As a long standing critic of the OBR and Treasury models and poor forecasts let me clarify. I do support the need for Treasury financial discipline. One of the Treasury orthodoxies I always supported was the one which said you should not hypothecate or give a tax to a particular area of spending.
The Treasury rightly pointed out there was rarely a single tax which raised just the right amount of money for a given service. If you found one or created one, there was no guarantee that the revenue from that tax would grow at the right rate for the service. It was always possible the tax would be more buoyant than the financial needs of the service making it difficult to rein in the tax and the spending. It was also possible the tax from time to time would be insufficient. There would then be remorseless pressure for the Treasury to provide a top up from general taxation.
I was therefore surprised when the current Treasury changed its mind and invented a new hypothecated tax. Indeed they invented two. This year it is to be a supplement to National Insurance. Next year it is to be a new social care tax.Ā These new taxes have been born of controversy. Here are some questions I would like to see the governmentĀ answer.
- How will the money from these taxes be moved from assisting the NHS to social care? What is the timetable or trigger points to scale back the cash to the NHS and put it into social care?
- As social care currently costs taxpayers around Ā£40 bn and is paid for out of general taxes and out of local authority taxes, how will the future settlements of these sums be calculated bearing in mind the top up money coming from the dedicated tax? What has been gained by ring fencing a proportion of the cash when far bigger amounts still rest on annualĀ negotiation between local government, social care and Treasury?
- The government has now announced a substantial increase in the threshold before anyone pays National Insurance. Has this reduction in the money from the ring fenced tax been agreed by the NHS and by social care? How has this been possible? does it mean they can now manage with a smaller tax or will there be more top up money? When can we see the spending Ā plans behind this? We would like to know what the new tax is buying.
March 26, 2022
Good Morning,
Arguments for hypothecated tax.
1. Tax payers can see where their money is going
2. The minister repsonsible will have to argue for tax money and see that it is well used.
3. If too much tax is raised, then the rate can be cut (there’s an idea!!), if too little, it can be raised. There is no reason this cannot be done between budgets.
4. Comparative analysis bwtween departments can be made to show which is getting ‘best bang for the buck’ Ministers should be graded on their ‘return on investment’.
March 26, 2022
But you can do all that without hypothecated taxes – isn’t that kind pf performance analysis and comparison done already?
March 26, 2022
Today 0.83 gw from wind power. How about hypothecating some money for fracking and energy security.
By the next election taxed will be over Ā£1 trillion p.a. and not much to show for it. Sunshine is a limp dumb chancellor posing as a tory. For goodness sake get shot of him and Carrie.
March 26, 2022
āSunshine is a limp dumb chancellor posing as a tory.ā
Couldnāt agree more Ian but with the exception of our host and a handful of others, you could say that about the whole sorry lot of them. The only party for us Conservatives to vote for is Reform.
March 26, 2022
Jools. You’re not wrong there.
March 26, 2022
+100 JoolsB – Any patriotic party that stands in our constituency will get my vote, but I am getting to the stage where I would vote for Screaming Lord Sutch rather than give credence to LibLab or CON!
March 26, 2022
+1
March 26, 2022
+1
March 26, 2022
Indeed on the Wind generation. We have now had another run of days (6 so far) with minimal wind generated electricity. The idea that you can use the electric car’s battery as a temporary storage to get you over a dip in electricity generation simply does not work when you have a prolonged lack of wind.
This Net Zero target is simply unrealistic.
March 26, 2022
The depreciation cost of using the car’s battery is several times more than the value of the electricity recycled.
March 26, 2022
Ian Wragg
Here is another element to add to the mix. When the wind doesn’t blow or blows too hard and the sun doesn’t shine we need stand-by power generators ticking over, But it comes at a hell of a price.
https://www.drax.com/investors/announcements-events-reports/annual-reports-and-accounts/
Subsidies for their biomass operation reached Ā£893 million last year. All of this is added to our electricity bills:
March 26, 2022
DRAX wouldnāt survive without the government subsidy as a commercial concernā¦..therefore it should be considered DRAX ānationalisedāā¦.green conservative party nationalising renewable companiesā¦not the Tory party I know
March 26, 2022
The UK has 11,000 turbines, on and off shore, and they are producing c 3% of our energy today. On this basis we need 110,000 turbines to produce 30% and still need gas powered stations to provide the shortfall. Even coal is producing more as I write!
It takes being a numbskull to think that wind is a sustainable and reliable main source of future generation, and an even bigger one to bet the UK Bank on it! Clearly Boris, Gove and their like fit into this latter category. In their case, “like talking to a brick wall” springs to mind.
Trumpets anybody?
