The press and BBC are full of a story today about how Anderson Recruitment are encouraging the use of an "abusive" tax avoidance scheme that HMRC says "doesn't work" and which the usual rent a quote crowd are using as a stick to beat their favourite targets.
I don't know much about the alleged avoidance scheme and certainly have never to my knowledge brushed against the recruiter but this furore is a good example of the hysteria and to be blunt, utter crap, that flows from people who should know better, just to get a few column inches.
However it is a serious consideration for us here. It demonstrates that there is still considerable appetite with media outlets to feed public opinion on this issue, usually with negative stories.
The facts are that the "scheme" looks to save around £300k. If applied universally, it is estimated (guessed) that £20m is involved. The last figure I could find in a 30 second search for NIC collected was 2012/13 at £84 BILLION.
So perhaps 0.023% of the fund collections. Or 50 x this scheme to reach 1% of the NIC collected 3 years ago.
Logically this is a non story.
Emotionally it is massive. This hurdle is one that BIG GROUP will be taking head on and a critical element of that strategy is to bring the facts to a disbelieving public and restore some balance.
I don't know much about the alleged avoidance scheme and certainly have never to my knowledge brushed against the recruiter but this furore is a good example of the hysteria and to be blunt, utter crap, that flows from people who should know better, just to get a few column inches.
However it is a serious consideration for us here. It demonstrates that there is still considerable appetite with media outlets to feed public opinion on this issue, usually with negative stories.
The facts are that the "scheme" looks to save around £300k. If applied universally, it is estimated (guessed) that £20m is involved. The last figure I could find in a 30 second search for NIC collected was 2012/13 at £84 BILLION.
So perhaps 0.023% of the fund collections. Or 50 x this scheme to reach 1% of the NIC collected 3 years ago.
Logically this is a non story.
Emotionally it is massive. This hurdle is one that BIG GROUP will be taking head on and a critical element of that strategy is to bring the facts to a disbelieving public and restore some balance.
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