“his fairly large tax debt has been dropped”
This sounds like rubbish to me. HMRC don’t just “drop” tax debts in the way Ruth implies. If it no longer exists there will be reasons for it (for example, it was never legally due in the first place).
“Every time the Tories prattle on about being the party of tax cuts, they should be asked: what was VAT in 1979 (8%)? What is it now (20%)?”
There is plenty of academic evidence that taxes on expenditure are less harmful economically than taxes on labour. Sorry, you may not like that, but it’s true. No one seriously argues that the top rate of income tax should be 83% (or higher in some circumstances) anymore, not even the Labour Party. If VAT at 17.5% was so bad then Labour had 13 years to reverse it, but they left office with VAT at the same rate.
Also, good luck with getting the EU to agree an 8% standard rate of VAT. Remember, VAT is an EU tax, it didn’t exist in the UK before we entered the EEC in 1973.
Evidence by and large funded by big business via places like the Oxford Centre for Business Taxation
I’m sorry but this baloney – pure and simple.
Please list these academic papers and their sources. Come on – don’t be shy.
VAT seems reasonable in that people are all taxed at the same rate. However, the practice ignores income which is not all the same is it?
Which means in the real world that 20% on on item is a bigger deal for someone on £12K per year than someone on £60K.
The lower the income, the worst the effect of the VAT. Add to that a drop in income through cuts in benefits and wages or a fixed income and VAT becomes harder to justify.
This whole argument is smoescreen to protect huge wealth and assets from being legally taxed – pure and simple. You should no better than to peddle your neo-lib wares here my friend.
Well, the EU introduced the 15% minimum standard rate of VAT in 1993. The provision currently requiring a 15% minimum expires at the end of 2015, but it has been renewed several times before. The VAT rate tends to be higher in places like Sweden and Denmark, and lower in places like Malta and Luxembourg.
At a recent talk at the LSE, Dr Gabriel Zucman gave his view that the peak of the Laffer curve (that is, the tax rate that would secure the greatest tax revenue) was around 80%!
He may be right
So we have 200,000 people “prosecuted” for non-payment of TV licence which in practice simply means that, apart from 50 (0.025%), they have been fined.
We also have about 1000 people who have used a Swiss bank account to avoid paying tax. All have been fined while one (0.1%) has been prosecuted.
Perhaps the issue here is simply that HMRC has the authority to impose fines while the BBC requires the authority of the magistrates courts.
BTW, Richard, can you get us any data on how many of the 200,000 pay SKY subscriptions.
HMRC have not fined
They have reached tax settlements
And they also applied exceptionally low rates
1. HMRC claims they have imposed penalty rates (i.e. fines).
2. You cannot know whether or not “exceptionally low rates” have been applied unless you have full details on each case.
France has managed to claw back £188 million in unpaid tax AND fines while the UK has received £135 million. Given that tax rates in France are generally higher the 2 figures are not that different.
You have no way of knowing
You say I do not know
But then conclude you can
Not possible
I Forgot to add that you failed to address my main point which was that HMRC can and does impose fines (or penalty rates) while the BBC (or its agency) doesn’t which makes the comparison in your headline void.
HMRC is not fining
And no one has a record as a result
The difference is fundamental
Only fools and charlatans would not be able to spot it
You know the rates, do you? I expect some of those settlements will have involved penalties, which sounds a bit like a fine to me. HMRC had the Lagarde information before the Swiss agreement was put in place, so can apply their usual penalties.
There is some information of this in the PAC minutes from 2012 and 2013:
* http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/716/121105.htm
* http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/666/131028.htm
There was mention of possibly another 12 criminal prosecutions. I expect it has been hard to find corroborating evidence to secure convictions.
I can confirm, from direct experience, that HMRC do impose penalties on settlements involving Swiss bank accounts under the recent settlement facilities.
And the scale was? % please
Different levels for different things – 10-30%.
Which I thought a bit harsh in this case (I wasn’t the one negotiating it: it was a done deal before the client came to me).
I think anything less than 100% a rip off of society when 30% can be charged for honest error
This case was a non-UK national who’d been living in the UK for a few years, who had some Swiss investments in their name managed for them by a parent (Swiss, living in Switzerland). They didn’t appreciate they had the income & gains, much less that it was taxable in the UK.
