Friday, Feb 03, 2012
Whats the point, so many tax fiddles and too high taxes
Liverpool daily post: More than £25m of council tax went uncollected by Merseyside councils over the last year
New figures reveal Liverpool was the fourth worst authority in the North West for non-collection, witrh more than £7.3m left outstanding in 2010/11.
Sefton was the second worst offending council on Merseyside, failing to collect £5.4m, while Knowsley had the lowest non-collection rate of all six authorities, failing to bring in £1.4m.
The worst performing authority in the North West for failure to collect council tax and non-domestic rates was Manchester, waiving more than £18.4m in the previous financial year.
Posted by mark @ 10:10 AM (962 views) Add Comment
23 Comments
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1. libertas said...
This is great news. Hopefully they can stop collecting the rest and we can then employ our money in the real economy.
Like, we do not need Council's providing bin collections. Private sector can provide better service for less money. I am capable of using the Yellow Pages. We can also return to private provision of lighting and roads. Hand High Streets to the shops and flats which face them and require that they set up a Corporation to maintain and control the street. You wouldn't believe the funding that would be available and how fabulous and clean the streets would become.
Same for residential estates. Set up a corporation run by the Resident's Association paid for by subscription. Then see the public spaces in Estates flourish. Also see Communities re-ignited and working together. The local Association could also better regulate development within an Estate with the Council acting as arbiter when there is disagreement. Local Authorities can already set up Development Zones. These allow all kind of development permitted by local policy guidelines. So, get a design guide for an estate and all development which complies does not require planning permission and can be resolved locally. Those which do not comply apply in the normal manner, eliminating probably 60% of all planning applications.
Then we can slash Council tax completely and once again fund local Council's from general taxation, as it was before Thatcher.
2. mark wadsworth said...
Libertas, do you keep repeating the same old lies because you think people will believe you or because you genuinely believe them to be true? "Then we can slash Council tax completely and once again fund local Council's from general taxation, as it was before Thatcher."
Domestic Rates pre-1989 were much higher than Council Tax post-1991, and before that we had Schedule A tax on owner-occupied housing as well. The whole notion of funding councils from general taxation is a relatively new development.
Have you changed your mind about relocating to Florida now I've pointed out that their domestic property taxes are much higher than ours, certainly much higher than Council Tax or the proposed Mansion Tax?
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From the article: "It is a scandal and a disgrace, at a time when vital services for our elderly and our children in our local communities are being slashed due to government cuts in funding that more than £1bn nationally is going uncollected in council tax and business rates." said some public sector union chappy.
Ho hum, £1 billion not collected out of total CT and BR of around £50 billion a year is only 2% which is absolutely fantastic by the standards of other taxes, where the amount lost to fraud, evasion, bankruptcy etc. is more like five or ten percent (and that's not including the lost GDP due to Laffer effects and the potential tax thereon).
3. mark said...
anyone here still believe in global warming lol
those taxes could be abolished
and bleeding car tax it is a pain
4. mombers said...
@libertas, do you really think that tax revenue from people on minimum wage is best spent lighting streets in affluent areas? I've never heard anyone try to honestly make a case for explicitly redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich via tax policy.
5. mark said...
libertas why dont you start with 1 baby policy unless you are working and able to support more children without state benefits
6. libertas said...
Mombers, what on earth are you saying. I'm telling you that tax should not cover lighting in rich areas. That this should be privatised. Currently it does. Are you completely confused, or playing mind control by completely twisting everything I've said?
7. mark wadsworth said...
Mombers, keep up the good work! I'm not sure what planet Libertas lives on. If he sets up his street by street associations to deal with lighting, street cleaning, who is going to pay for it? Presumably the residents. How will he apportion the bills? Per capita, by house size, what? If the former, then there'll be massive evasion "Oh no, my boyfriend doesn't actually live here, he just stays overnight" and if it's by house size or plot size, then it's like LVT anyway.
Now, what happens if one person doesn't want to pay up? Will the residents' association be able to force the recalictrant to pay? Isn't that a bit like a tax? What happens if somebody refuses to pay his share of rubbish collection and just throws it in his neighbours' bins or piles it up in his front garden? And who's to say that the Residents' Association won't be hijacked by NIMBYs and all new development stifled? That's the most likely outcome, seeing as NIMBYs never seem to have anything better to do than shoving their noses into other people's business etc etc etc.
So his comment at 1 is pure politician speak about "invigorating local communities" but we'd end up with the same old same old but even worse.
8. libertas said...
Mark, are you a Communist/Eugenicist?
How on earth does restricting fertility help. If you want a one child policy, why not move to China and keep your grubby mittens off my crown jewels. My home is my castle, and nobody gains any respect from my by telling me how to run my life, how many children to have, this is a disgusting approach to have.
British families are already well under replacement rate. The British population would have fallen to well under 50 million if we hadn't had massive immigration. I am not voicing an opinion about immigration, simply stating that domestic births have nothing to do with overcrowding in this country.
Indeed, this is the case for the whole of Europe.
