"Roland Perry" wrote in message

In message , at 18:05:57 on
Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Recliner remarked:
The German word is "Freie Berufe", the adjetive or adverb
"freiberuflich". This is of relevance for VAT -- those who are
working "freiberuflich" don't pay VAT. In some professions, one can
chose if one works "freiberuflich" or as commercially as a
business. In the latter case, one has to pay VAT, or rather, charge
VAT to one's customers.

In Britain, you don't get the choice if "taxable supplies" (revenue)
exceed £67k.

I wonder if an MP has to take account of the monies paid to him to run
his office, as a "taxable supply", or whether they are entirely exempt
from the VAT system.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'll assume all the "expenses" are valid
ones.

Looking down the list and picking the first person as my random
example: Ms Diane Abbott claimed around £131k, *none* of which was
for a second home. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8044207.stm

If they ran their offices as self-employed businesses, they would, but I
don't doubt that they exempted themselves (not to save money, but just
to simplify their paperwork). In fact, I don't know if the money for
things like staff costs isn't paid directly to the staff, rather than
via the MP's books.

I know that when I invoice my customers, I have to charge VAT even on
things like reimbursed public transport fares that are not themselves
subject to VAT. Of course, it's all a waste of time, as the money I
charge my customers just moves in a loop: they pay me, I pass it on to
HMRC, and my customers claim it back from HMRC. And, of course, from
time to time the VAT people audit me, even though any errors I might
have made would simply cancel out. So, lots of time and effort incurred
by all concerned, for zero net revenue to HMG.

In message , at 19:47:46 on
Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Recliner remarked:
Looking down the list and picking the first person as my random
example: Ms Diane Abbott claimed around £131k, *none* of which was
for a second home. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8044207.stm

If they ran their offices as self-employed businesses, they would, but I
don't doubt that they exempted themselves (not to save money, but just
to simplify their paperwork). In fact, I don't know if the money for
things like staff costs isn't paid directly to the staff, rather than
via the MP's books.

One of the proposed changes is that the staff will be paid direct from
Westminster. (Which sounds to me like something that will require a
whole new layer of admin, so they can be assured what hours those people
have actually worked).
--
Roland Perry

Tony Polson wrote:
Mizter T wrote:
That said, I am in favour (I think!) of the massively expensive
Crossrail project... for a long time I didn't really have any properly
considered thoughts on it because I thought it was unlikely to ever
happen, but it seems it is now happening (as ever there's some
uncertainty of course). Though Crossrail won't facilitate long-
distance commuting per-se directly, but inevitably that will be a side-
effect.


An article I read a few years ago suggested that Crossrail would enable
the affluent professionals who are living to the west of London to get
to their highly paid jobs in the City with ease, and the poorer people
from the East End to get to their (not much more than) minimum wage jobs
in the West End in less time than now. :-(


I should just add that I'm not anti-professional people (whatever that
means!), nor anti-commuting as such. I certainly appreciate the
complex and multi-layered reasoning at play behind the decision of
people to do more lengthy commutes. Though I (obviously) do take some
issue with long-distance daily commuting (FSVO "long-distance", which
is of course debatable!).


Yes, I suppose I opened up a can of worms. ;-)


And sometimes I think I might implode under the mass of my own
internal contradictions... and then just propose that everyone should
go off and live off the land, being crofters and woodsmen, where the
big journey is into the next town but one! But the genie of travel is
of course out of the bottle.


We cannot hope to address climate change without taking a good hard look
at transport.

But I am pleased to report that sales of videoconferencing systems are
holding up well in spite of the recession. Companies are at last
beginning to see it as a genuine alternative to expensive and time
consuming travelling to meetings.

I have no doubt academia will lag years behind commerce, with the usual
underworked scientists insisting (to the few who listen) that the
scientific value of face to face networking far exceeds the economic and
environmental cost of their time and travel to and from the meetings. Of
course these are the same guys who will be lecturing us on changing our
travel habits, indeed our whole way of life, in the papers they present
at their far-flung and highly repetitive conferences. ;-)

No doubt the pen-pushers and postal clerks with be able to produce video
conferencing without needing anything produced by scientists. They'll
just need to bang the rocks /really/ hard.

I used to be lectured by a scientific colleague who strongly criticised
my use of a car for leisure trips because of the CO2 it emitted. The
same guy was a regular visitor to the Galapagos Islands, often more than
once in a year, and drove over 30,000 business miles a year in a car
with a 2.7 litre V6 that drank petrol like it was going out of fashion.
If he had used a more economical car, such as mine, he would have saved
far more CO2 than all my annual car use emitted, leisure *and* business.

Aren't scientists wonderful.

You lost that argument at some point in the eighteenth century or so, if
not far earlier.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On Jul 13, 8:00*pm, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 19:47:46 on
Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Recliner remarked:

Looking down the list and picking the first person as my random
example: Ms Diane Abbott claimed around £131k, *none* of which was
for a second home.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8044207.stm

If they ran their offices as self-employed businesses, they would, but I
don't doubt that they exempted themselves (not to save money, but just
to simplify their paperwork). In fact, I don't know if the money for
things like staff costs isn't paid directly to the staff, rather than
via the MP's books.

One of the proposed changes is that the staff will be paid direct from
Westminster. (Which sounds to me like something that will require a
whole new layer of admin, so they can be assured what hours those people
have actually worked).

Which is fine by me, if it stops dodgy MPs 'employing' their children
who somehow do all the work whilst they're 300 miles away at
university, and other such scams.

Some MPs work very hard - my understanding is that Diane Abbott is one
such example - and I'm all for providing them with the proper back up
of researchers and staff (I was going to call this a 'private office',
which it is commonly called, but actually I don't think that's a very
appropriate phrase).

