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One of the benefits of the tax by default, claim refunds for exceptions (and make that easy/quick) is that for some people (most likely well paid employees with simple affairs, some small businesses), they may find the admin of doing tax returns (as they need to do now) a huge cost/time sink and would equally find the refund process not worth their time. In the new system they could choose not to bother. The result in that case is the exchequer gets more tax in return for removing the need for that admin. In our current system you have to do the admin and for many smaller diy filers I'd guess they don't claim everything they could so end up doing the admin and paying the tax and similarly some, having been forced to do the admin, will try to claim every penny they can in order to try and recoup the cost of the admin. Only really applies to relatively small amounts but also applies to large numbers of people. It's a win for everyone involved (except accountants).

As a non-creative it doesn't help me either. Sure, but it's annoying to have to do it when your affairs are simple. Various 'single events' trigger having to do the whole thing (in some cases justified, in others not but its the only way to report the event). Sort of, though from what limited stuff I'm hearing it's adding more work rather than taking it away. You have to do the work once for the quarterly report and then do the tax return at the end of the year. Yes the software should eliminate a lot of the duplication but not all. Yep, free ability to file, especially for small businesses seems important. Biden introduced a free web based filing system for people to use. Apparently it was quite good. Cost a fairly significant amount of money to build. The accounting/tax filing software companies didn't like it and Trump scrapped it. 💵🔥

Sure. Dividends are a transfer from a corporate account to a personal account so are automatically covered by the proposal. (Assuming the shares are held in a 'personal' account - this is an area where there might be more types of account - 'pension' account might be treated more like a company account than a personal account for instance to allow tax free accumulation but taxable withdrawals). Capital gain within an investment account isn't dealt with automatically and issues such as amortising a gain over a number of years, etc, means that this would still have to be dealt with as it is now. I didn't say my system was perfect. I think it's simpler, results in less avoidance and less paperwork for the average person/company. So a better tax yield. As someone who earned a significant salary for a period of a few years and not so much the rest of the time I've definitely paid way more tax than I would have if I had earned that money over a longer period. I don't think there was a system for handling that for my situation (please point me in the of the existing rules if I missed something - I think it's probably too late for me to claim a refund now but would if I could). Again, nothing about the proposed system precludes dealing with this situation. The key is you would pay the tax up front and then claim refunds vs the other way round. Sure. What I've proposed is not a miraculous thing. Not supposed to replace all the corner cases. It is supposed to make things a lot more automatic, reduce avoidance. Average person on the street would be much less likely to need to deal with a tax return. Small businesses would have less admin (not zero). If you qualify for an exception/refund, claiming that exception can be be done immediately after the transaction in many cases thanks to the linked digital infrastructure.

Agree. My proposal wasn't intended as a complete reset to a progressive system. It only touches a part of the system anyway, a lot remains in place without changes or minor changes. I would like to get rid of VAT as it just seems like a huge amount of bureaucracy what in the end is a fairly regressive tax. However, nothing to say you couldn't keep VAT entirely as is within the system I proposed, that's not it's main point. The main point is addressing income/capital gains and tax avoidance associated with those.

Yep. AFAIK the way you decide a tax is progressive/regressive is to see what overall percentage of income the tax takes, not the headline rate. If the tax takes a greater percentage of income from poorer people then the tax is regressive and there are likely better ways to extract the same amount of money. (assuming you want either a income neutral tax or a progressive tax). I like the nordic idea of fines being a proportion of income vs our system of fixed penalty. Seems much fairer. A speeding/parking ticket for a minimum wage person is much more impactful than for a millionaire. In my system none of this gets taxed. Income taxes are higher to compensate. Capital gains is significantly different (if it exists at all). The richest people in this country often pay the lowest tax rate (not raw £) of everyone because a lot of their income is from capital not work. Remove that difference (in the main) and you get some very interesting results. (I'm not saying my proposal is an easy sell -- I believe it would seriously reduce bureaucracy but would also disadvantage a lot of the richest and the white van man tax avoiders who tend to have a significant political influence). Almost all taxable. As it is today (or rather as it was when I last looked a decade or so ago, rules may have changed). My last company gave me all sorts of benefits but also paid benefit in kind tax on those benefits as if I'd earned the money directly. Leather? Alloy? For a work van? No. More seats can be justified. If providing a service and the luxuries are for the use by clients then that's potentially different. I'm not sure of the existing rules here but setting rules in this area is not different from what we do now. Businesses have to deal with this already, my proposal doesn't change that. Sure. But council tax is worse. And maybe I should have said 'property tax' rather than land tax. (I'm very much not a fan of a land tax in our current system and it has issues in general, however, I gave it as an example of something that might be needed in this new theoretical system for it to be cohesive, there are likely other options too). It doesn't but it's not meant to. She has an income (likely mostly structured as capital gains rather than income tax). Tax her at the income tax rate. To me this is much more of a hidden tax. I'm generally against frictional taxes. Far prefer to have simpler, easy to understand, in your face taxes. If everyone (even idiots) can understand the taxes and understand that everyone pays them then social cohesion will be higher. Not done the maths, but if you remove the ability for rich people to pay less taxes by structuring their finances differently then I expect the headline tax rates go down. In summary, what I proposed, is not a summary of all taxes, but a reform of a subset. In my thinking it eliminates a lot of paperwork for the less weathy (<£1million) and smaller companies while preserving flexibility for incentives where needed (though the overall system is thought of as a way of reducing overall costs and therefore the need for incentives). One thing I didn't mention before is that there would have to be a limit of transfers between personal accounts (normally tax free) and transfers to cash (if it still exists in this system).

