Moose on the Loose

A Tax System That Punishes Aspiration

The UK has built a tax system that punishes aspiration. It isn’t a fair ladder. It’s a series of cliff edges: the personal allowance taper that pushes the effective marginal rate to around 60% just above £100,000, the loss of childcare support at the same line, frozen thresholds that pull more ordinary earners into higher bands every year, and student loan repayments stacked on top of income tax for a whole generation of graduates. The message to anyone trying to get on is plain: the harder you work, the less of each extra pound you keep.

Fifteen Years Standing Still

That comes on top of more than fifteen years in which real wages have barely moved. People are working harder than their parents did and falling further behind. A young couple on good salaries can spend a third or more of their income on rent and still see a first home drift out of reach. Energy bills and childcare costs are among the highest in Europe, and council tax goes up every year while bins go uncollected, libraries close and roads fall apart.

Two Incomes, Still Not Enough

A generation ago, one decent wage could raise a family, pay a mortgage and still leave something over. Today two parents both work full time just to keep the lights on, often paying out much of the second salary in childcare so they can go to work at all. Children are raised around shift patterns and commutes, and parents have less time with them than any generation before. Politicians used to talk about the “just about managing” (JAMs). That group has now stopped managing. Families on middle incomes, doing everything right, are putting the weekly shop on credit cards, dipping into savings they no longer have, and cutting back on things their own parents took for granted. When two working parents can’t make ends meet, the problem isn’t the family. It’s the country.

A Generation Locked Out

Young people have been dealt the worst hand of all. They leave university with debts they may never clear, and repayments that act as an extra tax for decades. They pay rents that swallow their wages and see no realistic path to owning a home. Many have concluded that the deal their parents had no longer exists for them. They’re young, mobile and have little to tie them down, so they’re the most likely to go, and the country loses them just as they start contributing.

Taxed for Moving Home

Buying a home in the UK comes with one of the heaviest transaction taxes in the developed world. Stamp duty takes thousands, often tens of thousands, of pounds from buyers before they’ve even moved in, and it has to be paid in cash on top of the deposit. For first time buyers already struggling to save, it’s another barrier in the way. For growing families, it’s a penalty for needing more space. For older people who want to downsize, it’s a reason to stay put, which keeps family homes off the market and pushes prices up for everyone else. The thresholds have been cut rather than raised, so more buyers get caught every year. It’s a tax on moving that stops the housing market working, and in many other countries the same move would cost a fraction of the price.

Not Just the Wealthy Leaving

The debate has focused on the wealthy leaving, and they are leaving. The bigger threat is quieter. It’s the middle earners with portable skills: the nurse, the engineer, the software developer, the electrician, the teacher, the accountant. They don’t need a family office to move. They need a job offer and a visa, and other countries are competing hard to give them both.

Trained Here, Working There

Nowhere is this clearer than in healthcare. Doctors and nurses trained in the UK, at great cost to the taxpayer, are leaving in large numbers for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Gulf, where they’re offered better pay, better conditions and a better work life balance. The UK pays to train them, another country gets the benefit, and the NHS they leave behind tries to fill the gaps with expensive agency staff and recruitment from abroad.

Small Businesses Squeezed Out

The people who create jobs are being squeezed too. Small businesses have been hit by rises in employer National Insurance, crippling business rates and ever growing red tape. Every extra cost makes it harder to hire, harder to expand and harder to keep going at all. High streets are emptying, shops and pubs are closing, and many owners are asking why they bother. When job creators give up, the jobs go with them.

Punished for Building Something to Pass On

Family farms and family businesses have been hit by changes to inheritance tax that many see as a punishment for building something over generations. Farmers who are asset rich but cash poor fear their children will have to sell land just to pay the tax bill. Business owners who spent their lives building something to hand down now face the same question. The message is that building something to last in the UK is no longer rewarded.

A Potentially Better Life Abroad

And it isn’t only about money. For many people, life abroad offers a potentially better quality of life, often at a lower cost. Housing that a normal salary can actually buy. Lower bills and a lower cost of living. Better weather, better food, more time outdoors and a healthier pace of life. Healthcare you can get an appointment for. Trains that run on time at a fair price. Streets that feel safe at night. Communities where the basics work and people have time for their families.

