What Nanny takes with her right hand, she also takes with her left too!
Despite all her urging for us to get off our bottoms and do more exercise, it would seem that Nanny has not told her chums in HMRC.
The taxman is trying to add VAT to membership of local leisure centres. This would of course undermine Nanny's campaign to tackle obesity, as millions of people use swimming pools, gyms and leisure centres run by non-profit making leisure trusts.
HM Revenue & Customs is demanding 17.5% VAT on monthly and annual subscriptions to trusts, which include access to sporting and non-sporting facilities such as steam rooms and saunas.
The Revenue has also indicated that it will collect unpaid VAT retrospectively over the past three years, and could even charge interest on the debt — placing a huge financial burden on trusts.
A fine example of non integrated, non joined up and unconnected government policy.
Great post Ken,
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see if biometric cashless fingerprint scanners start to appear at council run leisure centers. To monitor the amount of exercise people are taking.
These machines are appearing in many British schools for a cashless catering system. Monitoring what the kids are eating. Taking mugshots and fingerprints of children without parental consent!!
It's a massive cash grabbing business for the biometric sales Companies.
Would the biometrics machines be subject to VAT I wonder?
Ken said:
ReplyDelete"The taxman is trying to add VAT to membership of local leisure centres. This would of course undermine Nanny's campaign to tackle obesity, as millions of people use swimming pools, gyms and leisure centres run by non-profit making leisure trusts."
Or look at it the other way around.
Set up a 'sleeper' scam that everyone of any age ot too fat to live very long and frighten people into gym membership - mostly unused. People get a feelgood factor from belonging. In some cases they actually go AND enjoy it and become addicted to the exercise (cue anorexia and so on.)
Once the number of captives looks big enough to be meaningful and the concept is well entrenched in the social mindset one smply retrospectively activates the tax that was planned all along. It's not a new tax, just a new interpretation of whether or not it should apply.
Not dissimilar to, say, the EU consistitution proposals. Or indeed any number of other parallel examples to be found across the interests in the public domain.
Structured social re-programming over the last 30 years has produced an era of accepting whatever is proposed. So I suggest that to consider this to be non-joined up thinking may be somewhat wishful thinking.
IMHO.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteYou're an accountant... I seem to be seeing more and more of these 'retrospective' grabs where people abide by the (vicious enough already) rules only to be shafted and most likely broken when the scumvernment decides to apply some new thievery retrospectively. How on earth can this be legal? I despise socialists!
Of course, what socialists, including champagne ones want, is everyone to give all their money to government and them to pay us all a small amount of pocket money.
ReplyDelete