Tax

Tax is a system used by those in power to pay special interests. Frederic Bastiat, a very sound  Libertarian says, in effect that tax is theft. I think that some expenditure is justified. Most is not. When politicians have taxed us as much as they can their response is to extort by other means. Government Financiers use Quantitative Easing, an evasive term for printing money. It is called forgery, a crime when we do it. Then there is Privatization which qualifies as a humungous Boondoggle with a lot of sticky fingers in the pie. The whole is a giant parasite that pretends to be for our benefit while being expanded to pay an ever increasing number of free loaders, Capitalist Swine, bribing illegal immigrants to vote Labour et cetera. Another straightforward technique is Asset Stripping; they steal tax payers' property, selling it off cheap to their peculiar friends. The rewards, post-dated Bribes, pay offs come later. But this is about tax.

We should know and care about the Forgotten Man. He who prays, he who pays for social projects. William Beveridge and the #five great evils of his #Report cost us billions every year.

A lot of people do not know how much tax they pay. It is deducted before they ever see it and they accept it as a fact of life. Some sources claim that it is around 40% of our gross income. They are wrong; it is much worse, much higher. A video called The Big Swindle tells us that the take is 78% of our income. That is about right. It also tells us that the Bank of England is owned by Rothschild. In fact it was nationalized by Her Majesty's Government in 1946. See Bank of England Legislation on the point.

Given the reality that we are allowed to keep 22% of our income, reducing tax so that we kept 44% would double our standard of living while reducing tax from 78% to a less rapacious 56%. It is perfectly possible because huge amounts of tax payers' money get wasted. Honest government would be better government albeit various apparatchiks and parasites would not like it.

Today, in 2016 AD we have Green Tax inflicted on us. The Greenies love it; they love Social Contracts because they think they know how to run our lives better than we do.     
PS Negative Income Tax is an approach to helping the poor; it has its difficulties but Sean Gabb approves - see Libertarian Thoughts on State Welfare.

Frederic Bastiat
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorises it, and a moral code that glorifies it.”
Thus quoth
Frédéric Bastiat

 

Tax Waste
The title tells all. The evidence is out there. The waste is humungous. That is before considering the fraud.

 

Milton Friedman Explains Tax
QUOTE
I am in favour of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, 'How do you hold down government spending?' Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes.
UNQUOTE
Professor Friedman got a Nobel prize for economics but I respectfully disagree with him on his 40% figure. I settle for 80% in England. For the rest he is spot on.

 

Tax 2010
We can still blame this one on to Brown. Next time it will be down to Cameron and the other one.

 

Tax Analysed
More about the yoke that is round our necks.

 

Tax Brown And Slavery
Tax farming is one name for it. Extortion is another. When 80% of a man's income is taken he has some right to expect a result. Most of it is wasted or used to bribe Brown's greedy friends.

 

Tax And Marx
QUOTE
Just recently, I was discussing the tax system with my attorney who had just completed my mother's estate. When I informed him of the Marxist underpinnings of, not only the so-called "death tax," but also the graduated income tax, he was shocked. He had no idea that Karl Marx had written the major elements in the tax code with which he had been working his entire professional life. All one has to do is read the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848. The fact that an educated, sophisticated man, such as my lawyer, had been totally unaware of this fact speaks volumes about the vast majority of Americans. As Yankee manager Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up!"
UNQUOTE
It is there in The Communist Manifesto. All you have to do is look.

 

Tax Farming
The Wikipedia takes the position that it was a Roman system where a rich man paid the tax and was allowed to extort it from a particular population. I see it as a cynical and honest name for the robbery carried out by the Inland Revenue in England and the IRS in America. It is said that William the Conqueror brought Jews over from Paris & Rouen to do his tax farming for him. This is consistent with the Wiki's claim and an effective way to screw the peasants.

 

Tax In America
An American view of American tax. It is incomplete.

 

Tax In England
Here are some numbers. Your tax loss is around 80% of your gross unless you have made some moves.

 

Tax Slavery
QUOTE
Tax Slaves Existing for Government
Alan Keyes, a candidate for the Republican 2000 presidential nomination, argues that the income tax is a slave tax and that Americans are slaves. He is correct.

