…(with apologies to Poly Styrene)
Did you read that BBC presenters and other senior figures in the public sector could be forced to publicly publish their tax returns under Government plans to increase transparency?
Dozens of BBC stars and executives are thought to be paid via private companies which has sparked speculation over their tax affairs. Several BBC presenters are currently embroiled in an HM Revenue and Customs investigation
My own view is that what a person earns is their own business and so I don’t really go with this jihad against income but on the other hand, some within the BBC have been to the fore in damning “the wealthy” “the bankers” etc so a certain hypocrisy is in play and needs exposed.
Why do I have the feeling that this story is going to vanish down the memory hole in very short order 🙂 They would rather cover a certain trial in Liverpool than this story.
My initial thought and instinct would be that the individual’s earnings and finances should be private. But then as public financing is involved, there is always accountability and we seem to be going the way of disclosure under pressure of scandal and concern about a profligate public sector. I noticed the other day a Freedom of Information Act disclosure of the earnings and expenses etc of a senior civil servant who was a permanent secretary at the time. See also MPs’ expenses. That civil servant’s payments came to over £200, 000 and that was about four years ago. Why, exactly, was he being paid that amount – more than even the PM gets?
This tax issue has become a public issue because of a failure in the public sector to act responsibly and to maintain trust in its custodianship of public money. If the public sector is going to play fast and loose with the tax system, it will bring this pressure for disclosure on itself. The trend towards transparency will continue as people have got used to an expectation of knowing what is going on and so long as public pay remains a concern. The Beeboid Corporation will wriggle out of whatever it reckons it can get away with, bleating all the while about its independence. It’s already had to yield to pressure and give out a lot of info about individuals, so we know, for instance, what Greedy Thompson and his senior acolytes are paid. So the principle of privacy hasn’t held.
You have impeccable if unlikely musical tastes MrVance.
I too don’t like this move towards tax transparency. I suppose you can make a case for politicians. But not public employees.
I think there is a scandal about BBC pay. Not the ‘talent’ side so much (there’s a free Market there), but BBC employees. Mark Thompson is on 4 times what the top man at HM Treasury gets. Ridiculous.
‘you can make a case for politicians. But not public employees.’
Conceding your concession in the last sentence, just wondering who pays pols’ salaries, public employees and/or those of the BBC?
“I think there is a scandal about BBC pay. Not the ‘talent’ side so much (there’s a free Market there), but BBC employees. Mark Thompson is on 4 times what the top man at HM Treasury gets. Ridiculous.”
I don’t entirely agree, Jim, although I suspect you are talking about BBC executives here. Middle managers, some technicians, BBC Online workers and administrative staff* are not particularly well paid.
Even local journalists – such as reporters and producers on Look East or Droitwich Tonight – are paid less than one might think.
The ‘Talent’, on the other hand, are very well remunerated indeed. And by Talent, I mean anyone who fronts a national radio or television programme.
But do I give two hoots what Andrew Marr earns? Nah. He’s a bright chap so let him enjoy his money.
* I loathe the word ‘administrators’ because it implies such staff are mere office monkeys when, as any employer knows, they keep companies running.
Yes, the middle group are ‘not particularly well paid’ – but they have an amazingly cool job, with loads of travel, tickets to everything from glastonbury to the olympics and a pension you will never get anywhere else!
Jim
Glad you got my relative obscurist reference! Poor old Poly died a few years ago. I did like their stuff.
Anyone working for the public sector should be paid PAYE only and not be allowed to setup an intermediary, such as a limited company, to minimise their National Insurance contributions and overall tax contributions.
They are quite clearly employees and disguising this issue is exactly what the ill-thought out IR35 legislation was set to prevent during the Reign of Terror™ 1997-2010.
These people quite clearly are using the limited company vehicle to reduce their tax by paying themselves in small salary, large dividends and offsetting their tax take by paying their spouses dividends, whom I suspect have minimal or no input into contributing to their “business”, or more correctly, disguised employment.
All these people would immediately fail any IR35 and S660A test.
As someone that has a legitimate small business, I am constantly wary on a contract to contract basis, to make sure I avoid these HMRC pitfalls by ensuring most of my work is fixed price, whereby I take a substantial personal risk for each project that I tender for.
