Interesting Facts

Diesel drivers in the UK are facing a congestion charge in 16 UK cities from 2020. Maarten van den Heuvel -  twitter.com/mvdheuvel (Dubbed the "T tax" (here T stands for toxic), the first cities to receive approval are Birmingham,  Derby, Leeds, Nottingham, London, and Southampton. Cities that are considering clean air zones are Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Hull, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sheffield, and Stoke. Diesel fumes are blamed for 12,000 deaths a year, but many people are accusing councils of using diesel drivers as cash cows.)

The UK is about to introduce a sugar tax on soft drinks, which will add at least 18p a liter to sweet fizzy drinks. (The tax will be levied according to how much sugar is added to a drink. According to the BBC, there will be two bands - one for total sugar content above 5g per 100 millilitres and a second, higher band for the most sugary drinks with more than 8g per 100 millilitres. Analysis by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility suggests they will be levied at 18p and 24p per litre. It is estimated that it will raise around £520m a year, which the government has pledged will be spent on increasing the funding for sport in primary schools. So, does this mean people will drink less sugary pop? Probably not, they'll just have less money to spend on fruit.) The sugar tax has an interesting history:- First they said they wouldn't, then they said they might, now they have: Talk about flip flopping:- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-rules-out-s...

The UK government paid social media giant Facebook 113 times more in taxpayers’ money for advertising than Facebook paid in corporation tax in the UK. (Government departments spent £489,329 in the 2014-15 fiscal year for advertising on Facebook, who only coughed up £4,327 in corporation tax. They only had to pay such a tiny amount because they recorded a £28.5million loss in the UK, but at the same time they handed staff £35million in share bonuses. Increasingly it seems that the job of governments is to be cleverer than corporations, but I want to know the answer to one question, "What on earth were they advertising?")

Drivers in the UK will no longer have to display a tax disc on their car windscreens. (Motorists will still have to pay tax on their vehicles, but cameras will read a registration plate and check it on a database of cars that have tax, insurance and an MOT.   People who collect tax discs will be gutted.)

According to insurance company Prudential, a British man will typically have earned £1 million by the age of 51 during his working life but a woman will have to wait until her 70th birthday to do the same. (By the time the average worker has earned their first million they will have paid around £123,300 in tax and £93,200 in national insurance. If I'm meant to have earned a million by the time I'm 70, I'd better get myself a better paid job.)

The taxman looks set to be granted the right to break the speed limit in the UK. (At present only the emergency services; police, ambulance and fire, are allowed to break the speed limit, but under new rules other groups will be included: bomb disposal units, the blood transfusion service and mountain and mine rescue teams, oh and the aforementioned taxman.  The taxman - the fourth emergency service.)

Major cigarette firms in the UK have been accused of fueling black market in smuggled tobacco. (The accusation is that UK tobacco manufacturers turn a blind eye to the avoidance of UK tax by supplying more of their products to European countries than the legitimate market in those countries could possibly require. The “high-risk” oversupply countries included the Benelux nations – Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and of course Spain, where many Britons go on holiday. Just one “white van man” bringing back a single load of tobacco is estimated to cost the Exchequer £60,000 in lost revenue. He probably tells customs it's for "personal use".)

According to a report from parliament's public spending watchdog, the failed NHS (National Health Service) patient record system has so far cost the British taxpayer nearly £10bn (I say "so far" because the final bill, for what would have been the world's largest civilian computer system, is likely to be several hundreds of millions of pounds higher, it has been described as "the biggest IT failure ever seen".   Nice use of the superlative.  I wonder if the British taxpayer can sue?)

Today - 30th May 2013 is Tax Freedom Day in the UK. The day when you've actually earned enough to pay tax, NI contributions etc, and are now working for yourself. (Unless you are Starbucks, Amazon, Apple or Google of course. In which case, every day is tax freedom day.)

The Queen has received a £5m pay rise from the British taxpayer. (Under a new payment system, called the sovereign grant, which replaces the old funding system of the civil list and grants-in-aid, the Queen now receives 15% of the profits from the Crown Estate. Between 2011 and 2012 the Crown Estate made a profit of £240.2m. Just remember - We're all in this together.)