A slave is a person who does not own his own labour. After tax, successful Americans retain no more of the income they produce than 19th century slaves -- and considerably less than medieval serfs. The maximum that could be extracted from a medieval serf was one-third -- an amount extracted today by the combination of the payroll tax and the bottom rung of the federal income tax. Add in state sales and income taxes, and it is apparent that Americans are not a proud, free people.

Our Founding Fathers knew that an income tax was a slave tax, and they forbade it. It required a constitutional amendment -- the 16th -- to make us slaves.......... An income tax is different from other taxes. An income tax gives government a claim to your labour, just as a slave owner had a claim to the slave's labour.

A slave who withheld his labour was likely to be punished. He would be put on short rations or whipped. If one of us today withholds from the IRS, the punishment is more severe -- several years in prison.
UNQUOTE
Doctor Roberts knows of what he writes. Things are worse in England, much worse. We get mulcted of 80% of our gross.

 

Tax Top Ten
There are happy countries where their wonderful governments don't bother to tax people. At all events they don't charge income tax. If you have that many million barrels of oil being pumped every day why bother?

 

Taxes
Some of the numbers. They are HUGE.

 

Taxes, Brown And The Budget
Her Majesty's Treasury admits a certain amount of truth.

 

Wage Slaves and Tax Slaves
The average man loses 80% of his gross income to extortion. Cutting tax by 20% would double his pay. It sounds good to me.

 

Brown and the Budget
Brown is a sanctimonious rogue with unlimited greed. Unlimited means well over £600 billion a year and that is just what he admits to. He is getting it up by at least 6% a year which is well over the claimed rate of inflation. Of course the inflation is something he causes, making us poorer. Cranking up the printing presses to make more money has a huge profit margin for him. The cost of production is well under 1%.

 

John Birt
QUOTE
Soon after Birt became director general [ of the BBC ] , his future was risked by revelations that he was selling himself to the BBC as a consultant, with Schedule D tax arrangements and an expense account which included secretarial payments to his wife and a large sum for suits. He survived, and joined the staff, where his salary rose to more than compensate. The scandal became known as Armanigate, since Birt is vain about his clothes: an acquaintance recalls once seeing Jane Birt in a beautiful dress and asking 'Is that Japanese too?' (Acknowledging that her husband was obviously wearing a suit by Issey Miyake.) 'No,' John Birt replied, indicating his own outfit, 'this is Japanese.
UNQUOTE
Did engineering at university it seems. But sound on tax; only victims pay. The Jew, Grade hates him so he is not all bad. View of tax confirmed by John Birt, Baron Birt

 

The American Constitution and Federal Powers
The Constitution grants certain powers to the Federal government and no more. The Federal government has chosen to ignore the Constitution in order to cheat, lie steal and wage war in spite of the sworn obligation of every Federal official.

 

Death Duty - A Capitalist Swine Explains

 

Tax In Pictures - An Analysis
It comes in:-

It goes out:-
 
Privatization
If you wonder why things get worse, read this.

 

Recent Disasters [ 4 February 2010 ]
They start bad and get worse. Put a price on each and you have to think billions every time. Can you guess which is the worst?

 

Save The Tax Havens – We Need Them [ 12 April 2009 ]
QUOTE
What is it about tax havens that makes the G20 leaders so keen to crack down on them? Outrage against all those Russian mafia bosses secretly laundering their prostitution and protection racket money through Luxembourg or disgust at Third World dictators being able to siphon millions of their people’s money into numbered Swiss bank accounts in case they need to make a quick exit one day?
UNQUOTE
The Adam Smith Institute puts a view. Brown extorts over £500 billion a year from us, forges [ Sorry - make that Quantitative Easing - Editor ] God knows how much then whines about people avoiding his robbery.

 

Head Taxman Is A Tax Evasion Expert [ 23 July 2012 ]
QUOTE
HMRC have announced the appointment of Edward Troup as the new Tax Assurance Commissioner (to take over from Dave Hartnett), and Ian Barlow as the Lead Non-Executive Director to succeed Mike Clasper.
UNQUOTE
Saw in Private Eye the other day new head Edward Troup quoted as saying in 1999 Taxation is legalized extortion and only valid to the extent of the law. Set a thief to catch a thief? Or set a thief to let his little friends get away with it? To be fair the man is right. Tax is extortion that politicians use to bribe special interests. The Mafia understands them.