March 26, 2022
Agreed Beecee. There is a reason why windmills were abandoned by businesses all that time ago. They are intermittent, unreliable, and are no good for running a business. Any business … unless they can afford to work only when the wind blows at the correct speed. Also, I have read that wind turbines generate more cash when switched off. How clever is that?
March 26, 2022
Johnson has clearly demonstrated that he is indeed a numbskull. Unless of course he is receiving some benefit for pushing wind generation. God forbid!
March 26, 2022
+1
March 26, 2022
??
March 26, 2022
PW, +1.
dixie, It could be done. But have you ever seen the results of such a performance analysis, especially by MPs, or Ministers of the Government actually in charge, say at the end of a Parliament.
The OBR (created in 2010 by the Conservatives) is supposed to provide independent analyses but as can be seen here again today is criticised by āleadingā Conservatives.
So what we usually get in addition are some kind of analyses carried out by the Opposition with the Government claiming the Opp. is just talking rubbish. Or analyses made by various think tanks of opposing views defending their own preferred political views.
Thatās the level of āscrutinyā that the voters might get. Can we expect voters to be enlightened?
My take on this is that the lack of official clarity is certainly not to the benefits of voters. So to whose benefits?
March 26, 2022
Who remembers Margot from The Good Life walking into her council office and explaining which parts of he rates she was prepared to pay? “Road repairs, I will not pay – the streetlight in our road has not been working for months”.
That’s where you end up with hypothecated taxes.
March 26, 2022
Ahh, fond memories of Margot! But she’s making my point – ACCOUNTABILITY for the money entrusted to our elected representatives. Wouldn’t you like to see exactly where all the money spent on the NHS goes, and hold the minister to performance conditions ?
March 26, 2022
+1
March 26, 2022
You have to be carefully with what you wish for…that will be like MP’s expenses more money and time will be spent working out what goes where than the original cost š
Remember civil servants and council employees are totally into “empire building”, any excuse to ensure their continued career path will be jumped on with glee..
March 26, 2022
Indeed Peter.
March 26, 2022
PeteB, do you really expect the taxes to be āhypothecatedā at this level of details?
March 26, 2022
hefner, purely given as an amusing example for those who remember the show. But start the hypothecation debate and you immediately have time consuming, wasteful debate.
March 26, 2022
Arguments against hypothecated taxes – you vastly restrict government ability to spend sensibly on the areas where government spending is needed or to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. There are lots of areas that need expenditure that the public would never support politically. Plus it makes the tax system absurdly complex. Best to leave the money with the people who earn it and let them spend it as they see fit.
But really governments should get out of healthcare (and indeed education) as far as possible anyway. Just a safety net for the few who really cannot provide for themselves. As we see with the NHS which has an appalling record (based on outcomes) government monopolies are a disaster and kill real alternatives for most people too.
March 26, 2022
āBest to leave the money with the people who earn it and let them spend it as they see fit.ā
Trouble is LL, as with all socialist Governments, this one included, they donāt see it as our money and even if they were capable of making big savings in one department or another which theyāre clearly not, they would only be rubbing their hands together trying to find other things to spend/ waste it on. It wouldnāt occur to that odious little rich boy Sunak and his even more odious out of touch boss to return any of it to their rightful owners. Cost of living crisis? What cost of living crisis?
March 26, 2022
Who will pay the hypothecated tax for ferrying and featherbedding illegal migrants? Recently reported that our courts have found against Priti Patel for violating the ‘rights’ of dinghy migrants by taking away their mobile phones, thus preventing them from contacting the ‘loved ones’ who they abandoned to come here.
March 26, 2022
…and are too precious that they canāt even stay in an army barracks
March 26, 2022
Yes, I struggled with that claim. Is it true that victims of crime (especially rape) can have their mobile phones withheld for months on end? If so, should uninvited guests (illegal immigrants) be allowed to demand better treatment than UK victims of crime? Silly question! They get better care and treatment than any legal citizen!
March 27, 2022
They get better care because there is an army of lawyers ready to take up their cause at the tax payers expense.
When our government STOPS funding these lawyers these claims will go away.
March 26, 2022
Peter
At one stage it was suggested that each year HMRC should send out a balance sheet with our tax codes.
This would show the total tax take for the previous year, and list the departments and amounts allocated to each area of expenditure during that year.
A simple balance sheet in effect, so we could all see where the money was going, why was this never done.
The above would at least give people a clue as to where the money was being spent, although again no idea if it was spent wisely or not.
March 26, 2022
Good morning.
Why do we need to raise taxes for a ‘given service’ when we can in all probability have people pay for a service out of their own pockets ? Admittedly that is an over simplification as not all services government provides can be done that way – eg Defence. But it should be seeking to reduce the size and scope of the State and, as others have mentioned already, cut spending.
