Further To…

This, Hammond and the Guardian are trying to rationalise what amounts to picking the pockets of the self-employed.

Narrowing the tax gap between self-employed workers and salaried employees is the kind of neat, rational measure that appeals to Treasury officials. It raises a bit of money – £645m a year by the end of the parliament – and it irons out one of the many historic anomalies in taxation.

That view of the world was echoed by Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who described it as a “small change making a small step towards correcting a big problem with the current tax system”.

Oh, really? The self-employed take more risks, they do not have ready access to benefits that the employed may enjoy (okay, perhaps not, exactly, enjoy but you get what I mean here) and if you doubt me, do wander into the local job centre and try claiming for any of the range of benefits on tap. Apparently at some point in the far distant future, there has been some improvement in pensions. Whoopy do! Well excuse me if I don’t jump up and down with joy. I might not live that long. I am concerned with the here and now and here and now as a self-employed person, I do not get out anything like what I pay in, so I expect to pay less. There is not some sort of “reward” as Stephen suggested somewhat idiotically in the other thread (tax does not reward, it penalises).

Besides, there is another solution if they feel that there is iniquity between what we pay and what the employed pay – reduce NI contributions for the employed and cut spending. There are plenty of opportunities for making real savings here.

But Osborne knew that however rational, raising self-employed national insurance could be too easily caricatured as a raid on the bank account of “white van man” – a tax on entrepreneurship.

Because that is precisely what it is.

I go back to a comment I made on the other discussion:

As an aside to all of this, I appreciate that the state is in debt. This is not my fault, nor is it yours. It is the fault of those politicians who spent money like it was going out of fashion.

If an individual presented themselves to a debt counsellor with this problem, they would be told to stop spending money on fripperies, not to go out and mug someone.

Unfortunately, politicians are thick. If they weren’t, they would grasp this basic principle; that when you have money problems, you reduce your spending. That does not mean you reduce the rate at which you borrow. It means you look closely at what you are spending money on and stop spending it on anything that is not strictly necessary. But, no, the cretins in government, of whichever stripe, prefer the mugging option.

So, yeah, thieving scum, the lot of them.

The state is not your friend. I discovered this one day shortly after returning from France. Having tried to claim some of the tens of thousands of pounds I had paid into the system in order to eke a meagre living while I got myself back onto my feet, the HMRC sent one of their thugs round to the house demanding money with menaces. He even threatened to take my car if I couldn’t furnish him with protection money. It took a call to my accountant to get these people off my back. This, despite having advised them of the situation and my accountant preparing updated accounts reflecting my losses. The scum owed me money, not the other way around. Did these leeches ever apologise for their error? I’m still waiting on that one and I’m not holding my breath. The state is my enemy and I treat it accordingly.

Lib/Lab/Con, they are all pretty much the same. Not one of them has the wit or courage to do what needs to be done and drastically reduce public sector spending.