 

http://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/gen-cowans-edict.210998/page-13
Danny_Dravot said:

Is this the city that nearly bankrupt our country - that relied upon the taxes of the working man to be bailed out? Where drug-taking, indulgence, opulence, tax-evasion and uber-complicity in stinking financial malpractice are rife?

I'll stick to my working-class values of common decency if you don't mind....

Hmm,
The bit that failed was a very small part of the City revenue. The rest was still one of the major contributors to the UK economy.

I don't like to burst your bubble, but "ordinary working people" don't actually contribute much in the way of taxes. First of all, discount anyone employed in the public sector. They get their
Money from the state, so anything they give back is a nil sum item. They are a tax burden.

Discount anyone in the private sector on a relatively low (less than perhaps £30k) wage, because pretty much everything they pay in taxes will be absorbed by them in services provided by the state. They are tax neutral.

Only corporations and people in the private sector with higher incomes pay taxes in excess of the services provided by the state. They are tax contributors. The City is one of the largest of these, both corporately and on an individual level.

Anyway, back to discussing how an email about sandwiches and who writes the thank you letters will bring about the downfall if the British military.

 

Rich Pay Far More Tax Than Poor  [ 18 August 2019 ]
QUOTE
A quarter of a century ago, pale with terror, I stumbled in to my first university history tutorial. It is fair to say that I was not a stunning success. The subject was the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, something about which I knew next to nothing. My tutor asked me what I thought held states together................

And then, after another interminable pause, he spelled out, perhaps a bit too gleefully: ‘T ... A ... X.’ He was exaggerating, but he was not entirely wrong. Tax is one of the key pillars of government, and, indeed, of society itself.............. No taxes would mean no borders, no roads, no police, no NHS, no state pensions . . . and the list goes on.

A country without taxes is, almost by definition, a failed state.....................For as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) reported this week, the latest HM Revenue & Customs tax data shows that the percentage of British adults paying income tax has fallen to just 57 per cent, the lowest figure this century.
UNQUOTE
The Mail is on the right lines but most Tax is stolen or wasted. Think of all the parasites running QUANGOS and paid a lot more than our wonderful prime minister. Lots of them 'retire' with golden goodbyes and go to work for the firms they gave multimegabuck contracts. If it sounds like systematic corruption be assured that it is.

If you doubt the ugly reality look at The Power of Organized Crime to know how the underworld and Establishment happily co-exist.

 

Taxpayer Defrauded By Government, Lawyers And Third World Liars On The Make  [ 3 June 2020 ]
QUOTE
Hounded veterans demanded an apology from defence chiefs last night after it emerged that all but one of thousands of war crime allegations from Iraq have been thrown out.

More than 3,500 allegations against UK forces between 2003 and 2009 have already been dismissed by taxpayer-funded probes.

Yesterday an independent investigator looking at the final few cases said it was ‘quite possible’ none of the claims would lead to a criminal prosecution.
UNQUOTE
They are deeply, sincerely corrupt. What's new? Not a lot. Recall that Her Majesty's Government let Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness get away with murder while Phil Shiner, a light fingered, left wing shit on the make was allowed to get away with touting for business. But HMG does not hesitate to screw men of  the Parachute Regiment. Some things don't change.

 

How Tax Has Shaped The Course Of Human History
QUOTE
...............You can look back through history, take any notable event, and, lurking in there somewhere, there is almost always a tax story, without which things might have been very different.

Jesus Christ was only born in Bethlehem because Mary and Joseph were there to pay taxes. Taxation paid for man to take his first steps on the moon. In Britain, income tax was introduced as “the tax to beat Napoleon” and in many ways it did.

The US Revenue Act of 1942, described by Time magazine as, “the biggest piece of machinery ever designed to separate dollars from citizens”, brought income taxes to ordinary Americans for the first time. Those taxes paid for the US war effort, which was what swung World War II in favour of the Allies.

I argue that tax has in fact shaped the course of history.