But Sir John, I already pay this through my Council Tax. I have it here right in front of me. It says; “Adult Social Care.” Why am I now expected to pay twice ? I do not pay twice when I go to the supermarket, once at the checkout and then again at the door when I am leaving. And remember, this is for people who have not planned for when they are old, those of us who have are being penalised and have our futures blighted because of these peoples lack of forethought. We all get old and need to think of this now. It is much like those who put money into a pension pot only for the government to raid to to pay for those who have not. Again, this unfair and you are rewarding poor behaviour.
And when I say ‘you’ I do not me ‘you personally’ I mean the government and the party you support.
If we wanted Corbynomics we would have voted for it !
March 26, 2022
Mark.
I also pay a Social Care charge on my Council Tax bill. It has been there since last year. Who does the Government think they are kidding? Perhaps they hope that people donāt scrutinise their Council Tax bill.
To be honest, the charge that really annoys me, is the charge for Police and Crime Commissioners. This is more than the Social Care charge, and in my opinion, is a total waste on taxpayers money.
March 26, 2022
+1
March 26, 2022
+2
March 26, 2022
Mark, the whole council tax system annoys me. The most unfair and punitive tax of the lot which takes no account of income or ability to pay. We pay out of our modest pensions over twice as much as Johnson does for his Downing Street abode. And no doubt he sticks that on his expenses.
March 26, 2022
What a good point you’ve raised about the ‘social care’ charging on our Council Tax bills.
March 26, 2022
Good points…unfortunately you are too close to the truth š
March 26, 2022
Mark B
Bang on the money again mate. Our local councilor is always making excuses on what cannot be repaired or replaced because Social Services takes up 82% of the budget.
The expression about urine and rain and the back of my neck comes to mind.
Especially when we see all around us those on benefits getting everything and doing nothing except walking their dogs at 2 am to make sure they don’t get seen, leaving their children from 11 pm till 4 am to meet up with fellow carers as they “need time off” to unwind from the stress and the pressure of bringing up a 25-year-old with the mental age of a 7 year old.
March 26, 2022
Turboterrier
Indeed, but if the Council did not have to pay anything towards Social Care, central Government covered it all, as should be the case in my view, do you think your Council tax would be reduced by that same 82% charge value. ?
Answer No, they would find another excuse !
March 26, 2022
“Adult Social Care”, I suppose that means the migrants, except the ones who are minors.
‘When were you born?’ ‘I was born in the summer.’
Thank you, Johnson, no secure energy supplies, no borders and with the imminent legislation, Online Harms Bill and the Police Bill whatever it is called, the end of free speech. The intention seems to be to destroy the country.
March 26, 2022
Sir J, you, I and most of the population clearly understand the hypothecation exercise is no more than a conjuring sleight of hand. This ‘Social care levy’ is an attempt to make a tax sound worthy. Who will argue against giving more money to “our wonderful NHS” and social care? If they do, they are labelled heartless right wing @$#!.
Sunak would seriously consider the “lost puppy care charge” if he thought it would raise cash.
Reality is that this is another (poorly) hidden tax rise just like the freezing of the tax & NI bands and just like Gordon Brown’s multitude of tinkering.
How about a law to require the UK tax legislation be reduced from the 10 million words it is now? Let’s have simple straightforward tax rules.
March 26, 2022
You’re of course correct in your analysis of what we are seeing. I also see the now political hand of the NHS taking a firm grip of health policy to suit itself and to distance itself from the patient, the taxpayer and all areas of both legal and social accountability and responsibility.
It has always my belief that the State has become a vested interest that will fight to promote and protect its interests against democracy and the civil population are now totally disenfranchised and seen as nothing more than vessels for taxes and in many cases something to demonised and subjugated. All main parties are on board with this move. There is now no one on the inside, as it were, to protect the civil population, from the activist and authoritarian State
I also belief British democracy will be dismantled over time. A new party will emerge but extinguished before it can become a threat to the prevailing progressive political class
March 26, 2022
Dom. Your last sentence is particularly relevant now. Farage has had two venues cancel his meetings in Bolton recently where he wanted to talk about energy and net zero. I wonder if someone was paying money to shut him up? We now have major charities turning down money from fossil fuel companies. I bet those on extortionate wages don’t ask where their pension funds are investing.
March 26, 2022
I agree DOM.
I also think that we can no longer rely on the courts for justice and that they have become part of the woke establishment.
March 26, 2022
BOF – We also can’t rely on the Chancellor to tell us what a woman is. Did you see him squirm ?
