Beelbeebub

🤣 Isn't that analysis based just a testament that poor people don't have much spare money? (I'll ignore zero rated vat for now) Poor person earns 1k a month and spends all of that on stuff that is 20% vat - has paid £200 in vat ie 20% of income Rich person earns 100k a month and spends half of that on stuff at 20%vat - has paid £10,000 in vat ie 10% of their income This forms a core part of the argument for lower vat rates (or even zero) on certain products Poor people spend a lot more of their income on food, energy etc than rich people so the argument goes well should lower rate it. Likewise kids clothes and other things Nobody would claim vat on mink coats, gold watches and diamond tipped canes is a regressive tax on the poor. But if we lower vat on food, that means we lower the tax on fillet steaks, caviar and fois gras. Then we have the difficulty of restaurants. Charging vat on restaurants but not food, but where is the line between a restaurant serving meals and a shop selling food? If a pizza in a restaurant is Vat is a frozen pizza you cook at home vat free? What about a pizza base, block of cheese and a jar of topping? Take away? It all gets complex fast Your simplification already has multiple get outs and exemptions .... What is a personal benefit? Is having physio a personal benefit or good employee care? Is providing tea and coffee in the break room a benefit or good practice? Does your work van need leather upholstery, a second row of seats and alloy wheels? If you are a plumber probably not, a taxi driver then definitely but what if you are a builder who has 3 labourers? I am skeptical of land taxes because when it was conceived in the 1800's USA land was through basis of all wealth. You farmed it or mined it or did some thing that needed space or it's proximity. But now alot of our economy is unteathered from land. Google probably owns less UK land than lidl yet has orders of magnitude more revenue and profit. How does a land tax capture JK Rowlings value and income? I have wondered about inflation as a tax. Government issues currency and the purpose of tax is to drain off that currency so we don't have hyper inflation If the government didn't tax anything and the money entering the economy was larger than the goods and services in that economy we get inflation. So taxes draw off that extra money. Inflation is basically the thing that adjusts the fiat money to the real economy. And it's bad because it destroys savings and makes you stealth poorer. But what if you drew the extra money away as a very small % of transactions- basically a card fee. As there is a link between volume of transactions and GDP the two would scale together. It would be like every £ issued is slowly wearing away with each "use" (transaction). Ironically not a million miles from steamy teas suggestion 🤣.... Though the (I think) critical difference would be the "tax" would be on every single transaction and being very small (I don't (now what level it would need to be to work and if that level would{d be so high as to stop it working). This would make cash (which doesn't "wear out") very attractive. But maybe it could work as a digital only currency. People are very comfortable now with bit coin and the like that has never had a physical existence.

Are you proposing *only* to tax wage payments to individuals? Ok if I work for a shop and they pay me £1,000 a month I pay £400 of that to HMRC What if I form a company that provides my labour to another company? Is that taxed? That company pays me a wage of £1 a month and I pay 40p to HMRC. The company provides a house, car, clothes and food for me for free.

Right So I've just had some rewiring done. Electrician charged me £800 and provided wire, consumer unit, sockets etc. total value around £500 I pay him £800 and he has to pay £500 to his wholesaler and £320 to HMRC (40% tax). He has now lost £20 for his day's work. If I were to buy the parts directly for £500 and give them to him and he charge me £300 he'd only have to pay £60 in tax and make £240. every single trade would become labour only. Every shop would have to mark up all goods by at least 40% even if they were simply a warehouse/wholesaler. Every single step in a chain will add 40% to the price so a lump of brass for £10 become £14 when it is sold to the machinist, he has to sell that £20 just to break even to the cabinet maker. He in turn has to price that part at £28 to the kitchen show room. They then have to charge that at £40 to the kitchen fitter who charges his client £56 for that brass handle. And that assumes nobody charges anything for their time and overheads that's just the material cost moving through the chain!