9. mark said...
oooh we hit a nerve, he must be the guy on benefits with 15 kids
10. libertas said...
Mark Wadsworth. I happen to have lived on a street where the local residents association set up a corporation to maintain the previously unadopted access road. They chose a beautiful rustic surface with attractive edging and borders. Unlike anything in the City, because the Council makes every road look the same.
The road is paid for by subscription from residents in the area who agreed to go ahead. Sure, it took a while to agree on it, but this is real democracy. Where a community get together and share the burden and decision making.
Others elsewhere in the city do not subsidize the street. This is how all streets were in this country before the World Wars during which we adopted the policies of National Socialism.
11. mark wadsworth said...
Lib, you haven't answered the questions yet. What happened to those who didn't want to pay?
Can I also give you a nudge re Domestic Rates and Florida? Or don't you anwer questions?
12. mombers said...
@libertas I'm assuming that you're looking into privatising security on your private land? People on minimum wage should not be paying taxes to man a police force for an affluent area.
13. mombers said...
Ps I'm also very interested in your reply re Florida and pre-Thatcher property taxation...
14. mombers said...
Ps I'm also very interested in your reply re Florida and pre-Thatcher property taxation...
15. enuii said...
Libertas spelt subsidise with a 'z' so he's probably a Yank trying to wind the Brits up!
16. libertas said...
Actually, I work with Yanks every day and my partner is American, but I am most definitely British.
And if suggesting personal liberty and limited government is a wind-up, then I fear greatly for our future.
17. libertas said...
YES, privatise security also. It works for shopping malls. Also, I don't mind private properties having CCTV, but get government out of the security business. And the Police? They don't even help if your car is stolen or for small crime, forget it. All they are interested in is high visibility policing with the sirens on loud. They don't even clear away crashed cars for weeks on end now.
Also, airlines can provide their own security, better security without infringements on personal liberty, and cheaper. You would get through security fast without having to take clothes off, have naked body scans and without having to pay stupid mega taxes to fly.
AND, better still, let the public arm themselves. In Swizerland (admittedly they are government issued guns), every male over 18 has a military rifle at home and is trained to use it. Break in's are almost unheard of, and they can amass an army of over 2 million in less than 48hrs. No country in Europe or the world could do that with decentralized, autonomous control structures. That is why they weren't invaded in World War II.
18. mr g said...
I wonder if Merseyside would be as cr*p at collecting LVT?
19. libertas said...
That is THE issue mr g. If spending is not taken under control, any new taxes will mean extra taxation, with NO BENEFIT and net loss to the public as the bureaucracy expands.
If they want a new tax, they must drop another, and must slash spending at the same time, because spending is the real tax, which we pay not only via taxation but also via inflation.
20. libertas said...
So when Marx Wadsworth says that the form of taxation is the issue, he doesn't see the wood for the trees. Spending is THE ISSUE.
21. libertas said...
So when Marx Wadsworth says that the form of taxation is the issue, he doesn't see the wood for the trees. Spending is THE ISSUE.
22. European-bear said...
Libertus, Switzerland was not invaded in WW2 because the NAZIs needed bankers....Despite this the NAZIs made advanced planning to invade Switzerland (operation Tannenbaum), and the Swiss themselves made advanced preparations to retreat to the mountains leaving their main cities (Zurich, Basel, Bern, Geneva) in the hands of the Germans. Do get your facts right! And the Swiss and guns...every male has to do national service and has a gun in his cellar. Yes effectively they have more guns per person than the yanks. However there is a culture against using them. Indeed when some Swiss lunatic shot dead many members of a regional parliament, he did not use an army gun, but an illegal weapon....
23. mark wadsworth said...
Libertas, er, Florida, Domestic Rates, your response?
Actually, spending levels and what types of taxes to have are two quite separate issues.
For example, everybody has to decide what sort of job he wants to do to generate income, and everybody can decide how to spend his money. Two separate issues. Whether you work as a teacher or a taxi driver, that is just how you earn money and has little impact on how you spend it or how much you save. Or you can say "In my life I would like to spend £x on various things, which job do i have to find which will pay me this much money?"
I quite agree that spending is far, far, too high, if we could get back to late 1990s levels, that would be great, even if we could only get back to 2003-04 levels (inflation adjusted) then we could eliminate the annual deficit (assuming current tax revenues remain constant). That's one topic.
The other topic is, if we agree on spending levels of [whatever - low or high is irrelevant] what is the economically least damaging way of raising the taxes to cover that spending? As those proto-Marxists Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Milton Friedman all explained, LVT is the way to go. I know far more about LVT and tax than most people, and I know some LVTers who are small government and others who are big government, that's an entirely separate debate.
For example, let's say there is an consensus that income tax is the least bad tax, therefore the debate is between small government people who want 20% flat tax and big government people who want 60% top rate tax. But they agree on what type of tax to have - income tax. It is the LVTers who say the optimal rate of income tax, VAT, corp tax and NIC is precisely zero per cent and whatever the government spends should be raised in LVT.
So there. I've answered your questions, yet again just to prevent any *ahem* misunderstandings on you part, now you answer mine, eh?