12 years of Tory rule and an 80 seat majority.
WTF ????
March 27, 2022
He should have referred the questioner to the OED, if he does not know. It’s quite simple.
March 26, 2022
Lots of councils already have high lost dog return/fines!
March 26, 2022
Take NIC s for example, Sunak has taken with one hand and given half back with the other. Or the council tax rebate which he has decided only some are eligible for but not those of us in bands above D whose incomes may well be less than those he has deemed worthy. How much is all the extra administration cost for Sunakās blatant re-shuffling of our money and his boneheaded refusal just to scrap the NI increase altogether or just apply the rebate across the board? Heās deliberately complicating the tax system because this fake Conservative Chancellor and this fake Conservative Government are incapable and unwilling of doing anything else. Like all good socialists, itās in their DNA.
March 26, 2022
hear hear
March 26, 2022
I support the hypothecation of taxes for the NHS and social care. Why? Because the left has successfully weaponised the subject, to the extent that both main parties – profligate Labour and the profligate/cowardly Conservatives – compete to throw extra tens of billions at the NHS, while an unthinking/irresponsible electorate cheers them on. BTW, I also support charges being brought in to supplement the taxation. An ‘hotel charge’ is one option. (My late mother was earning some Ā£60/night from her health insurer every time she went into hospital.) Removing my right for free prescriptions is another. But the most critical need is to restrict the numbers going into state-funded residential care. Families will push hard to get Mum and Dad into a home now that someone else will be paying for it.
March 26, 2022
Ah, yes, that “unthinking and irresponsible electorate”, that voted Leave, you mean, SW?
There was a perfectly good solution proposed by Labour, a progressive tax, a levy on estates to pay for shelter and nursing for the elderly and infirm. (Why this weird “social care”?)
However, it was emotively caricatured by the usual as a Death Tax and that was that.
It was far fairer than “the cap”, which amounts to a poll tax on age and infirmity, and hits those of modest assets the very hardest, however.
March 26, 2022
The existing forced tax for ‘social care’ steals a person’s estate leaving about Ā£22k when it is deemed the person must be relocated from hospital care to a Care Home. There are also visit charges on a person requiring home delivery of care, rather than required in a hospital.
Keep up Martin.
March 26, 2022
The amount that the cap leaves depends absolutely on how much the cared-for has.
If they have less than Ā£86,000 then they may well lose all of it on personal care.
If they have Ā£8.6 million then they will only lose a maximum of 1% of it.
As I say, it is, in effect, a poll tax on age and infirmity.
March 26, 2022
Do you really think someone with Ā£8.6 million would require the State to help with old aged care?
March 26, 2022
how many of our ‘ hard working ‘ families leave an estate worth over say Ā£1m?
If one or both (yes we’ve known it) need or are forced into Care Homes that money can be trousered quicker than an expert shoplifter in M&S.
An estate of less than Ā£500k is likely to have all minus the ‘pennies’ filched by the state.
So, now tell me Martin how the offer you mentioned would be better.
We have not been robbed by the state yet, but who knows in the months or years to come!
March 27, 2022
OK, so if you’ve got a fairly modest house in the Home Counties worth Ā£860,000 then you keep 90%, but if it’s a terrace in Halifax worth Ā£86,000 then you lose the lot.
March 26, 2022
Good questions to which there are no good answers. But that is only to be expected from the Johnson government. In these inflationary, net zero driven, times it would be a good idea if we had a PM who actually understood financial matters.
March 26, 2022
+10
March 26, 2022
Another hypothecated tax is foreign aid at .7% of GDP and look what happens to that. Waste and mis spend on a gargantuan scale, often propping up some of the worst regimes.
You are right not to support hypothecated taxation.
March 26, 2022
+ 1,000,000. Not sure what Johnās views are on the aid budget but most of our deluded out of touch MPs support giving an arbitrary figure of . 7% of our GDP away, borrowed money at that, irrespective of where it goes. Hey, it makes them feel good. Wonder if theyāre as generous with their own money.
March 26, 2022
You need to factor in the compensation for the Covid vaccines are harm caused by lock down.
In 2017 the High Court Rejected the Government appeal to prevent compensation of over Ā£100,000 for dozens children who suffered from Narcolepsy resulting from the swine flu jab.
In the UK tens of thousand have had severe adverse reactions according to the Governments yellow card scheme.
If 10,000 people receive Ā£100,000 in compensation. That will come to Ā£1,000,000,000. A billion. It may take 5 or more years but Iām guessing billions will be paid out.