The British Government spends £18bn more on Wales every year than it gets back in tax. (This works out at £6,008 per head of the Welsh population.) Source

UK taxpayers fork out over £17 million a year to police football matches. (Presently, clubs are responsible for the costs of policing in and immediately around stadiums, but extra police have to be deployed to prevent violence and disorder in the surrounding area, in town centres and on public transport.  The Football League says that fans pay taxes to cover police costs, and should not 'pay twice for policing'. Maybe we should all get to vote on what our taxes get spent on.) Source - The Wright Stuff and Daily Mail

According to statistics released by the Department for Work and Pensions, in the year up until April 2012, over 7,000 people in the UK claimed sickness benefit because they are too fat to work. (In 2012 it cost taxpayers around £30 million a year.  Which might seem a lot, but it's just a drop in the ocean when weighed against the total bill for obesity, which costs the taxpayer more than £5 billion a year, in benefits, expensive healthcare, equipment and carers.)

According to HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs) 850,000 Brits have been fined £100 each for filing their self assessment tax return late. ( 9.6m people did file their tax return on time this year, but penalties can still apply if a mistake was made, and people can be fined even if there was no tax to pay or if any tax due has been paid. Wait!  It doesn't stop there: Anyone who has still not filed a return and paid all the tax due faces further fines of £10 a day after the end of April. After another three months there is a further penalty of 5pc of the tax due, with a minimum of £300 – a penalty that is repeated after a further nine months. That's a nice little earner.)

Apple  paid less than 2% tax on profit made outside the United States last year. (They paid $713m (£445m) in overseas corporation tax on foreign profits of $36.87bn (£23bn) in the year to the end of September. That translates as a tax rate of 1.9%, compared to a headline corporation tax rate of 35% in the US and 24% in the UK.   Executives from Google, Amazon and Starbucks will be hauled before the Commons public accounts committee in the UK on Monday 5th November 2012.  They will be asked to explain why they pay so little tax to the exchequer. Analysis by the Guardian found that Google, Amazon, Starbucks and Facebook have paid just £30m in tax over the past four years despite generating more than £3.1bn in sales.)

I pay more tax in the UK than Starbucks! (According to the Independent newspaper, the coffee chain Starbucks has not paid any tax in Britain since 2009.  UK sales since 2009 amount to around  £ 1.2 bn, but their UK tax bill was  £ 0.  Yes,  £ 0. I don't even live in the UK, but my little NFP organisation pays more tax than they do.  Star*ucks! (Sorry, but it makes me livid.))

According to economist James Henry financial assets held offshore round the world are worth “at least” $21tn and perhaps as much as $32tn. (He calculated that £6.3trillion of these assets are owned by just 92,000 people – or 0.001 per cent of the world’s population. The international campaign group Tax Justice Network, which commissioned the research estimates that around $250billion is lost in taxes each year by governments worldwide as a result of the wealthiest individuals holding their assets offshore.) Source

According to a review published in the British Medical Journal, adding 17.5% VAT to unhealthy foods in Britain could cut up to 2,700 heart disease deaths a year. (One US study showed a 35% increase in the price of sugar sweetened drinks – working out at 28p per drink – in a canteen led to a 26 per cent decline in sales. Dr Oliver Mytton and colleagues at Oxford University said so called fat taxes would need to be at least 20 per cent to have a meaningful effect on population health. In the past year, Denmark has introduced a fat tax, Hungary a junk food tax and France a tax on sweetened drinks. Other countries,  notably Ireland, are also considering such taxes. I want to know why they're not considering a champagne tax or caviar tax.) Source

According to figures published by the Treasury, 6% of people in the UK earning more than £10million a year hand over less than ten per cent of their income to the Treasury. (The worst offenders are the super-rich, people who rake in £10million-plus a year. Just to put it into perspective this all means that some of the richest people in Britain are paying a lower rate of tax than their cleaners.)

According to the National Audit Office, a massive seven-year government programme meant to increase efficiency has cost the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds. (Whitehall departments have spent £1.4 billion over the last seven years in a bid to save £159 million by sharing "back-office" functions such as personnel and procurement.   It would be funny, if it weren't so tragic.)