100% for that sounds very harsh to me. Being in the “careless, prompted” range sounds more like it.
This is nonsense Andrew
You are describing a non-dom who must have remitted the funds
They were aware of them then
Nope, I’m talking about a non-dom who didn’t remit the funds. I think they knew the investments were there, but not what income and gains were being produced. Which of course has no impact on the tax liability, which I checked over when I took on the client and agreed is reasonable.
As for the penalties: as I say, they are clearly included in the figures agreed by HMRC, at rates of up to 30% of the tax underpaid.
None of that makes any sense Andrew
Are you not familiar with the taxation of non-UK domiciled individuals, then? It makes perfect sense to me.
Taxpayer is resident in the UK (and has been for several years), and therefore subject to UK tax on worldwide income and gains.
Taxpayer does not declare income and gains on funds in Switzerland, as they are not aware of the amounts or that they need to (as in fact they didn’t, when the remittance basis applied). There’s no intention to avoid tax, there’s just a non-UK person not being terribly familiar with UK tax rules.
HMRC find the name on the list of Swiss accounts and ask about the funds.
Taxpayer (with help from family and advisors) agrees that tax should have been paid, agrees the amounts of unpaid tax, interest, and penalties, and pays up.
Job done. Tax collected. Penalties charged. Tax being paid properly going forward. Perfect example of the system working perfectly.
If you say person is non-dom I assume a remittance basis applies
Why not?
Why would you assume remittance basis applies?
It costs tens of thousands of pounds to get remittance basis, but their income is about £60k a year – and it’s all taxed at UK rates or higher (apart from the relatively small amount from Switzerland).
I did
You mentioned status implying non-dom so I assumed it was relevant to the situation
It wasn’t
Sate facts clearly or of course I come to the wrong conclusion
That’s pretty basic Andrew
Of course it was relevant to the situation: not being a UK national, they were not familiar with the UK tax system.
Had I meant to say they were non-domiciled because the remittance basis was the point of the situation, then rather than referring to them as a “non-UK national”, I would have said they were non-domiciled and using the remittance basis.
If you want to read additional facts in, and thereby mislead yourself, then that’s nothing to do with me.
Andrew
Your style is endearing
Richard
Thank you.
So, back to the point: do you accept that HMRC are charging penalties in these cases?
I have always accepted that they are
Insufficient ones
Oh, sorry. I was confused by you saying “HMRC have not fined”.
Penalties are not fines
Well yes: strictly penalties are civil sanctions and fines are criminal ones.
But you’re rather splitting hairs, aren’t you?
Not at all
Criminal records matter and are avoided by HMRC penalties
Which would you prefer? A bigger penalty and no criminal record or a criminal record and a low penalty. I know the answer
This is not hair splitting
This is a very real issue
TV licence.
Problem solved.
Cancelled.
Still watch TV, just not live “as it is broadcast” but on catch-up.
Loads of films available to watch online via the likes of netflix etc.
Loads of music.
And no TV licence.
Bonus.
I strongly recommend people do not follow this dangerous example
Richard.
You only need a TV licence to watch BROADCAST television, as it is being broadcast.
You do NOT need to have one if you only watch, say, netflix. Or if you have a contract with, say, NOWTV…as long as what you are watching is not being broadcast at the same time. The BBC, on its iplayer website, even tells you that.
And so do tv-licensing:
“You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it’s being broadcast. This includes the use of devices such as a computer, laptop, mobile phone or DVD/video recorder”
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one?WT.ac=home_plt_check
The risk of getting it wrong is very high
I do not endorse doing this for a moment
And I am willing to pay for Wolf Hall
For me, there is no risk at all.
If a program on the bbc site is being shown live, the site opens a window telling you that you need a licence.
Netflix et-al do not matter; they don’t show live programs.
It’s a personal choice, some people pay because the licencing people get quite ratty when visiting. To the extent that they insist on entry to check.
If people doubt me, you can check with the tvlicensing people about it.
The gov are intent on removing the criminality of not having a licence and watching programs, that would make it a civil offence. Given the difference between criminal law and civil law, the bbc are against it.
The Government are also seeking to financially undermine an institution whom they don’t like by essentally making it run at a a loss in my opinion. So this does not look as benign as it first appears.
Underfund and then privatise – that is the Tory mantra (some in Labour think like this too).