The whole point of this legislation was to stop the swing from the so-called “Friday to Monday” scenario, that it was possible for a worker to leave a job on Friday and return on Monday to be doing the same work for the same company, but with a greatly reduced tax take for the disguised employee, as well as reduced employment cost for the employer.
These employees in the BBC and the public sector are doing just that.
While I have no problem with public sector staff setting up a limited company (if contractually they are able to under their present terms and conditions of employment) to pursue additional work outside their 9-5 normal work, they should not be permitted to try and pretend they are “businesses”.
The legislation by HMRC of IR35, S660A and Personal Services companies is typically a clusterfeck of enormous, wealth destroying proportions as is the norm, makes little return for HMRC, is an unnecessary irritant for SMEs and genuine contractors, but I’ll be damned if we have to spend thousands of pounds in legal costs and valuable business time, while The Righteous are allowed to get away scot-free with this type of Livingstone-esque hypocritical behaviour.
In the end the fuss about “personal service” companies reduces to the impact of National Insurance contributions which are not paid on dividends. I know why NI and “normal” taxation are not combined in a single tax regime (1. to further the swindle that somehow NI is a form of “insurance” rather than a Ponzi scheme, and 2. because the civil service likes it like that – anything to confuse the people they’re supposed to work for). Nevertheless, successive governments have chosen the indirect route (ie more civil service jobs and interference) to combat the personal service company method to avoiding the impact of NI rather than the direct route of abolishing the anomaly.
There is an argument that abolishing NI and thereby increasing the standard income tax rate to keep the money rolling in would have an unfair impact on pensioners, savers etc. Of course, this could be dealt with by increasing the personal allowance and/or introducing a low pre-basic income tax rate. Such simple measures are evidently beyond those who appear able to apply the bookshelf-destroying Butterworths Income Tax Guides in all their complex glory.
Totally agree Umbongo, simplification would be a win-win for everyone. Except for the burgeoning Public Sector.
We could even call it a Flat Rate Tax scheme or something.
The whole point of this legislation was to stop the swing from the so-called “Friday to Monday” scenario
Er No. That was the excuse used to attack a healthy freelance community. The reality was a pay back for monies received from the big consultancies. As always qui bono?
Both HMRC and Labour share a distaste for those who want to work off their own bat and aren’t wage slaves.
Er, yes actually.</P
If you had been working during the early nineties, you would have seen the trends as I did for the large corporations to retire significant amounts of business on Friday. To re-establish them on Monday to carry out the same jobs, but without the employer paying Employers National Insurance contributions, pensions, expenses, Health Insurance and holiday pay and having a monthly notice period.
And here is where I agree with you: the instigation of yet more ill thought out government feared (due to a perceived drop in total tax take), kneejerked legal precedent, we have the very fount of entrepreneurism in turmoil due to their reactive trepidation of their perceived reduction in tax take.
Corporations did what they did because of the legal exploitations of an ill thought out government tax policy. Blame Labour. Blame all government.
Governments reacted as they did to try and close the tax openings. But as they debated over things they do not understand, they fecked it up, as is their normal modus operandi, and caused the important entrepreneurial part of industry to stall, as is their wont.
We had a market spread of Business-To-Business, Consultant/Freelance, temps and employees which settled naturally in the “free market”. What the corporates tried to do was switch some of their perms to temps to avoid the employers NI, and the government reacted. Typically, badly for some small genuine businesses.
What we have is a confusing business mix of SMEs, consultant/freelance and temps, and after the dotcom boom and the IR35 legislation, we have the grey area of IR35 tax legalese on a range of businesses.
When Gordon Brown stood up to the MSM and stated he was supporting SMEs and how important they were in our Global Economy and then paradoxically announced he was increasing Corporation Tax for SMEs, I knew he was a total twat and it was all for the greater good of control and tax take.
You are right: all governments hate the entrepreneurial spirit, they are more interested in total tax take especially on bodies that have little representation, so we must suffer more of the red tape burden.
One is either a true business, or a temp, but not let ill thought out government interpretation of that to overtax the legitimate businesses.