Public Services Falling Apart

Compare that with what many people now feel at home. Waiting weeks for a GP and months or years for treatment. NHS dentistry so hard to find that whole areas have become dental deserts, and some people have been driven to pulling their own teeth. Rivers and beaches polluted with sewage while water company bosses collect bonuses. Potholed roads, cancelled trains and fares that rise every year.

Crime Without Consequence

Shoplifting is treated as routine, phones are snatched on city streets, burglaries go unsolved, and there’s a widespread sense that reporting a crime rarely leads anywhere. People no longer trust that the police will come or that the courts will act. When feeling safe becomes something you have to move abroad to find, something has gone badly wrong.

One Rule for Some

Trust in fairness has broken down too. Many people now believe there’s one rule for some and another rule for everyone else. They see police turning up at people’s homes over social media posts while burglaries and shoplifting go uninvestigated. They see protests policed differently depending on who’s protesting. Whether or not every case is what it seems, the perception of two tier justice has taken hold, and a country where people feel they can’t speak freely, or can’t expect equal treatment under the law, is a country people start to leave.

The Hidden Cost of Net Zero

Households are also paying for political decisions they never got a proper say on. Net zero targets are set in Westminster, but the cost lands on ordinary families through green levies on energy bills, pressure to replace boilers and cars they can’t afford, and industries closing or moving overseas along with the jobs. The goal may be shared, but the burden isn’t. Working people carry it, while those who set the policy are well insulated from its cost.

Failed by Every Party

Behind it all sits a governing class that has failed whichever party holds office. Governments change, but the results don’t. Growth stays flat, services decline, taxes rise, and huge sums are wasted on projects like HS2 that run years late and billions over budget. Promises on immigration, housing and the NHS are made at every election and broken by the next. Ministers and senior civil servants repeat the same failures and never pay the price for them. People have stopped believing that voting changes anything, and when they stop believing in the system, those who can leave, do.

Who Picks Up the Bill?

The NHS, schools, social care, welfare and the state pension are all funded by people in work today, and a small share of taxpayers already carries a very large share of income tax. Every skilled earner who leaves takes their contribution with them. The cost doesn’t disappear. It falls on those who can’t leave.

Lower Earners Left Carrying the Load

That’s the cruel part. The people with the least room to move pay the highest price. Lower earners, many in essential jobs that can’t be done from abroad, face higher taxes on a shrinking base, frozen thresholds eating into tight pay packets, longer waits, weaker public services and a welfare safety net under growing strain. Families already choosing between heating and eating will be asked to carry more, not less.

Pensioners Betrayed

Pensioners are just as exposed. The UK state pension is already one of the least generous in the developed world compared with average earnings, and millions who worked all their lives live on a sum that barely covers the essentials. The triple lock protects it only while there’s a working population willing and able to fund it. An ageing country that drives out its working age taxpayers is quietly breaking the promise it made to the people who built it.

Moving the Goalposts

Those still working toward retirement can’t plan either. The state pension age keeps rising, so people must work longer before they receive what they paid in for. Every Budget brings fresh speculation about raids on private pensions and tax free lump sums, so savers can’t trust that the rules will still be the same when they retire. When people can’t rely on the promises made about their own old age, they look for a country where they can.

Losing Your Home to Pay for Care

And at the very end of life, social care can still force people to sell the family home to pay for it. People who worked, saved and paid their taxes for decades watch everything they built disappear on care bills, while the reform promised by government after government never arrives. It’s one more reason people feel that doing the right thing in the UK no longer pays.

A Poorer Country for Everyone

This isn’t about sympathy for the rich. A country that drives out the people who pay the most doesn’t become fairer. Everyone who stays ends up poorer, and the poorest are hit hardest. A country can survive losing a few billionaires. It can’t survive steadily losing its skilled middle, its young, its doctors and its job creators while its low paid and its elderly are left to cover the gap.

UK Citizens, the New Migrants

The irony is hard to miss. A country that spends so much political energy arguing about migration is turning its own citizens into migrants. UK workers are becoming the skilled legal migrants other countries are glad to welcome, because home has made staying the less rational choice.

