Comment - Land Value Tax Campaign

U-turn on multinational company tax changes

Written on 22 July 2008. Posted in Taxation.

Yet again, the British government is in trouble with tax. The Daily Telegraph business section reported today (22 July 2008) that… “in a letter to the CBI, the Treasury apparently relented on its plans to levy new taxes on multinational companies. With two already having opted to move their headquarters away from the UK and more threatening to follow suit, the business lobby’s...

UK Government budget deficit growing

Written on 20 July 2008. Posted in Politics.

Figures for June show that the UK’s budget deficit has now reached the point that the Labour government will have to breach its own self-imposed borrowing rules. Naturally this has invited plenty of comment, most of it slightly off the point. On the right, it is suggested that too high a proportion of GDP is in the public sector and that cuts are needed. Nobody these days is arguing that taxes...

UK unemployment rising and set for worse

Written on 18 July 2008. Posted in Economics.

Some 15,500 people lost their jobs in June, according to the Office for National Statistics. It is the biggest increase since 1992, and means 45,000 people have already lost their jobs since the start of the year. Economists warn of worse to come, as the economy slows sharply in the coming months and possibly dips into recession at least as bad as that of the early 1990s. Vicky Redwood of Capital...

Credit crisis explained in pictures

Written on 18 July 2008. Posted in Banking.

For an explanation of how the present credit crisis originated, click on this link. Mortgages were being packaged, good and bad together, and sold on to investors, just as a shifty street market trader might sell boxes of apples with the good ones on top and rotten ones underneath. It has to be said that a lot of these “investors” were being remarkably stupid or naive not to check to...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Written on 13 July 2008. Posted in Economics.

In early July, we told our visitors to expect to hear more about the US mortage organisations Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As it is turning out, there is plenty to hear as the financial disaster unfolds. In case you are wondering what these organisations are, information on the companies’ own websites explains…

The Swedish Tax Gap

Written on 11 July 2008. Posted in Taxation.

According to the Swedish taxation board, Skatteverket, there is a large gap between the amount that it believes it should be collecting and what it actually manages to gather in, amounting to 5% of the gross national product. It is referred to as the Tax Gap. As nearly everywhere else, most of the tax is levied through charges on labour, goods and services. Skatteverket states that “The tax...

South Africa’s disputed land

Written on 10 July 2008. Posted in General.

Land reform in South Africa was discussed in a recent BBC programme “Crossing Continents – South Africa’s Promised Land:” It investigated the South African government’s controversial attempts to speed up the process of land reform. During the colonial and apartheid periods, ancestral land was taken over by white farmers. In an attempt to redress the injustice, new laws...

EU condemns British budget deficit

Written on 10 July 2008. Posted in Politics.

An article in the Daily Telegraph today (10 July) reported that “Britain’s economic difficulties came to attention at a meeting of European Union finance ministers, who have voted to condemn Britain for flagrant breach of the Maastricht spending rules, irked that the UK government has not even tried to keep its budget deficit below the treaty limit of 3pc of national income. By its own...

Taxi tax fiddles and other Swedish difficulties

Written on 8 July 2008. Posted in Taxation.

There was a news piece this morning (8 July) about the problem the Swedish tax authorities are having with getting the right amount of tax out of taxi drives. Yesterday there was a report of the crack-down by Skattverket on restaurants who fiddle their takings; a popular method has been by manipulating their cash registers. So far, over 100 restaurateurs have been convicted and 45 sent to prison. Sweden...

UK economy – no silver lining

Written on 5 July 2008. Posted in Economics.

The news on the UK economy gives no indication of any silver lining to the cloud. All is talk of recession, a house price crash, a falling exchange rate and inflation. The falling exchange rate is more serious than usually acknowledged. A year ago, a Euro cost 71p, whereas now it is nearly 80p. But the Euro itself has also been losing purchasing power, and all these changes will feed through into...

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