"The TUC suggests the tax authority, HMRC, should be given new powers to clamp down on employers who aren't giving staff the leave owed them." https://t.co/Te22Gk76Rs
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As we set our binoculars to the English Channel to watch the Ruskies sail by, may I direct you to an article on my HMRC site about how in 2012 the then Permanent Secretary for Tax at HMRC (Dave Hartnett) broke HMRC's prime directive on confidentiality and briefed journalists about the tax affairs of an individual and the company he ran.
For why?
To score a result in a tax claim and to try to get the journalists to tip him off about other tax avoidance schemes.
We have entered very dangerous waters indeed when Nanny's HMRC starts briefing against taxpayers to the media for its own ends!
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There has been a fuss in the media recently over the resignation of Camila Batmanghelidjh, from her position of CEO of a charity Kids Company that she founded.
It transpires the heart of the issue relates to non payment by the charity of nearly £700K of unpaid National Insurance to HMRC in 2003.
HMRC has written off £589,587 of the amount owed (at the taxpayers' expense) and Nanny, it seems, will hand over £3M of taxpayers' money to continue to fund the charity.
Laurence Guinness, director of communications at Kids Company, is quoted by the Third Sector saying that
the charity had:
"experienced a delay in making National Insurance
payments to HMRC as resources were focused on meeting the immediate
needs of a high number of vulnerable children with complex needs who
were not receiving statutory support".
A "delay"?
Twelve years??
When does a charity cease to be a charity, and become a business?
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Oh dear oh dear, who would have thought that Nanny would ban a Fairy?
But she has!
It appears that the well know brand of washing up liquid (Fairy Liquid) does not meet with the approval of the health and safety gestapo at HMRC's office in East Kilbride.
For why?
Allegedly it contains “non-approved chemicals”.
Does this mean that the product is a threat to the health an safety of all who use it?
No!
It poses only a threat to HMRC staff in East Kilbride!
Those running the office there want only the UK Government department’s official supplier (Brillo) to be used in the washing up process.
However, the staff at HMRC’s East Kilbride office have fought back and, according to the Daily Record, have smuggled in their favourite brand.
Alas senior management are demanding staff get rid of the unauthorised cleaning fluids.
An
email from Fiona McGregor of the “governance and security team” said:
“I have received feedback that when checking tea points staff identified some with non approved chemicals.
The
control of substances hazardous to health regulations 2002 requires
employers to control exposure to potentially hazardous substances.
Therefore any chemicals brought on to site require to be assessed.
These include products such as household washing up liquid and cleaning sprays etc.
All that should be at the tea points should be ISS approved and supplied chemicals – Brillo washing up liquid.
At some point in the next few weeks a check will be made on all tea points and any non approved chemicals removed.”
FFS!
Why are we paying taxes to employ people like this?
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Nanny has yet again abused the powers granted to her via the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA).
In theory RIPA was brought in by Nanny on the pretext of catching terrorists.
In practice, as loyal readers know, it has been used by Nanny's orifices of state (eg councils et al) to spy on local citizens as a means of collecting debts and bringing "unruly" voters under control.
The latest example of the abuse of RIPA emanates from HMRC.
In March (on my HMRC site) I asked the following question:
By happenstance, on the 29th of April, The Guardian provided a rather detailed and interesting update as to what HMRC have been doing to Mr Mba.
It transpires that HMRC used their powers, normally reserved for
catching serious criminals to search the belongings, emails, internet records and phone calls of Mr
Mba and his wife.
For why?
HMRC wanted to prove that Mr Mba had spoken to the Guardian's former investigations editor David Leigh.
Seemingly HMRC could find no proof of any contact.
Cathy
James, the head of the whistleblowers' charity, Public Concern at Work, regards this as "sinister" and is quoted:
"The actions of the HMRC in this case are very much a
step in the wrong direction, more likely to result in a culture of
silence with more anonymous leaking than anything else. It is a case of
shoot – and silence – the messengers."
