Just when you think they can't get any lower....

'Thousands of struggling families who have been overpaid tax credits in error could face demands for repayment from private debt collectors.

Louise Haigh, the Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, has discovered figures in the House of Commons Library showing that 600,000 people received £700m additional tax credits in error in 2013-14. Although this is less than in previous years, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) appointed a private sector contractor last November to chase debts that the tax authority has previously struggled to recoup through its own inspectors.

David Gauke, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, told Ms Haigh this summer that HMRC seeks to “recover all overpayments of tax credits no matter how they have arisen, as they do with all debts”. This means that debt collectors can ultimately go after claimants who have been overpaid through no fault of their own. '

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a6716391.html

They can sink lower Kizzy, just watch them until that slender overall majority finally disappears.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Does this mean if people have been underpaid, they can hire debt collectors to recover it?

What about this 'tax credit'?

GEORGE OSBORNE insists it is right to cut tax credits for millions of families because the state cannot afford to subsidise the low wages paid by employers – but might the chancellor’s view be distorted by his experience of his family furnishings firm, Osborne & Little Group, of which he owns 15 percent?
The latest annual accounts, filed two weeks ago to Companies House, show that the unnamed highest-paid director – almost certainly his baronet father Sir Peter – enjoyed an inflation-busting 18 percent salary increase to £684,000 from £580,000 a year earlier, despite a flat financial performance. Evidently there is no need for tax credits chez Osborne.
Precisely zero “United Kingdom corporation tax”
Osborne & Little reported a pre-tax profit of £722,000 on turnover of £34m and incurred a corporation tax charge of £179,000. But the accounts for the year to March 2015 show it ended up paying precisely zero “United Kingdom corporation tax” as the company was able to claim for “timing differences” from previous years that offset the £179,000.

In fact, Osborne & Little has not had to pay any UK corporation tax for the last SEVEN years as it has claimed variously for “capital allowances”, “adjustments in respect of prior years” and historic losses – even as the company generated a total of over £200m in sales between April 2008 and March 2015.

Osborne & Little actually received a corporation tax credit of £12,000 in the year to March 2010, and the last time it handed over any corporation tax was for the year ending March 2008. And some wonder why the Treasury’s coffers are running low!'

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/issue-1404/hp-sauce]

That man lives in a parallel universe.

And here is an old video of him advocating tax dodgery! :hehe:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015...?utm_hp_ref=uk

Lucky basts Scots! TS I think you'll be chuffed!

'Gordon Brown, the Labour former prime minister, has said that amendments tabled by the government to the Scotland bill today mean that “the Vow”, the promise of further devolution to Scotland made by the three main UK parties just before the independence referendum, has now been implemented. In a statement he said:
Major Conservative amendments tabled today to the Scotland bill would mean that, if passed into law, the Smith Commission recommendations - which arose from The Vow, signed by the three main UK party leaders in September 2014 - have now been delivered and Scotland can now develop its own social model, including repealing the Tory tax credit cuts.'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...-live#comments

U turn?.....

'George Osborne should abandon his planned cuts to tax credits and look for the £4.4bn in revenue elsewhere, according to the Resolution Foundation.

The thinktank was one of the first to warn of the political damage cuts that tax credits could inflict on the chancellor if he pressed ahead with the timetable set out in the summer budget. It has been looking for an alternative way for the cuts to proceed in order to mitigate the effects and has concluded that there is no effective way of simply tweaking the cuts. It instead proposes changes to taxation thresholds and pensions in an attempt to find the £4.4bn.

The foundation warns that phasing in the cuts would still leave 2.7 million families worse off and only shift the burden towards the end of parliament. It also cautions that transitional arrangements such as only imposing the cuts on new tax credit claimants will save very little and will undermine the universal credit scheme by creating perverse incentives to work.'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...says-thinktank