March 26, 2022
A large chunk of the NHS budget is already used for compensation and litigation. Six figure salaries are paid to NHS Admin workers to help people pursue āmistakesā by hard working often lower paid front line NHS staff and costing the NHS literally billions in money that could be put to better use. There was the case a year or so ago of the man who demanded compensation for negligence. He was offered Ā£35,000 and was only found out be a fraud when he demanded more. The pen pushers in the NHS admitted it was cheaper to just offer him Ā£35,000 than go to court. How many billions are wasted in this way? You just couldnāt make it up.
March 26, 2022
Sir John
Apologies for my rant on yesterday’s blog.
DOM
March 26, 2022
I enjoy your ārantsā Dom. I think most of us agree with your eloquently put analysis of this fake Tory Government.
March 27, 2022
+1
March 26, 2022
My colleagues and I used to have a very bad-tempered workmate, and this enabled us all to be fairly calm, chilled, as it were.
We had him to do all that for us, so none of the rest of us needed to bother.
March 26, 2022
Possibly the effect of having to work with you NHL?
PS
Only joking
March 26, 2022
Peter 2
Think before you write next time
March 27, 2022
Calm down Billy.
Did you not read “only joking”
March 26, 2022
NLH – It’s refreshing to hear someone who knows they can be wrong at times. Like me.
March 26, 2022
Camilla Tominey in the DT. Voters are turning on the shambolic Tory Party realising it stands for nothing at all. Quite.
And we now see āfriends of Borisā blaming Sunak for not agreeing to reduce energy prices in October. Wasnāt him who ruled out a promised VAT cut. Memories are short.
Maybe his āfriendsā would look at his ridiculous refusal to allow fracking, Matt Ridley has recently highlighted how much gas we have and how safe extraction is plus closing down North Sea storage and exploration.
March 26, 2022
Nig1. Don’t be silly. Boris has a plan. More onshore windfarms in England with bribes to those who live nearest of free energy if they don’t object. So when there’s no wind we will have thousands of blades doing sweet FA. That’s the way to do it Boris. He’s lost it.
March 26, 2022
Sir John seems to be suffering from the delusion that a great deal of careful thought was put into the Nat.Insurance increase and the additional NHS/Social Care fund. There wasn’t: it was a political manoeuvre and the usual back of a fag packet reaction to a problem (they largely created with Lockdowns) which we’ve already come to expect from this CON-Socialist Government.
Sunak’s Statement this week was another example of it. A panicky reaction to “events” and a problem which the Government has largely created with its Eco Lunacy/Net Zero obsession. The pretence that they are reducing taxes when they are taking more and more won’t fool anyone.
I don’t support hypothecated taxes; it will exacerbate the situation we already have towards the end of the financial year with Civil Servants desperately spending money on dubious schemes in order to use all their budget, for fear of seeing it reduce.
And I also don’t support the fiction that National Insurance pays for the NHS and our State Pensions. It is a tax, just like Income Tax, and goes in the same pot.
A decent tax-cutting Chancellor and a Government determined to simplify the Tax Code and streamline the Civil Service would combine them. Unfortunately we have neither of those.
March 26, 2022
+10
March 26, 2022
+1,000,000. Spot on Donna.
March 26, 2022
+ 1 on end of year wastage of hypothecated tax.
March 26, 2022
Indeed Donna.
March 26, 2022
This government’s whole approach on health and social care funding seems fundamentally dishonest, from damaging, pointless changes to the tax system to lack of grip on spending and the benefits it ought to yield. I did not vote for this and I will not vote for more.
March 26, 2022
Shame these questions were not asked when these tax measures were passing thro the House. You are unlikely to get any answers now.
March 26, 2022
Unfortunately I don’t think the govtās incoherent gesture-driven policies are going to change as long as Boris Johnson is PM. Boris did a great job at the last election saving the Country from a bunch of profoundly anti-UK radical leftists. While covid and the Ukraine war will be some excuse, the Conservatives donāt look like having enough to show their 80-seat majority for 5 years to stop a new leftwing govt. unless there is early sign of a radical new direction we should thank Boris for his great service in saving us from Corbyn and McDonnell – but make a change.
March 26, 2022
And in other news it is claimed Liz Truss is asking the Treasury for money over and above our aid budget for a Marshall Plan reconstruction of the Ukraine.
Will you please ask these people to stop spending even more of our bl***y money.
March 26, 2022
They’ll take no notice of polite requests. The only thing they take notice of are votes ….. Conservative votes going elsewhere, and the only alternative for conservatives is Reform UK.
March 26, 2022
Liberated the hell out of that place !
If only they’d stayed neutral. Their families would still be alive, their cities still standing and Putin would have stayed out.
March 26, 2022
That comment is truly shocking in its callousness.
March 26, 2022
Callous is what NATO had done in the past 8 years.
