Working people blow tax cuts on ‘booze, women and movies’
A Republican senator has defended the lack of tax cuts for working class Americans in the GOP tax bill by saying that they would only spend "every darn penny" on "booze or women or movies" anyway.
Senator Chuck Grassley said that people who "invest" are more deserving of tax cuts, because they don't waste their cash on trivial things.
Aside from the moral argument – and the fact that drinking is more prevalent among upper-income Americans, according to Gallup's annual consumption poll – Tax Relief would like to point out that giving more money to people who spend a higher percentage of their income on highly-taxed goods is better for national coffers (ignoring negative externalities) as more money is then returned to the state more quickly. Poorer people also pay a greater proportion of their income back to the state through sales taxes.
As a chain-smoking columnist who drives a 4x4 everywhere, stumps up VAT with reckless abandon and moves house four times a year for the sheer joy of paying stamp duty, Tax Relief considers itself a prime candidate for a tax cut – in the national interest.
I'll drink to that this Christmas!
Take advantage of tax relief on Christmas parties
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All Tax Relief wants for Christmas is to be allowed to go to the real office Christmas party |
Tax Relief was surprised to find out, from a particularly festive press release, that UK revenue authority HMRC provides a tax exemption for staff Christmas parties of up to £150 ($200) per head.
The rules state that if it's not practical to hold a single function then there can be more than one Christmas party. "Businesses can also put on separate parties for different departments, as long as all employees can attend one of them," says Nigel Morris, tax director at MHA MacIntyre Hudson.
Perhaps this explains why, as the rest of ITR's employees went for Christmas dinner last week, Tax Relief was locked in the basement with a mince pie.
Quotes of the month
"Open dialogue and pledges for change are replacing secrecy and opacity."
European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Pierre Moscovici
"Into elderly age, she drove an old and very loud orange Triumph TR7 sports car around Edinburgh."
The Scottish Herland's obituary of Ethel Houston, the first female partner at a Scottish law firm (in 1949). She was also an enigma codebreaker during the Second World War and, after retiring from practice aged 70, went to Africa for two years to assist the government of Eritrea.
