Why we need "Net zero"

[Beelbeebub]

14 minutes ago, -rick- said:

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.

Yeah, this can often be the way with "simplification"!😁

 

I looked into it as I thought I was going to have to do it (turns out I'm in the group that avoids it).  It's very dependent on your software. In theory all you have r to do is the normal admin (allocating payments to invoices and bills and tagging various transactions by type) on a reasonably timely schedule and then hit the upload button every now and again.

 

If you're reasonably on it, there shouldn't be much extra work.

 

But for the people who just chuck all their invoices and receipts in the glove box and then have a mad rush about just before the deadline trying to make sense of scraps of paper from 12 months ago - it's gonna be a change (but probably for the better)

[Beelbeebub]

18 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

under my system you would pay tax on a refund as it would be treated as income.

Obviously genuine mistake would be an exception.

I would tax state benefits as well. Then it just becomes an arguement about how large they should be, not a threshold arguement.

That seems rather bad, especially if the government is taking the money at source (eg PAYE) and has not adjusted quick enough to changing circumstances.

[Beelbeebub]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9xe09jz4eo

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/04/jackdaw-gasfield-set-to-be-approved-by-ministers-this-month-sources-say

 

Looks like the government is going to approve Jackdaw and Rosebank.

 

We shall be back to 1p kWh gas and probably under £1 liter of petrol before Christmas! /S

 

Well that's what you'd think if you listened to the bosses of those projects.

 

"Chris O'Shea, the boss of British Gas owner Centrica, said any additional domestic gas supply would reduce Britain's reliance on imported fossil fuels, "so it's got to be good"..." 

 

But then he tries the pull off the impressive feat of making an argument that he fatally undermined earlier in the same sentence ..

 

"He told the BBC's Today programme: "It wouldn't lower the cost materially, but basic economics would tell you that if you've got a fixed demand for a product and you increase the supply, the price should move."

 

So it won't do anything but basic economics says it will?

 

There is much trumpeting that the gas field will produce, at it's peak, 6% of UK gas output - which opponents point out is only 2% of the UKs actual gas use.

 

It would be really interesting to see exactly what the treasury outcome is in all of this. I know there will be some tax collected but that has to be set against the tax write-offs that this project will enable companies to utilise.  I have seen various takes that place the final outcome anywhere from a few billion met revenue for the treasury over the lifetime to a few billion net loss.

 

What would also be interesting would be how much an equivalent saving in gas would cost ie how much would we need to spend driving insulation, heat pumps etc to achieve an equivalent drop in UK gas consumption?

 

IIRC turning down your thermostat reduces your gas consumption by about 10%.

 

So Jackdaw is equivalent to 1 in 5 people turning their thermostat down by 1C.