Regime change for the fourth time with a country destroyed, millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.
The West is evil.
March 27, 2022
I’m in no way claiming that NATO and more covert Western interests have not been baleful at times, sometimes very seriously so.
Biden’s words – the bleeding obvious – are unhelpful too right now.
However, literally nothing, none of those – a fact of international law besides morality, logic, and proportionality – justifies Putin’s murderous, criminal invasion.
March 26, 2022
Especially since what gets reconstructed or not in Ukraine will be the decision of the Russians, who will be occupying the territory. At least if we’re talking about about the civilian infrastructure. Let’s hope we’re not talking about paying for repairing the military installations in Western Ukraine that have been blasted by the Russians.
March 26, 2022
What happened to the IMF and EU money that was poured into Ukraine(with the IMF breaking it’s own rules to make the loans)?
March 26, 2022
No one knows what happened to billions spent during covid19 measures here in the UK, Mitchel, so I don’t really think that this is the place to ask for that sort of information.
March 27, 2022
Ukraine – The most corrupt country in Europe.
I am sure the money will be well recieved and spent. But not on those whom it is intended, as ususal.
March 26, 2022
Sunak had already given the people in band C houses and below their extra Employees NI back (not in a loan in a rebate) now heās doubled it from July by raising the threshold and the people still arenāt happy. Heās put up the national living wage and dropped the age you receive it to 23 years and people still arenāt happy, nothing is ever going to be enough. I had three jobs and no holidays, no car to save a deposit on a house and pay for my own wedding, Blair did well with his āwork life balance mantraā the only problem is its slipped too far, everyone seems to have thought that any degree they did would get them a super salary for a minimum number of hours per week with 10 weeks holiday per year. France has a rule that anyone working in France has to be paid their national living wage we will have to match that rule soon or we will drown in benefits.
Everything is measured by London and the South Easts requirements, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland benefit from that and theyāre still not happy even though their cost of living is much lower.
Why does no one ever ask them how much do you expect in net pay when youāre not working.
March 26, 2022
Oh and why canāt you contribute. People can work from home while kids are at school now. There is always something people can do.
March 26, 2022
A-Tracy. Working from home? It’s a bloody joke. The DVLA and DWP have staff ‘working’ from home. I’ve had the misfortune to have to deal with the DWP this week. Both times I was kept waiting on the phone for over 40 mins. When they did answer they didn’t have the information or the system to deal with my problem as they were at home. I was given the wrong information and told to cancel my direct debit for my contributions only to receive a letter a few days later telling me I shouldn’t have done this as I’m short for my full year!! I now have to wait for another direct debit to be set up. This is after being told in 2004 not to bother paying a stamp at all as I would be able to claim from my husband contributions. I have been trying to make up the shortfall ever since and because of their incompetence lost out on 6 years of state pension which I have had to pay for in later life and when not in good health. Don’t talk to me about working from home.
March 26, 2022
Agree Fus. If the public sector insist on carrying on working from home and a Government too weak to tell them otherwise, they should receive a pay cut to begin with. Itās a joke. Having finally reached retirement age in July, it took until September to get my state pension. Spent weeks chasing it up and the last person I spoke to asked me to hold on whilst she shut the door on her noisy washing machine. Itās an absolute fact that people have been less productive working from home and the majority of the public sector werenāt that productive to begin with.
March 27, 2022
FuS and Jools, there should be a feedback section for customers of the DVLA, DWP to feedback to the Managers.
March 26, 2022
Working from home is wonderful. It has transformed many lives and led to a huge increase in productivity.
The people whining against it mostly donāt work.
March 27, 2022
OK.
So where is the offset for Net Zero targets ?]
A bit of leniency for those who DO have to go out to work !
March 26, 2022
I am not convinced that the Treasury know what they are doing apart from using the working population to fulfil their sver expansionist goals.
We need to decide on the purpose of government, where it needs to act on our behalf and where we are better at acting for ourselves. Then to calculate tbe cost of their involvement and to decide how to collect the tax to cover it. The motivation being to keep it simple, understandable and fair. I think we all know it needs to be done, having seven volumes of tax law is ridiculous. It has become a make work project.
March 26, 2022
That the only place to get a gold plated index linked pension, top pay and London weighting whilst (not) working from home happens to be a Government job whilst everyone else is heating or eating shows that we are rapidly becoming a communist state.
March 26, 2022
The biggest non hypothecated tax is NIC. It is sold as providing a security safety net, for NHS and pensions. Look what actually happens – it goes into a bottomless government bucket to be used in general taxation for any old nutjob scheme seems fashionable at the time and the pensions are the poorest in the developed world whilst we pay some of the highest taxes. Time to properly hypothecate NIC to stop it being wasted and used as income tax for MP’s who haven’t got the balls to show it in the income tax rates and still b/s people that it is all for social security.