That is the issue. And we must not confuse the original government kneejerked interpretation of that reactive tax strike with lazy hyperbole.
One of the interesting things to come out of the story that the bbc never mentions, (Ken’s tax avoidance problems), is the startling revelation that Brian Paddick gets a police pension of £65,000 a year !!!!
I’ll run that by you again, a middle ranking copper, who retired from the force in his 40’s, has a tax payer paid pension of £65,000 a year.
Whats that, 5 or 6 times the regular state pension at age 65 ? Certain sections of the public sector have been doing themselves very nicely, thank you, at the tax payers expense of late.
So you have a man that has probably only worked for 25 years (max) retiring on £65 000/pa. What was he being paid when he worked?
And these same “civil servants” are in total revolt over pensions adjustments.
Something seriously wrong in the system here.
“I suppose you can make a case for politicians. But not public employees.”
When I was a young man there was an annual publication called something like the “Civil List” (not to be confused with the Civil List although, I suspect, sort of related). This listed every civil servant in the land employed by the various ministries together with their pay. (I seem to recall that Whitakers did much the same for senior civil servants.)
No-one then thought this unusual or invasive since these were public employees paid by the taxpayers who, it was considered, had a right to know who they employed and how much they were paid. Quite why our resident apologist for the BBC – or anybody else, for that matter – thinks that any public employee, quangocrat or whatever should have his pay (and perks and reimbursed expenses) hidden from his employers escapes me.
There’s a big difference between pay and tax.
But here’s where we are with civil service pay transparency. I’m all for it above a certain level.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11551683
And shove the ‘apologist’ slur up your fundament.
Just arrived at the latest baton being picked up to stir by our resident… very busy person.
So many threads to post upon, so little time.
Which may again explain straying from the ‘fundamental’ guidelines that has garnered so much praise of late from the picket line. So glad no one is being expected to do as instructed by said beacon of consistency.
Anyhoo, have to say that, be it pol, public sector or employee, as I think the dosh they pocket and all else accrues from public service that is supposed to be impartial and above reproach, it seems reasonable that those stumping up for performance and/or position know what they are paying for who they get. Especially in the case of those who presume to stick oars in on how the public lives their lives with either legislation or commentary.
At least with a pol, if a venal incompetent, I can vote on their tenure every few years.
What they earn may not be your business, but what they avoid in taxation IS. As a result of these schemes, we all have to pay MORE tax. Ergo – that is very much our business.
Anyway, what’s wrong with embarrassing overpaid BBC shills?
It certainly IS my business if the likes of Humphrys presume to ask questions on my behalf…as a “little man out there”.
Hardly any Tory has dared to snap back at Evan Davis and his presumptions to ask politicians and bankers what they earn….to be fair to Bob Crow, he did.
The response showed us all the Beeboids are all Livingstones…and at least we don`t have to elect that creep…but we`re still meant to pay for Davis` piercings!
Ah, no wonder that headline from the other day read that Osborne “‘happy’ to reveal” salaries.
I wonder if Robert Peston will be opining that some of his colleagues’ salaries and compensation packets are “inappropriate”.
What is the advantage of the salary being paid via a private company set up by the salaried person?
Tax efficient? How ? Is the salary paid as a dividend, thus attracting no NI, and just a 10% tax on dividend income up to 34K?
Yes, pretty much. The Guardian explained it recently.
What they do is their business because what they do is within the law. HOWEVER, what they shouldn’t then do is harangue (Conservative) politicians and bankers for also trying to pay as little tax as possible within the law. They do so, so become HYPOCRITES and open themselves to the same scrutiny (stones, glass houses etc.)
One word to add: EXPENSES
Could this be why those tax-evading/avoiding BBC staff haven’t made much of a fuss about the Chancellor’s offshore family trust?
Dimblebum was asked about 320 BBC people avoiding tax on QT and he said it was news to him and that he didn’t work for the Beeb.
Perhaps “Dimblebum” is a company!
As most must surely know by know, “hypocrisy” is one thing the BritishBrainwashingCorporation truly excels at. Along with millions of others i’m just sick to the back teeth of legally having to pay for it!!