On Jul 13, 3:15*pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Martin Edwards" wrote:

Recliner wrote:
"Willms" wrote:

*You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?

In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.

Not necessarily. *It sometimes refers to moderately paid people like
teachers and quite low paid people like nurses.

No, I don't think so -- maybe headteachers, but not your average junior
teacher, and certainly not nurses. I'm not saying they aren't dedicated,
hard-working professionals, just that the colloquial British use does
have a status/class/wealth implication. I was just trying to correct
Luko, who seemed to think that anyone not in this vaguely defined this
category is therefore being insulted in some way. I also made the point
that this was UK usage; it's different in the US.

And I'm agreeing with Luko that the colloquial British usage of the
term is crap, and furthermore is actually perhaps something of a foil
for talking about class, status and wealth in an indirect fashion -
and is therefore worth challenging, rather than benignly accepting.

There's a whole number of common phrases that I avoid for various
reasons, one being that I think they carry with them a whole subtext,
another reason being that I think they';re intellectually lazy, and
yet another reason being that I think the phrase is stupid and doesn't
make any sense.

In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

In message , at 19:47:46
on Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Recliner remarked:
Looking down the list and picking the first person as my random
example: Ms Diane Abbott claimed around £131k, *none* of which was
for a second home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8044207.stm

If they ran their offices as self-employed businesses, they would, but
I don't doubt that they exempted themselves (not to save money, but
just to simplify their paperwork). In fact, I don't know if the money
for things like staff costs isn't paid directly to the staff, rather
than via the MP's books.

One of the proposed changes is that the staff will be paid direct
from Westminster. (Which sounds to me like something that will
require a whole new layer of admin, so they can be assured what
hours those people have actually worked).

MPs' staff salaries are already paid by Parliament (says he looking at
wife's payslip). They are employed by the MPs, though.

The plan is for Parliament to employ the staff. This is leading to utter
confusion on how MPs decide who works for them.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:53:57 +0200, "Willms"
wrote:

Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:47:46 UTC, schrieb "Recliner"
auf uk.railway :

I have to charge VAT even on things
like reimbursed public transport fares
that are not themselves subject to VAT.

interesting. In Germany, different rates of VAT apply depending on
if its long distance (full rate, 19%) or regional which is supposed to
be a public service (lower rate, 7%).

Public transport in the UK is subject to VAT but at 0%:-
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/introduction.htm
which also has a paragraph "The difference between exempt and
zero-rated" although some of our resident VAT-handlers might be able
to improve on the explanation as the HMRC page does not really say
much about those who might "buy" at 0% but then have to charge their
own customers at a non-zero rate.

Recliner wrote:
"Martin Edwards" wrote in message

Recliner wrote:
"Willms" wrote in message

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 23:57:05 UTC, schrieb Tony Polson
auf uk.railway :

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability
of using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums
than the already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise
professional people's long distance daily commute.
You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?
In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.


Not necessarily. It sometimes refers to moderately paid people like
teachers and quite low paid people like nurses.

No, I don't think so -- maybe headteachers, but not your average junior
teacher, and certainly not nurses. I'm not saying they aren't dedicated,
hard-working professionals, just that the colloquial British use does
have a status/class/wealth implication. I was just trying to correct
Luko, who seemed to think that anyone not in this vaguely defined this
category is therefore being insulted in some way. I also made the point
that this was UK usage; it's different in the US.


There is a kind of shell game involved. They are professions when the
employers are trying to get something for nothing out of them, but the
matter is forgotten when a pay claim comes up.

Mizter T wrote:
On Jul 13, 3:15 pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Martin Edwards" wrote:

Recliner wrote:
"Willms" wrote:
You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?
In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.
Not necessarily. It sometimes refers to moderately paid people like
teachers and quite low paid people like nurses.
No, I don't think so -- maybe headteachers, but not your average junior
teacher, and certainly not nurses. I'm not saying they aren't dedicated,
hard-working professionals, just that the colloquial British use does
have a status/class/wealth implication. I was just trying to correct
Luko, who seemed to think that anyone not in this vaguely defined this
category is therefore being insulted in some way. I also made the point
that this was UK usage; it's different in the US.

And I'm agreeing with Luko that the colloquial British usage of the
term is crap, and furthermore is actually perhaps something of a foil
for talking about class, status and wealth in an indirect fashion -
and is therefore worth challenging, rather than benignly accepting.

There's a whole number of common phrases that I avoid for various
reasons, one being that I think they carry with them a whole subtext,
another reason being that I think they';re intellectually lazy, and
yet another reason being that I think the phrase is stupid and doesn't
make any sense.

I agree. When I was a teacher, I often tried to point out the
incongruity of the term with our pay and, especially, conditions, but to
no avail.

In article ,
(Charles Ellson) wrote:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:53:57 +0200, "Willms"
wrote:

Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:47:46 UTC, schrieb "Recliner"
auf uk.railway :

I have to charge VAT even on things
like reimbursed public transport fares
that are not themselves subject to VAT.

interesting. In Germany, different rates of VAT apply depending on
if its long distance (full rate, 19%) or regional which is supposed to
be a public service (lower rate, 7%).

Public transport in the UK is subject to VAT but at 0%:-
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/introduction.htm
which also has a paragraph "The difference between exempt and
zero-rated" although some of our resident VAT-handlers might be able
to improve on the explanation as the HMRC page does not really say
much about those who might "buy" at 0% but then have to charge their
own customers at a non-zero rate.

If you are providing a service it being zero-rated is much better because
the government repays you all the input VAT you pay out. If you are exempt
you still have to pay it.

--
Colin Rosenstiel