March 26, 2022
Your posts on the subject of Taxation consistently put the blame for the obvious shortcomings in current policy collectively on ‘The Treasury’. But the accountable people are the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer: it is them you should be blaming and asking for explanations, not the Civil Servants who are simply there to do the bidding of their political masters. Or have things changed?
March 26, 2022
William Long : “Or have things changed?”
“Yes”, I think they have.
I no longer believe that our elected Government with an 80 seat majority is in charge.
The BEIS’ Net Zero Strategy and the “borders are a pain” Home Office’s immigration policy evidence this change.
March 26, 2022
The green levies on our electricity bills are hypothecated taxes designed to subsidise windmills, in many cases built on the lands of wealthy individuals and even in National Parks.
All for the sake of possibly reducing tiny amounts of CO2 in the earthās atmosphere.
March 26, 2022
Does all the āgreen levyā go to buying wind-turbines, ev charging stations and wood burning pelletsā¦.to subsidy commercial enterprise
Build Back Green Business Better
March 26, 2022
glen
Think it also pays for smart meters !
So you pay if you have one or not !
March 26, 2022
Would that be the same ‘smart-meter’ that hasn’t reduced a single domestic household bill….but has helped energy companies reduce their running costs
March 27, 2022
That’s the one !
March 26, 2022
āWe would like to know what the new tax is buying.ā
X number of extra useless Net Zero/Diversity Managers and eradicating the word Woman/Women from the face of the earth.
March 26, 2022
I might support an hypothecated tax for the NHS provided it pledged to use the money to retrain many of the suits to do something useful such as become carers or heart surgeons.
March 26, 2022
If you are against hypothecation, you are for allowing foreign invaders and foreign temporary invaders to raid our health service, sometimes a simple snatch and grab raid via Heathrow. You are for a centralised health service run by Arts graduates who are able to fritter away Ā£33B on a track and trace system that had zero impact on containing a virus with a very low mortality rate. You are for the control of our environment by Arts graduates who have no knowledge of farming or anything of any value to mankind. If you are against hypothecation, you are for unaccountable Arts graduates running the whole country from Whitehall and wasting a high proportion of the money they spend on schemes that have little or negative payback.
By employing someone, an employer is nor providing a public service; he is using someone’s labour to benefit his business. The employer should pay a hypothecated tax toward that employment because, the employee will have healthcare and social care needs in the future even if he is fit and healthy at the time of his employment. Furthermore the system under which employers dodge national insurance payments by paying cash for a gig through an agency needs to be closed down.
A hypothecated tax does not need in principle to precisely cover the item for which it is hypothecated; for example in Germany, in addition to the income from compulsory insurance by employer and employee, either for a private scheme or a compulsory state scheme, the federal government and state chip in as well.
The advantage of a hypothecated insurance scheme for health and social care is the abolition of the need for a centralised health service run by Arts graduates in a huge multilevel hierarchy because a ensured person will simply go to his or local hospital or doctor or travel further afield to avoid those with abysmal reputations for outcomes and cleanliness and the hospital or doctor will be paid for the service they provide by the insurer.
March 26, 2022
I’m sorry but the NHS is the industrial wing of the Labour movement. The hypothecated tax will never be able to be removed now.
The NHS was truly weaponised during the Covid crisis and turned into a national religion to ensure that Tories can never be Tory again. True Tories have been comprehensively outmanoeuvred and outwitted.
The use of the term Key Worker is political and insulting.
It upends the reality – to me a Key Worker is not an NHS carer but is one that brings money into the national coffers to pay for the NHS. They are a matter of economic and physical survival but you’d think they were servants of the Devil the way the “the NHS is more important than the economy” dimwits go on about it.
Hence we’re now approaching hyper inflation because they believed in the magic money tree.
March 26, 2022
NLA
A sewerage worker is also a key worker, if they turn off the machinery, we are all in the ****
Fact of life, in a developed Society, everyone is a key worker, because we all rely upon others to function sensibly.
It’s just a fact that some are a bit more important than others, before everything eventually comes to a standstill.
March 26, 2022
FFS.
If we don’t earn money we don’t get sewerage.
Stop telling us there is only one type of key worker. The most important are those who create the wealth to pay for it all.
March 26, 2022
āAs a long standing critic of the OBR and Treasury models and poor forecasts let me clarify.ā
For the case of implementing Net Zero the Treasury doesnāt appear to have any model at all, not even a poor one.