Every war, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Iraq, was paid for by some kind of tax. Taxes make wars possible. If you want to end war, end taxes!

The aim of every conqueror, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon and beyond, is to take control of the tax base: the land, the labour, the produce and the profits. Conquerors plunder and then they tax.

Every revolution and revolt has inequitable taxation at its heart. “No taxation without representation” was the cry of the American revolutionaries. Ruinous taxes levied by the tsar against peasant farmers led to the Russian Revolution. Perhaps most explicitly of all, the Philippine Revolution began with the Cry of Pugad Lawin, exhorting rebels to tear up their tax certificates.

From Spartacus to Boudicca to Robin Hood to Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest rebels in history were usually tax rebels.

History looks different when viewed through this lens of taxation.

Taxation is as old as civilisation itself – probably older – and in all the years since men first came down from the Zagros mountains to settle on the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, there has never been a civilisation without taxation. Taxation is inevitable.

Rulers will always expropriate the labour, the produce and the profits of people for the greater good of society.

Some see taxes as “a necessary evil”, as Winston Churchill put it – the price we pay for a civilised society. Others see them as theft.

Both points of view are right. And the art of taxation is surely to cause as little disruption as possible to people’s lives – as Louis XIV’s infamous finance minister put it, to pluck “the most possible feathers with the least possible hissing”.

But Louis XIV’s finances were a mess. His successors adopted his poor habits and his contemptuous attitude towards his subjects’ wealth, and the eventual result was the French Revolution. We should be wary of taking said finance minister’s advice.

The evolution of tax and the state
Taxes should not be about milking the system for everything you can. They should be fair. Today’s tax systems are anything but. Labour is taxed heavily, capital barely at all. The result is a society skewed towards asset ownership Ten percent is the ancient proportion – the tithe. The number goes all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, and was adopted across ancient cultures, whether Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Roman, Carthaginian, Phoenician or Arabic.

We tend to think of the tithe as a tax paid to the church, but the distinction between god, king, ruler, church and government was not always clear, and often they were one and the same. Some scholars argue that ancient cultures arrived at the figure of one tenth because we have ten fingers, and calculations were often made using one’s fingers. It is a natural number.

Just like taxes today, tithing paid for wars and defence, for buildings and infrastructure, for the lavish lifestyles of leaders, but also for alms. Almsgiving is an essential feature of just about every religion – indeed, I would say it is a part of human nature – and one of the main roles of the church through history was to provide the contemporary equivalents of welfare, healthcare and education, responsibilities that have now largely passed to government.

That 10% figure lasted right up until the 20th century. In 1900, government spending was much lower and taxes played a far less prominent role in our lives. In the US, it was around just 7% of GDP; in the UK, it was 9%; in France, 13%. Of nations in the modern era, Sweden in 1870 had the lowest spending, at just 5.7% of GDP.

These low rates of tax ended with World War I and have never been seen since. At least not in the West. Countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore kept their taxes below 15% of GDP in the second half of the 20th century, and their economies consequently boomed.

In authoritarian or totalitarian societies such as Soviet Russia or North Korea, people have virtually no ownership of their labour, their produce or their profit. Government takes it all. On the other hand, in ancient Greece, many taxes were voluntary.

The developed world today sits somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Excluding inflation (itself a form of tax), if you are a typical American, roughly 38% of everything you ever earn is taken from you in taxes. In the UK, 45%. In France, the figure is an eye-watering 57%.

Ultimately, tax is power. Whether king, emperor or government, if they lose their tax revenue, they lose their power. This rule has always applied, from the first king of ancient Sumer to the social democracies of today. Taxes are the fuel on which the state’s operations run. Limit taxes, and you limit ruling power.

Daylight Robbery – How Tax Shaped The Past And Will Change The Future is available at Amazon and all good bookstores with the audiobook, read by me, on Audible and elsewhere. If you want a signed copy – and what could make a nicer Christmas pressie? – you can order one here.
UNQUOTE
Quite a sensible look at the business. He might even cover the waste and theft that goes with it.

