Is it better to be stupid or nasty?

Hiya all,

Having read this mornings papers, it occurs to me that in the UK now, it is better to be stupid or nasty than a normal, hardworking person. Let me explain...

It seems that if you are stupid and take out one of the loans that you cant afford, or sign up for insurance on products that a worthless, by moaning about it a bit or being too stupid to realise that you cant afford them at the time, or too stupid to find work, the debts, insurance or bad things are written off. Whereas, if you have the means to pay, you are hounded into the ground. Cases in point are Barcleys who have recorded record amounts of bad debt write-off this week, and the chap in Brighton who topped himself for owing £5000 to the CSA who had started taking it out of his wages, leaving him nothing to live on.

It seems the government are creating a society where its better to be stupid or lazy that it is to work. If you work, you pay taxes on your income, almost everything you buy, and everything you do. But if your stupid or lazy, the state pays you large amounts to encourage you to stay that way. Again, case in point is reports which states its something like £4200 a year better off to be a couple that splits, than one that stays together.

And the government seems to want to hurt business as well. The introduction of taxes like IR35 hurt start-up business, whilst tax breaks encourage work to be shifted to other countries.

The government even makes matters worse in their public service schemes. The CSA now has a backload of over 3 years, and have reported that it costs 54p for every pound collected. Now that to me sounds like a hopeless situation, and encourages the nasty people not to pay.

But its not all the governments fault. The UK at large has encouraged people to spend, spend, spend, and its all coming home to roost. But as a hard working tax payer, I seem to be paying more and more to make up for the stupidness of others. We have record debt, every 2nd advert on the television is for refinance deals (which we all know are either cons at 19.9% interest), and a large part of the television on sky now is "phone up" quiz shows at £1 per call.

Somebody make me feel better by telling me that it will all sort itself out, and that those that are stupid with their money will suffer in the long term - because it doesn't seem like it at the moment.

Or is it simply stealth taxes on the stupids of the country to weed them all out?

Reply to
JaffaB
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In message , JaffaB writes

It wont sort itself out whilst the do goody goods have the ears of those in power.

I'm currently planning to leave the country, and will be taking most of my tax payments with me - Unfortunately, this will leave the rest of you to foot the bill for scroungers and conmen, (conpersons??), but I'm sure I'm not on my own.

Presumably various governments have calculated that they gain more from the ordinary Joes' taxes, than they lose from the rich leaving for tax havens, and need do nothing about it.

I always believe that "what goes around comes around". Most of the people who have ripped me off over the years live a life of near poverty, and will never get any better. In addition, they will probably rip off the wrong person one day, .............

Reply to
Richard Faulkner

agree with everything you said except IR35 which prior to its introduction, there were many people using a loophole to avoid paying tax. Maybe there were genuine people there as well, but I know personally of many IT people who worked full time at one company only, renewed their contract every year (arguably they had more job security than employees) and simply used the existing tax laws as a mechanism not to pay tax. They were not starting up a business which would expand and ultimately employ many, nor did they have any intention of ever doing that, they were one man/woman operations which would always stay that way, and used spouses (spice?) as 'employees' to do 'admin' in order to further reduce their tax. Good riddance to that scam I say.

Reply to
Tumbleweed

Well yes, but IR35 was a bit stronger than it needed to be, and too targeted. Now, its almost impossible to work a contract in IT on a day basis (rather than fixed price) and not be cought in IR35 issues. And as far as I am aware, it doesnt hit temp agencies placing personal assistants.

As I say, it did cause a lot of IT people to pull out of contracting and did help to push work abroad. Therefore, it helps move money out of the country and therefore the chancellors bucket - not the desired effect.

Reply to
JaffaB

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