Well this got super off topic. But as a master of asides I will join in! *ducks* Sales tax/VAT is quite a regressive tax so I'm not hugely in favour. I tend to think that in a digital age (where most transactions are done electronically) we could radically reshape our system. Make bank accounts be marked with a flag that denotes the type of account (I'm sure this already exists but I mean a UK wide standardisation and make this flag part of the transaction). Hugely simplifying, an account can be owned by a person or a company(*). Payments from a company account to a personal account have tax deducted at the time of transaction at the rate of that taxpayer (based on annual income). Other transactions are tax free. It is illegal to derive personal benefit from a non personal account (similar to existing benefit in kind rules). Payments to/from foreign (unmarked) accounts treated as payments to personal account and taxed (allowance for international agreements for tax free transactions to jurisdictions with compatible laws though clearly starting with zero). Possibility of claiming tax back in exceptional(*2) cases. Mechanism for refunds automatically refunding the deducted tax (basically need to enter original transaction ID at time of refund, or request refund using online banking that is then confirmed by company). Likely need an annual land tax also, but these two taxes can cover a wide range of existing taxes. Exceptions and incentives can be created but they are created on the basis of having to claim the tax refund, rather than having a lower tax bill. Claims should be digital and easy to claim (possibly directly through the online banking transaction record). (*) there may be more categories with special rules but they should be limited (*2) exceptional sounds wrong here, there are going to be many cases where you want to claim a refund, but the key is that these are rare overall given the total number of transactions Edit: companies would still have some additional taxes in some industries (carbon tax?) and need to file tax returns in many cases. But amount of work involved significantly reduced. Individuals much less likely to need a tax return. Individual (automated) tax refunds possible on specific transactions avoiding need for end of year return.

I think I'd do this too. The toekick/plinth bottom will be a good way back (not in line with the drawer fronts) and most of this won't be seen. I would not do any of the options with an angled bit. That looks wrong. A version of 3c might be fine also.

This maybe a bit harsh but they look like a guy in his bedroom has cobbled together some pc water cooling parts and fans and 3d printed a case for them and has now set up a company to sell them. (I've not looked hard at them and they are probably doing it properly but they have a very 3d printed look). Pretty much any unit other sold as an FCU will support going below dew point. That's the primary market after all (proper air con performance). It's only a relatively small market of eco warriors and retro fit installations where below dew point is a problem so that will be an afterthought. So trimley have identified a market opportunity. Shame about the design.

I'm guessing you didn't insulate your pipes (and a condensate drain) to give you the option of running a little below dew point if the need arose? What is the FCU you are looking at? Guessing supplier didn't want to sell to non-installer.

IMV the A/C unit would be much more unpleasant due to compressor noise. Would likely keep me up at night (light sleeper). Quiet fancoil will be much nicer.

The AI is sending you down the wrong path (slightly). That particular unit doesn't need you to fiddle with gas at all. It's definitely diyable. Downsides are it requires two 100+mm holes in the wall (and thus mounting to an external wall) which unless you are very careful is going to mess with your air tightness. Equally, those holes will provide a route for external air into the unit bypassing insulation/heat exchange. It won't get into the room but in a tightly insulated house it may create a cold area in winter. Those two holes also bypass your insulation for sound deadening so you are likely to hear the outside more directly in that room. Finally, the compressor is in the internal unit so these will be louder than conventional split A/C (or water based fancoils). Given the temperature has now gone down and you don't have to rush, I'd take a step back and look again at fancoils. See if you can make progress there. Failing that, look at proper split A/C units (likely requiring an installer - but the units are cheaper so overall cost of that install vs this unit might not be huge). What's the issue you are having with fancoils?

Well that's a much more substantial workshop than I was expecting from your previous posts. Barn vs 2/3 car garage. To cost effectively make that space warm? Build a room within the room for the work area and heat/cool that, don't heat/cool the storage. Even a large tent that you can move about if needed to contain the air of the area you are working would help.

I really like that house (though been a while since I watched the video). From my memory of it I think they made it work by: 1. Having plenty of previous experience. She is a designer with experience of remodels and IIRC her husband has industry experience of some form. They have worked up from from smaller remodels and projects. 2. From that previous experience they have a well established network of trades they can trust. These trades know they are reliable customers and this job is not a one off so they get better attention to detail and less 'risk' mark up for an unknown customer. 3. She seems really detail oriented, focusing on lower cost ways of achieving a result. But even with that focus, they had the money to spend to address issues as they came up (and trust in their trades when the trade needed more).

And that brings us back to mains sockets with USB-C. The vast majority of them will be more basic chargers so basically the same as a USB-A fast charger but with a usb-c connector. So that means even if you have a socket with a USB-C you can't necessarily plug your higher power device into it and charge at a reasonable rate. All devices have to support the lowest power standard but a laptop would take hours upon hours to charge at that rate. When I say higher power device, obviously laptops but it also applies to tablets and even the big high end phones. Anything with a big battery wants a higher power charge.

For laptops, monitors, etc. The charger will be physically quite a bit bigger if it's putting out that much power. I'd guess the more commonly available ones will go up to 30-60W max. If you have a USB-C laptop charger that will be 60-150W probably.