Tax is boring, but we have to pay it, to fund the NHS and everything else in society. But it’s very complicated. And if you can’t afford a tax consultant, where do you turn?
TaxAid offers a free helpline to help with problems, if you are on a low income. Just call during office hours on weekdays. There is also a helpline for voluntary advisors, to get help for clients. The service is for people on less than £20,000 a year, to ensure you are only paying the right amount.
Tax Help for Older People also offers free help, this time for people over 60 on incomes of less than £20,000 a year. It has over 420 volunteers and a national call centre, and can also help you to pay less tax, if you are on a pension. You can call them, or use their web enquiry form.
If you don’t qualify for free help, Tax Scouts offers affordable low-cost help to do tax returns on your behalf. It offers three services (depending on type of company – dormant, active or VAT-registered). And you are then directed to one of their accredited accountants, to file your tax return to HMRC in 48 hours. You can also use their fixed fee service to sort out tax problems. The site also offers free simple book-keeping tools.
Contact the government website to check your tax code.
Different Types of Tax (simplified)
Tax is complicated in England. We have income tax (some people would like National Insurance merged for simplicity), corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. Plus VAT (for businesses that earn over a certain amount, and it’s also paid on goods like hot foods but not on others like children’s clothing and disability aids).
Although some think that rich people should pay more tax and poor people pay less, others prefer a ‘flat rate tax’ where everyone pays the same rate. This saves a huge amount of administration money – Hungary and Romania for example pay flat tax of around 16% at time of writing. Others want taxes on polluters and junk food companies, to deter (and possibly tax subsidies on organic foods for instance).
How Serious is Tax Evasion in England?
Very. And what’s really irking is that while the media go after people on benefits (usually those who don’t claim are the most vulnerable in society), there is more tax evasion than benefit cheats by numbers.
Some companies legally ‘avoid tax’ by moving companies abroad (for instance, a major book store online paid no corporation tax in 2021, despite huge profits). That tax could go into funding the NHS or building affordable housing (on brownfield land). Or providing free dental appointments, to clear the backlog since the pandemic.
It’s not so easy these days for companies or individuals to move their money to ‘tax havens’ due to country-by-country reporting and a worldwide minimum corporate tax. Experts say that the main issue now is that UK banks don’t have to legally report tax evasion to HMRC and Companies House. It’s estimated that around £5 billion could be claimed, if governments pulled their socks up, and got the money back. That’s way more than the money ‘claimed’ say by getting rid of Winter Fuel Allowance.
We couldn’t find a UK list. But a US site (and dollars are pretty similar in value these days) suggests things that a government could do with £5 billion claimed back from tax evasion:
- Provide medical care for 1.5 million people
- Double national spending on clean energy
- Invest 60% in environmental/nature protection
- Increase school spending by 30%
- Double heating allowances for low-income households
- Double funding for mental health issues