David Leigh,
who retired from the Guardian last month, said:
"The revenue's decision
to use these powers to try and find a link with a journalist when the
disclosure was so obviously in the public interest was heavy-handed and
foolish, and shows the level of paranoia over their tax deals."
Mr Mba's employment tribunal claim continues and is expected to
be heard in the autumn.
As I have noted before, the more powers that are granted to organisations such as HMRC the more they will abuse and misuse them!
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It seems that in her "enthusiasm" to find contraband booze and fags, Nanny is happily indulging in secret searches of our bags and suitcases at airports.
According to a report issued by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and
Immigration, John Vine, Nanny's customs staff routinely search travellers and holidaymakers bags without the owners being present.
"There were no assurances that this
power was being used in a lawful, proportionate and controlled manner.
There had been an absence of any
assurance being undertaken to ensure that the correct procedures were
being followed to protect Human Rights obligations during these
searches."
"Ironically" covert searches of luggage are prohibited under the current Border Force Enforcement Handbook guidance.
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I am ungemused, but not surprised, to see that HMRC has taken a leaf out of local councils' books and has started using RIPA more often to spy on taxpayers (their phone calls, websites visited etc etc).
It is not just councils that are the enemies of the people, but the state!
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The reputation of Nanny's UK Border Agency has taken a heavy pounding of late (ironically its past CEO, Lin Homer, was promoted to running HMRC), as such it is keen to improve its standing.
Therefore in the spirit of keeping our country safe from felons and evil doers, the UKBA has banned Dog The Bounty Hunter from coming to the UK this week to appear on Celebrity Big Brother. Admittedly, they have probably done him a favour given that those who appear on the show are humiliated and subjected to mental torture. However, their rationale (he was involved in a murder 33 years ago) seems a tad off beam given that others with criminal convictions are allowed into the UK.
"The refusal letter from the UK Border Agency says: "Records show that
you were convicted of one offence which carried a sentence of five
years. According to those records, that conviction is not spent." It
also says the purpose of his visit is not "of a sufficiently compelling
nature" to exercise discretionary powers to let him in.
Other US
stars have been allowed into the UK despite convictions, including the
boxer Mike Tyson, who was granted entry in 2000 at the discretion of
then-home secretary Jack Straw, despite his conviction for rape."
Still I dare say that we all feel a lot safer knowing that the UKBA are clearly on the ball!
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My hearty congratulations to David Halpern (head of the Government's Behavioural Insights Team - aka 'The Nudge Unit'), who has slam dunked himself to win my prestigious, and rarely awarded, Knobhead of The Millennium Award.
For why has he been given such an award?
For his cretinous (and highly dangerous) suggestion that HMRC should overclaim tax from taxpayers.
At the Civil Service Live event Halpern said "it would be better for us to modestly overclaim tax" because when HMRC underclaims people become irritated and tempted to cheat.
He then went on to talk ever more bollocks about the "the psychological
boost of getting a rebate" - and the possibility that people spend
rebates:
"When people get tax back from HMRC, they feel great.
In
the US, people love it, and they spend the money differently too. So
we're trying to persuade you guys [HMRC] that's what you should do. Make
sure you have a certain amount of outcome which means you have to give
people their money back."
Our taxes are paying the salaries of cretins like Halpern!
David Halpern well deserving Knobhead of the Millennium!
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As loyal readers know, Nanny has something of a bee in her bonnet about us being fit and healthy (she needs a fit and healthy workforce so that she can levy taxes to pay for her expenses and mechanisms of state monitoring and control). Therefore she is often exhorting adults and kids to play sport.
However, as loyal readers also know, Nanny is a hypocrite who is desperately short of cash.
Therefore it should come as no surprise to learn that Nanny's chums in HMRC are trying to tax five aside football teams.
The Independent reports that HMRC is trying to levy VAT at 20% from companies
operating all-weather pitches at more than 150 sites in Britain.
The levy will add about £1 to the typical £4.50 cost of playing in a
five-, six- or seven-a-side match – or £100 a year for adults who play
twice a week.
