Conservatives’ bad tax idea
Accoding to The Daily Telegraph today and also covered by Guido Fawkes' blog; The Conservatives are working on a plan where employees pay will automatically have any income taxes etc automatically deducted by their bank, rather than the responsibilty falling on their employer as it does now under the PAYE system. The 'selling point' is that "The administrative burden on businesses, especially small businesses, should be significantly reduced".
Now, speaking as someone in small business, payroll isn't any particular headache; for our 7-or so staff we spend about 0.5 man-hours per week processing pay; of which very little is actually involved in calculating tax (our payroll software does that automatically. We spend an hour here and there (up to say 8 man-hours in a year) sorting out any problems that arise with HMRC, inputting new tax codes etc. It generally wouldn't be any quicker or easier to do without deducting tax.
The other implications of the government having direct access to one's bank accounts are rather worrying*. I forsee situation where tax disputes are 'resolved' by the disputed monies being drawn directly and instantly, leaving the person in question skint while trying to prove their tax case to an uncaring HMRC who already hold the money anyway! No doubt this is where mch of the '£1bn' of increased government revenues under the scheme would come from.
Personally I'd rather have a little bit of extra bureacracy than the ever-creeping increasingly powerful state having a direct line to my bank, and thats even speaking as a proposed 'beneficiary' of this scheme.
*This already happens; people have had their bank accounts frozen or drained by the government pendng tax or criminal investigations, leaving them with no funds to pay for legal representation in the cases in question. Institutionalising government access to bank accounts can only make this situation worse.