Give People a Reason to Stay

A country that wants to protect its families, its young, its low paid, its vulnerable and its elderly has to give people a reason to stay: fair taxes, wages that rise, homes people can afford, a stamp duty system that lets people move, a single income that can once again support a family, support for those who build businesses, public services that work, safe streets, equal justice, the freedom to speak, a secure retirement and leaders who deliver. At the moment the UK is making it easier to leave than to aspire, and it’s the people with the least who will be left holding the bill.

If Richard O’Dwyer faces the possibility of facing extradition to the US, which is totally unreasonable with draconian bias extradition acts,

Then so should GOOGLE !

Google links to multiple pirate websites and sites with links to these. Even more so Google links to thousands of websites delivering malicious viruses and spyware threatening internet security of individuals, companies and organisations.

Google should be more accountable, as they are abusing & acting irresponsibly by operating & profiting from a position of trust !

Yet the US Government want to persecute and bully an individual(s) worldwide & even more so outside their own jurisdiction.

In my opinion, there has to be an independent regulatory body. Stephen Blandford Ryman & Shipleys LLP – Insolvency Practitioners – www.shipleys.com, should take note.

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Article by Rachael Singh At Accountancy Age – 21 Dec 2011

http://www.accountancyage.com/aa/news/2134111/ed-davey-calls-single-insolvency-regulator
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Ed Davey MP calls for single insolvency regulator

Edward Davey MP

INSOLVENCY MINISTER Ed Davey has called for a single regulator of the profession in a speech to parliament.

The suggestion was made following a recent consultation on reforms to the regulation of insolvency practitioners, based on an Office of Fair Trading investigation into the industry.

Currently there are nine professional bodies including ICAEW, ACCA, CIPFA, ICAS and CIMA that regulate and licence practitioners. However, the Insolvency Service sits above all the licensing bodies and regulates the professional bodies.

Under planned changes there could be a single regulator of all practitioners.

“The present regulatory regime is a complex one involving a number of different regulators,” he said.

“…Responses to the consultation and subsequent discussions I have held with stakeholders have indicated strong support for an independent single regulator for insolvency practitioners as an effective and efficient way of achieving these aims.

Insolvency trade body R3, which represents more than 90% of UK’s practitioners, welcomed the move.

“The insolvency profession looks forward to working with the minster to consider an independent single regulator while strengthening and simplifying processes for handling complaints,” said R3 president Frances Coulson.

“We share the Minister’s aim to ensure the regulatory regime is transparent, consistent, accessible, independent and accountable.”

However, Coulson added overall the UK insolvency regime did not need radical reform.

Davey also announced he would remove the Insolvency Service‘s role as both licenser and regulator of practitioners as soon as possible.

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Article By Allan Urry At BBC File on 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11514708
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Insolvency practitioners poorly regulated, says expert

Stephen Hunt‘s work offers a rare insight into the darker side of insolvency.

With more than 15 years experience as an insolvency practitioner, he makes a living investigating those accused of letting the profession down.

“We have about 500 insolvencies where we’re appointed specifically to investigate or review the conduct of the previous insolvency practitioner,” he says.

“It’s a lot. There’s a steady flow of work which requires investigating.”

When firms go bust it is the insolvency practitioner‘s job to get the best price for the creditors from the remaining assets through the administration process, or try to get returns if a company is forced into liquidation.

These can be emotional, highly charged affairs, with insolvency practitioners having to act decisively in complex situations amid angry creditors.

Three frauds

To hear more on this story listen to File on 4 on Radio 4 today at 2000 or listen again on the iPlayer

In this maelstrom, there is no shortage of opportunities for insolvency practitioners to hide malpractice, according to Mr Hunt.

And although there are eight different governing bodies in the UK looking into allegations of malpractice, the system of self-regulation is ineffective and wide open to exploitation, he maintains.

During one recent investigation, “one of the insolvency practitioners created a spreadsheet called, ‘the randomised time generator’,” Mr Hunt recalls.

“He typed in how much money he wanted and it created fake time entries, so he could charge about £500,000 on that spreadsheet – which was entirely fake time.”

