The English Guy's Personal Blog » tax

Taxes, Hands Out

richard — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:30:30 +0000

The government sure are quick about sending you the tax return forms out! You can’t accuse the HM Revenue and Customs of being lazy.

It would have been nice to have got a tax refund, do we get them before the forms? Do I still have a chance of getting one? I doubt it …

PM Brown Did Not Know

richard — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:18:00 +0000

Oh the lamenting can now begin. We have lost our 10p tax rate, to be compensated by the wonderful lowering of the 22p tax rate to the new 20p tax rate. To concrete the issue (and IMHO the gravestone of the Labour party) the PM, Gordon Brown, admitted he’d made mistakes, as the BBC reports:

He told the BBC the government “didn’t cover as well as we should have” losses to low earners without children and pensioners aged 60 to 64.

Mr Brown said he was “listening” and “learning” as prime minister.

Didn’t cover as well? I’ll lose over Â£300 a year! All because I don’t have children – isn’t that a bonus btw? I’m not cluttering the world with yet more humans, not using materials, not adding to the rubbish we all produce, and I get f***ed because of it.

And I would have thought that by the time you’re PM you have stopped learning and should know how to do the job, or have learned advisors to tell you at least!

I hope that Labour lose the local elections tomorrow, badly. Maybe they’ll realise the big mistake they’ve made.

The Gas Guzzler Tax

richard — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:28:44 +0000

Today our esteemed Chancellor, Mr Darling, did basically nothing except what was expected of him. He added tax to a few things, cigarettes, alcohol, blah blah, and then he popped a bit more tax on cars.

Not on hybrids or environmentally friendly cars mind you, like the Prius. But for sedans, family cars, there was a bit of an increase in road tax, and then for the gas guzzlers, the chelsea tractors, there was a big increase in road tax, to Â£950.

But as one news reporter said someone said to him, when you pay Â£30,000-40,000 for a car, what’s Â£950? Good point really. Mr Darling could have gone further and said a couple of grand, and the extra goes to improving our national transport infrastructure, or for electric buses, or something like that, something imaginative and inspiring.

Taking one look at Mr Darling though, shows you a bit of an uninspiring face. Maybe that’s why Mr Brown chose him, because he wasn’t much of a threat to him, like he had been to Mr Blair?