Ok so you're suggesting VAT/sales tax on every single business with ability no exemptions? This is fine - I believe the French have no threshold and vat exemptions are much less common in Europe anyway. But then you get into discussions about what exactly is a business? How does sole trading work? How do you capture the guy doing an odd job for a neighbour and getting paid to cover materials? Do I have to charge vat on selling my CDs on eBay? Vat on selling your car privately? Vat when you sell your house? The reporting requirements around vat are pretty onerous already - is applying that t{ every single transaction between every single individual really the way to reduce complication and administrative burdens? I'm just saying that simple taxes never stay simple. Every single time you will need to make some sort of exemption or rule to stop your tax having undesirable effects. And those are where the loopholes come in.

Sorry I don't follow? Are you (or the op) saying there should one tax (let's say income tax) at a flat rate and no vat, no sales tax, capital gains tax, no IHT just individual income or that there should be multiple taxes but each one has exactly the same rate eg income tax is 20%, vat is 20%, capital gains tax is 20% and so on?

And what's considered an individual's income!

We can have a simple regime. Every single tax starts simple - then it becomes complicated over time as loop holes are closed and unfair effects are mitigated. VAT is a conceptually simple tax 20% for everything would be simple. But what about food? Kids clothes, books, tampons etc. Do we charge vat on every single business, even someone selling half a dozen bobble hats the knitted as a hobby , or do we have a threshold where you don't have to bother? You end up with high court decisions on whether a Jaffa cake is a biscuit or a cake and small businesses turning down work to avoid a step change in tax as the become vat liable.

It is a not unreasonable situation and one that would bankrupt someone if income were taxed instead of profits.

You're missing the point. It illustrates why taxing income at a flat rate and not allowing any expenses won't work. There is a reason we tax profits after expenses and not income.

60% of Britons support "net zero" to a greater or lesser degree Vs 25% who oppose it. That's a pretty big majority The interesting thing is the majority of people who oppose it think their view is the majority of the public's view rather than realising they are a minority. About 3/4 of the 25% who oppose net zero,so a bit under 20% of the public think their view is the majority view. Which explains a lot of the confidently wrong takes we see online.

That's odd We've had a bunch done and when we reran the assesment with the addition of 2.5kwp of panels wen got loads of points. Easily lifting one and sometimes 2 grades (10 points or more on some cases). It did seem to depend a bit on the individual property. Some were a bit less than 10 and others were well over

We used shortish rails (I can't remember the brand, Van Der something) that were screwed parallel to and on top of the ridges in the roof. This is to allow the landscape orientation of the panels. It did mean the placement of the clamps was varying from panel to panel but we managed to get them all (just) in the allocated clamping zones. The only issue (apart from the rail locations being fixed to ridge locations) was I had to be careful when placing the stitching screws that tie the ridge of one sheet to the next. If I had a choice I think I'd go for the type of short rail that spans between 2 ridges for a portrait orientation. Which would avoid that issue.

The conservatives have announced their energy policy It appears to be based on this document https://ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Powering-Britain_-A-comparison-of-policy-pathways-to-2050.pdf The net effect seems to be to get a lot more of our energy from gas than the current trajectory. This makes their cost savings assumptions very dependent on their assumptions of future natural gas prices. They have assumed a stable future price around £24 per Mwh (in 2025 prices) They are also relying on building an extra 7Gw of nuclear capacity (about 2 to 3 new plants). And they will achive this by making government more focused on delivering nuclear - as if this is a magic wand. These assumptions seem to be, in the words of Sir Humphrey, "courageous". Nowhere on the document can I find anything addressing the energy security in the context of being able to source gas from abroad. There is a lot of focus on "security of supply" - which in the context it is used seems to mean firm Vs intermittent power. But nothing on how we secure the continuity of our power supply if there is an issue with gas imports eg a pipeline or LNG terminal being destroyed by sabotage.

Maybe let's get back to the subject of UK oil and gas reserves relative to consumption and leave discussions of local recycling politics behind us.

Running a business and local politics/volunteering organisations are different. People don't really understand local politics and what they can and cannot do witness reform candidates running for country council positions on a platform of stopping the small boats - an area in which they have absolutely zero power. I would suggest you try a turn at parish council - with your amazing competence I am sure you'll be able to turn things around and then you won't have to worry about the recycling or potholes or whatever irked you. And in the unlikely event you fail you'll have learned a lesson in how even brilliant people with good intentions can't always succeed.