Critics of the scheme (including Nanny's own Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson) argue that the levy, which will collect £5M a year, will hit people participating in sport
and undermine efforts to improve the nation's health.
For more than 20 years, five-a-side
centres have not attracted VAT because their operators believed they
were only supplying the land to sports teams. However, the HMRC has
ruled that their use should be subject to tax because the players that
use them are hiring pitches from commercial concerns that are also
organising mini-leagues. It said that such businesses should always have
been subject to tax.
More than 500,000 children are estimated to
use such facilities free every week, with the number expected to double
within a decade.
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The bill, in its current form, permits the routine disclosure of tax records
and other personal data held by HMRC to council officers for several
council tax-related purposes.
The powers also allow HMRC to disclose such details directly to
contractors of the council (eg, perhaps those IT service providers based
overseas or in the cloud); this could permit tax details to go to many destinations outside the European Economic Area.
The argument used by the state is that these powers enable councils to
get information directly from HMRC to check claims for reduced council
tax, as opposed to having to ask for the same information again from the
persons seeking the council tax reduction.
All very "helpful" and "considerate" of the state, maybe. However, there is already an exemption
from the non-disclosure provisions in section 29 of the Data Protection
Act that covers the “assessment or collection of any tax or duty...”;
ie this data can be shared already.
The new bill will increase the data share between HMRC and councils and,
as indicated above, spread that data to organisations outwith councils
and the UK.
There is also one other rather interesting aspect of the proposed bill:
"There is a provision that states: “Regulations under this paragraph must
not be made except with the consent of the Commissioners for Her
Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”. This is the first time I have seen that
the exercise of Ministerial Powers is to become subject to a veto by
someone who is not the minister."
Is this a good idea to grant HMRC these extra powers?
I don't think so!
The state should be afraid of the people, the people should not be afraid of the state!
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As we know, Nanny and her acolytes have something of a fetish for gathering data on all of us and putting that data into databases.
Nanny's rationale being that the databases help her to "help" us live "better" more "secure" lives etc etc; eg the "super" NHS database (that has yet to work) and the proposed child "protection" database (that allows all manner of people access to personal details).
Nanny has assured us, on numerous occasions, that the data stored in these databases is secure.
Bollocks!
As we have seen in the UK (eg with the loss of HMRC data on 25 million people), databases are far from secure.
However, the ongoing Wikileaks fiasco wrt 250,000 "classified" US cables knocks the UK security failures into a cocked hat.
Whilst the content of the leaked cables is, to people with half a brain, hardly surprising and in many cases bordering on the trivial; the damage done to US diplomatic efforts is incalculable. People will now treat US diplomats in the same way as they treat journalists, and work on the assumption that whatever is said may well appear on the net one day.
How did this fiasco come to pass?
Post 9/11 the US became more scared and paranoid than it usually is. Now, under such conditions, one would assume that there would have been a "security lockdown" wrt handling diplomatic communications.
Perversely, no, the exact opposite happened.
Working from the premise that sharing data would increase US security, the government of the day undertook to build a central database of all diplomatic communications.
Maybe, in itself, this was a logical idea.
However, the US government then asked themselves the fundamental question wrt databases namely:
"Who do we grant access rights to?"
They chose, for reasons that are beyond any understanding, to grant unfettered access rights to over 3.5 million people.
Yes, you did read that correctly, over 3.5 million people were given access rights to this database!
An accident waiting to happen!
Quite why the US authorities are so "shocked" over this leak is beyond me. Frankly the fact that the leak didn't occur years ago is more surprising.
The lesson to our own Nanny is clear, databases can be abused. To leave the design and security of such databases to politicians (who have zero experience of the real world, work or IT) is asking for trouble.
BTW, one small question, what on earth does the US government want the biometric data of UN personnel for?
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Why not really indulge yourself, by doing all the things that Nanny really hates? Click on the relevant link to indulge yourselves; Food, Bonking, Toys, Gifts and Flowers, Groceries
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