I usually attend the Payroll World Spring update conference every year but after a sales call from PW a few weeks earlier and being informed that MP and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke would be in attendance I decided to go to the Autumn update conference for the first time.
I wrote to David Gauke, my MP, in September last year and blogged about it here. I wanted to know his opinion on Real Time Information (RTI) and if he shared my view that it was simply a stepping stone to Centralised Deductions. He ignored my questions and wrote back that he’d written to Mr Bigshot at HMRC for more information and then he later forwarded the letter he received back from Mr Bigshot.
Well, it turns out after hearing him speak at Payroll World that RTI WAS ALL HIS IDEA, it’s true, that’s what he said, it was all his idea when he became shadow chancellor he wanted to modernise the PAYE system. Well I’ll go t’foot of our stairs.
He also bigged up the scheme quoting some carefully selected statistics, like 91% of employers surveyed said Payroll End of Year takes less time. Well of course it takes less time. End of month routines take exponentially more time, I wonder how many employers pointed that out in the survey, 100% surely.
RTI is better for government because they get tax more quickly and it is being used live now for the new Universal Credit piloted in the North East of England. He stated yet again the RTI was designed specifically for the purpose of introducing Universal credit.
He warned us that although they’ve been very kind and not fined us for late filing or late payments in the first year, 2014 will see the new penalty regime. I’m sure I could see him salivating at the prospect of vastly more tax take in the form of penalties, although he claimed they didn’t want to pay down the deficit with penalty money.
He said using Intelligent Automation Technology (IAT) from April 2014 HMRC expect to recover an extra £280,000,000 from removing errors and fraud. Sounds like something one Mr Snowden might leak to the Guardian. Then he described the Digital Portal that all individuals in the UK will have on the HMRC website, which will be fully up to date with what taxes HMRC think we’ve paid and what taxes HMRC think we should pay, he didn’t mention an ability in this digital portal for us to inform HMRC how much we are paying and why we are correct, assuming as these people do, the HMRC are correct and we the subjects are thieving scoundrels that lie and cheat and don’t pay our masters what is due.
So I will now speak on behalf of the new subject class, the scoundrella at the Payroll World Autumn update conference 2023, where the new brain implant app explains to us at all times, work to pay the government, pay on time, pay “correctly”, comply.
Anyway, it was good to hear David Gauke’s opinion on the matter and to see that he’s still a tit.
Work, Life and Taxes 