Insolvency Practitioner Stephen Hunt Investigator Stephen Hunt says the regulation of insolvency practitioners is ineffective.

In another case, Mr Hunt discovered how three people from the same firm were fraudulently siphoning cash.

“The partner was stealing money. Unbeknown to him the manager was stealing different money and unbeknown to both of them the junior person was stealing cash,” he says.

“It was only when we investigated that we found contradictory documents that made us realise there were actually three frauds and not one.”

A recent report from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) backs up some of Mr Hunt’s observations. It found that those who complained about the conduct of insolvency practitioners had little confidence in the regulatory bodies.

“We interviewed over 1,000 unsecured creditors and of those who had complained, the vast majority felt the outcome of the complaint process and the way it was considered were unreasonable,” says OFT project director David Stallibrass.

And even those within the business had concerns.

“We were surprised to find that 41% of insolvency practitioners said that their own regulators did not deal effectively with rogues in the profession,” Mr Stallibrass adds.

“Start Quote

41% of insolvency practitioners said that their own regulators did not deal effectively with rogues in the profession”

David Stallibrass Office of Fair Trading

Vernon Soare, who speaks for the largest of the regulatory bodies, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, questions some of the methodology used for the OFT survey.

“Insolvency is an area where you will not satisfy everybody’s expectations,” he says.

“The OFT didn’t come to us to see how any of the complaints were handled. A lot of the issues are a matter of judgement.”

Lower valuation

While Mr Hunt has seen some extreme cases of criminal fraud, complaints also arise because of negligence and incompetence and the failure of insolvency practitioners to ensure all parties are treated fairly.

The OFT report found the group most vulnerable to unfairness was that comprising unsecured creditors, who have no automatic right of repayment.

In a landmark case in July, a judge decided to tear up an agreement put together by administrators involved in the case of the landlord of a boutique shopping centre in Liverpool.

It involved a fashion brand called Miss Sixty, which was run by a company called Sixty UK, pulling out of a long-term lease on two shops they rented at the city’s Met Quarter precinct.

A court found the administrators had set aside guarantees drawn up between the landlord and Sixty UK’s Italian parent company and put forward an offer for the surrender of the lease that was much lower than an independent valuation suggested.

The judge in the case said the documentary evidence put before him painted a “disquieting” picture of administrators who appeared to have, “abdicated their responsibilities as office holders”.

“Insolvency practitioners have a duty of care, to treat all creditors fairly in the same way they have to follow the insolvency rules,” the landlord’s lawyer Caroline Howard points out. “They didn’t appear to do any of that.”

Ms Howard says it looks as though the administrators were simply following the instructions of the parent company in Italy, and that this resulted in an “unfair manipulation of the system”.

The two insolvency practitioners who were the administrators in the Miss Sixty case say they had acted on legal advice throughout, but they were not prepared to comment further because of a preliminary investigation by their governing body.

The OFT has recommended far reaching reforms of the regulatory regime to the government, which is expected to respond by the end of the month.

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Article by By Richard Tyler At The Guardian – 21 Dec 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8971389/Insolvency-profession-told-to-tackle-excessive-fees.html
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Insolvency profession told to tackle excessive fees

A Government review has concluded the profession should be given a chance to improve before it loses its ability to self regulate

Ed Davey, the BIS minister, said creditors expected more from insolvency professionals

The insolvency profession must tackle practitioners charging excessive fees and poor complaint handling or lose its system of self regulation, the Government has said.

A year long review has found the insolvency regime working “reasonably well” but that “a great deal more could be done to improve [its] effectiveness”, Ed Davey, the Business Department minister, has said.

The department intervened after receiving evidence from the Office of Fair Trading that suggests that unsecured creditors “do not always get the returns they might expect”.

“I believe that confidence in the insolvency regulatory regime plays a vital role in ensuring that markets operate fairly and efficiently, by ensuring that in the event of insolvency as much is fairly returned to those extending credit as is possible,” said Mr Davey.

He favours a single regulator to replace the nine professional bodies that regulate and license practitioners, but has given the profession time to get its own act in order to avoid “such significant change”.
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Insolvency Service lets ‘serious’ cases go

But the Government will focus on improving “handling complaints, including on excessive fee charging, and achieving consistent and transparent sanctions”.