 

Biden, Obama, Holder & Clinton Accused Of Major Tax Fraud  [ 9 November 2020 ]
QUOTE
Today David A. Keene discusses an oft-ignored international scandal involving tax evasion at the highest levels leading back to Washington, D.C.’s corridors of power. To understand all of the particulars, David spoke with whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld. Birkenfeld worked at the Swiss investment bank UBS, offering wealth management services before returning to the United States and disclosing Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws:

According to Birkenfeld, key figures in this scandal include Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton. When Birkenfeld appeared before the United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 2007 and shared knowledge of UBS’s illegal practices taking advantage of federal tax law, then-Senator Barack Obama was conspicuously absent..............

According to Birkenfeld, that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Next comes Joe Biden and his implacable [ sic ] Delaware roots.
UNQUOTE
Bradley Birkenfeld, the author of Lucifer's Banker fingers Joe Biden, Obama, Hillary Clinton et al but, presumably was not get sued for Libel. His book fail to  convince all of its buyers however UBS Was Ordered To Pay $5 Billion For Tax Evasion. It kept the directors out of prison. It was only other people's money so it was well worth it.

 

Oxbridge Man Gets An Extra Ten Years But Keeps £11 Million  [ 20 August 2021 ]
QUOTE
An environmental scientist who was jailed for his role in Britain's biggest ever tax fraud has had 10 years added onto his prison sentence after failing to pay back millions of pounds.

Michael R , one of five businessmen involved, was ordered to pay back £11million of his ill-gotten gains from the fake 'green' investment scheme which saw celebrities, including comedians, sports stars and relatives of politicians, swindled out of £107million.

The 59-year-old, who was described as the leader of the fraudulent scheme, was originally convicted of cheating the public revenue and sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2017. 

When sentenced, Richards was described by the judge as a 'fraudster to his core' who was in control of the scheme in partnership with Gold and splashed his share on a £2.7m house and splashed out £32,000 on a diamond engagement ring for his girlfriend from luxury Mayfair jewellers Boodles.

Two years later, the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division successfully applied to the court for Richards to pay back £9,999,999 of his ill-gotten gains which has now risen to £11.1 million with interest.
UNQUOTE
That extra ten year stretch is worth better than a million a year. It is tax free too. But will his friends rob him? The government tried to with the interest they added on.

 

Chancellor Of The Exchequer Uses Fancy Footwork Against Tax  [10 April 2022 ]
QUOTE
Rishi Sunak was facing questions over his own financial affairs last night after it emerged he kept Boris Johnson in the dark about his family’s complex tax arrangements.

In a remarkable development, Mr Sunak confirmed reports that he had continued to hold a US green card until October last year. It means the Chancellor was classed as a ‘permanent resident’ of the United States while living in Downing Street.

In another twist last night, the Independent claimed that the Chancellor had been named as the beneficiary of trusts held in tax havens in the British Virgin isles and the Cayman Islands.

The newspaper claimed to have seen documents ‘linked to Miss Murty, her family and companies linked to their businesses... In a number of them, Mr Sunak was listed as a beneficiary.’ A Treasury source said Mr Sunak, his wife and her wealthy family were not aware of any trusts naming the Chancellor as a beneficiary.

Treasury sources confirmed Mr Sunak, who worked in America for a decade before entering politics, had also continued to file annual US tax returns until last year.
UNQUOTE
Sunak makes the rules, including the exceptions. Who helps make the leaks? Try any of the Big Four accountants. They were the Big Five until Arthur Andersen came unstuck, proving that Audits are pretty much worthless. It was also goodbye to Enron. Her Indoors aka Akshata Murthy is alleged to be a  non-dom [ non-domiciled ] in spite of living next door to Her Majesty's Prime Minister. Of course it is all legal or, realistically never going to be prosecuted. If your face fits you get away with all sorts. NB The previous Treasurer of the Conservative Party bought his way in using hefty bungs & staying out of prison. See e.g. #New Tory Treasurer is Director of 7 Companies With Overdue Accounts. The current one is a Pakistani, Malik Karim a greed driven chancer - see Tory treasurer 'to make a fortune from the sale of LV to US private equity firm' ex Daily Mail.

 

 

Errors & omissions, broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.
 
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Updated on 21/04/2022 09:53