Tax gap

The same number of the Guardian mentioned at the end of the post at reference 1, also ran a couple of pieces on all the tax dodging by all the men and women in the street, the great British public, rather than by a few fat cats salting away their ill-gotten wealth in places like Jersey and the Virgin Islands.

The argument is that around 5% or £35bn worth of tax does not get paid every year - something more than half of this being down to small businesses - and that HMRC would get a very good return on its investment if it poured some money back into enforcement - money stripped out by all the years of the Tories cutting the costs of government.

Bing seems to know all about it as a very simple search term pulled up reference 2, the top of which is snapped above. I have yet to drill into how much more HMRC know about the 5%, but will Labour have the nerve to grasp this particular nettle if and when they get back in?

Have they got stomach for everybody knowing someone who has been pulled up for evasion by the tax man? All that banging on in golf club bars about all those commies who have sneaked into the Labour Party?

PS: in which connection it is unfortunate for the Labour Party that Angela Rayner's tax affairs are in the spot light. From where I associate to a senior colleague at Orphanage Road - then an outpost of the Department of Employment, then headquartered in St. James' Square - who said that one should pay what is due. Leave the policy wonks to worry about equity and morality. Which I have always thought was good enough for me, good enough for the man in the street, but I am not sure that it is good enough for someone who chooses to be in the public eye.

The same colleague who supplied me with an old copy of the department's Establishments Code, which explained, inter alia, all about the marriage gratuity payable to women who were obliged to leave the service because they had got married. 

Rather different, another colleague supplied me with a handsomely made wooden slide rule, not quite so old, snapped above. It does come out from time to time, but not, I have to admit, very often. Needs a bit of TLC to bring it up to coffee table standard.

Those who are good at puzzles may be able to work out how to use it from these two snaps. In any event, a fitting pendant to my once state of the art plastic slide rule from Thornton, which lives near by. 

While the cylindrical slide rule that I also once owned fell by the wayside a long time ago. I don't think I ever really got on with it and never had any real need for the sort of precision that it offered. Something like the snap above and I am not even going to try to work out how it might have worked.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/sheep-leg.html.

Reference 2: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/1-tax-gaps-summary.