Vernon Soare, a director at the Institute of Accountants in England and Wales, said: “The rise in insolvencies during the recession put insolvency practitioners under the spotlight so it is little wonder the profession has come under closer scrutiny.

“However, the results of the Government consultation reveals a system that works, which reflects a profession that does a good job often in difficult circumstances. In the current climate, we don’t believe the time and cost associated with establishing a new single regulator is feasible.”

The Insolvency Services regulates the professional bodies.

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Stephen Blandford Ryman & Shipleys LLP – Insolvency Practitioners – www.shipleys.com

In my opinion, there has to be an independent regulatory body. Stephen Blandford Ryman & Shipleys LLP – Insolvency Practitioners – www.shipleys.com, should take note. I will take complaints to the highest level & maximum extend of the law and media visibility both online & offline.
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Oh dear, yet again another government thinks that raising the retirement age is a good thing / plan. No matter how any in term government dress it up or spin it, it is effectively a money saving exercise. “Work Till You Drop” – I have no intention to, it’s called having a life.

The further you are from retirement, the more likely you can presume the retirement age goalposts will change (more likely unfavourably increase), consequently don’t think they can depend entirely on receiving a suitable pension when the critical age is reached.

Governments probably prefer we all pass away the first day after retirement to they don’t have to pay a full pension. In my opinion like when the previous age rise was introduced this should only be applied to the new workforce entering new age 16 entrants, not existing ones. For those who have saved in personal pension schemes to have the option of retiring earlier it is a double whammy for them also & can feel justifiably aggrieved also.

I have lost faith in personal pension plans as I don’t think the 25% lump sum a Paltry annuity with the rest of the fund is an attractive enough proposition. If a 100% lump sum was available then would be a more attractive incentive to really enjoy a hard earned retirement. And even leave a decent inheritance to loved ones. Nobody knows how long they will live beyond retirement age.

Unfortunately not everyone has disposable income to contribute to such a personal pension scheme & most folk don’t even consider this at early ages of employment.

Any Government have a weak argument proclaiming that people live longer. Yes they may do on average – but the quality of life, capabilities & your physical health / fitness is not better.

Mid Life Retirement Option

Perhaps there should be a mid life retirement option period where work is resumed afterwards & whatever period up to say 5 years is bolted onto an individuals retirement age before they are in receipt of a pension? At least most will be more fit & able to tour the world, walk the wall of china, complete the Inca trail, quality time with their children or family or whatever their heart / dreams desires.

Perhaps there will come a day where state pensions is not even viable option & eventually abolished, & alternative options need to be seeked & implemented.

Maybe one day the conspiracy theory you see in Sci Fi novels like “Logan’s Run” will be of compulsory euthanasia at a fixed age not only to curb population explosion but to address where they are simply not enough funds to look after the elderly or support pension funds.

Life has a habit these days of imitating art and we maybe already live in an Orwellian society. When money runs out & natural resources dwindle that is how it might be. On theflip side , nature will always be one step ahead of us… we may create a cure for all cancers, but another disease will come along to control the numbers.

We cannot predict.

Retirement Pension Guide

Remember Uncle Sam, when you point your finger across the Atlantic pond at the United Kingdom, there are 3 fingers on your hand pointing straight back you!

Foxtrot Oscar to President “Dropped A Bollock” Obama & US Congress with their Kangaroo court style cheap shot comments yesterday. Isn’t it ironic that only now do they speak about the environment & coming to the table, when the current oil spill (a horrible tragedy it is) is probably a drop in the ocean compared to the overall damage to the environment a his gas guzzling nation has inflicted on the earth … Karma? – By Me

“If President “Dropped A Bollock” Obama can break off from crafting his next anti-British Petroleum soundbite, it might be worth him checking out the ownership structure of BP and pausing for a moment. It appears that 39% of the shares in the company are American owned (25% by U.S. pension funds and 14% by individual American investors). According to BP’s figures, 40% of the stock is owned in the U.K.” – By Iain Martin

Barack Obama The Power Of Change DVD