The HoC Public Accounts Committee report of 02/03/2022 said :
āThe HM Treasury witnesses we questioned were reluctant to be drawn on what the future costs of achieving net zero would be, cautioning that while the Climate Change Committee has provided estimates, they contain āheroic assumptionsā with errors potentially compounding over very long periods.ā
The costs are so eye-wateringly enormous the Treasury dare not publish them and makes all other models and forecasts worthless.
March 26, 2022
Everybody wants a well-functioning NHS to be there for them when they need it. Unfortunately stupid and cowardly Conservative politicians have allowed Labour to dominate the agenda and persuade the public that the answer is just to pump in more money. If we had a sensible PM, instead of the traitorous and cowardly buffoon who currently occupies that post, he would change the discourse to one of efficiency and good management. As I have previously suggested, the government should institute a system whereby NHS Trusts are compared, with the government selecting the metrics to compare them by. Get each one to produce a table showing how many operations have been completed per Ā£100,000 spent, for instance. Or how much they spend for the items they purchase, from sheets to syringes. The heads of the three worst performing Trusts should be sacked each year. This would lead to a dramatic improvement in efficiency.
I have also previously pointed out that when I was a hospital patient in Italy a few years ago I noticed that a patient who used the call button next to his bed was NOT attended to by a nurse, but only by an auxilliary, who asked what he wanted and then decided if a trained medical professional was required. Only in Britain do we allow highly-trained staff to waste their time on non-medical matters, such as bringing a patient a glass of water! We need a root and branch review into hospital practices, using foreign comparisons, to see where we can make greater efficiencies. There should be no sacred cows and no assumption that the NHS way is necessarily better.
March 27, 2022
X-Tory well in the UK that dinging bell goes unanswered for over ten minutes and more. I walked up to three chatting nurses the last time my Mum was in to ask them to please attend to the chap dinging because it was driving us insane.
March 26, 2022
The number of companies boasting the their products are manufactured using renewable energy simply doesnāt stack up, My electricity supplier tells me that all my electricity comes from renewables, I simply donāt believe them
March 26, 2022
The obvious thing to do is to create a National Care Service; a separate cabinet level ministerial department, divorced from the National Health Service.
In 20/21, Health and Social Care Department spent a net Ā£179 billion. The total spend on health (Cofog 7) across all departments was Ā£219 billion. The Social Protection spend (Cofog 10) was Ā£297 billion, a third of all government spending. Ā£200 billion of that was spent by the DWP, including Ā£100 billion of State Pensions; Ā£54 billion was separately spent by Local Government.
The UK fiscal model of tax and spending is beyond a joke. Hypothecating taxes in a fiat currency economy is nonsense. Keep in mind that about one sixth of National Insurance Contributions go directly into NHS funds.
March 27, 2022
They tried something similar with the OBR. So far it hasn’t worked out too well and I see no reason to create yet another department fit for failure.
March 26, 2022
A ‘supplement for National Insurance’ cannot be regarded a ‘hypothecated tax’, since NI is itself not hypothecated for any purpose – it goes into the general tax pot. NICs are just a form of income tax – one for which employers also pay (for no sensible reason I’ve ever seen, and I’m not even an employer), and one from which the retired and those who have already paid it for several decades have so far been exempt.
All most illogrical. Much better to unite NI with Income Tax, abolish council tax, use the second chamber to allocate local spending and decide pensioner discounts, and let the nation wonder at the bafflingly high percentage of tax we actually pay.
March 28, 2022
NI was originally a levy granting entitlement to use the NHS, to the State pension and to out-of-work benefits. In that sense it was pseudo-hypothecated.
Now, even tourists get t use the NHS without ever contributing, if people don’t qualify for NI-based out of work benefits then they can get them from a tax-based fund that does not depend on contributions. And teh State pension is a joke, but it remains the only element of the original levy. The main problem is that the govt are the only pension provider that does not invest receipts – paying claimants out of current takings is what Charles Ponzi went to jail for, so how can the UK govt justify doing this?
Now we have a new form of NI that is supposedly hypothecated but it goes elsewhere for an unspecified period.
My main concern is with its immorality. Asking current pensioners to be the first people to pay for their own care after a lifetime of paying for the care of previous generations is simply wrong.
However, I would like to see NI return to being a levy but split into its 3 components so that people can clearly see what the cost of the NHS is. The Australians do this with their Medicare levy at 1.5% from memory and they have an excellent service with the private sector being involved.
Lastly, we need to stop overpaying benefits then notionally deducting tax/NI, since this gives entitlements to people who have never contributed in reality thereby increasing the pressure on the pensions system (which is not a benefit as Sunak said, but a contractual entitlement).