Child Care, Gardening, Carers and Unemployment
About twenty years ago I met a policy strategist at the Department of Employment. He wasn’t your typical civil servant, as he had been recruited at about forty into government service, after a successful career in academia and industry.
In those days we were just as worried about many things that we still are today.
One proposal he had was that if you employ someone on a fully legal basis, where all tax and National Insurance is paid, then you can set all or a proportion of those costs against your tax.
He gave some examples, where it might apply.
- Many people employ a nanny or mother’s help, to help in the home with their children. At present, he said, it’s often cash in hand and a room or perhaps the help is employed in the family’s small business as a secretary, so that the costs are tax deductible.
- You also have the case of people, who employ a gardener to do the heavy work as they get old. Usually, it’s cash-in-hand, for a few hours, but perhaps, they’d really like to employ someone full time and even share the person with the neighbours or other people locally.
So we have system, where these sort of people are employed in one or two ways.
- Cash-in-hand, which often gives the worker all sorts of problems and will mean they have a reduced pension when they retire.
- The fake job, where they are employed and set against tax in a business controlled by the employer.
Both methods mean that less tax is collected and fewer jobs are created. It also means that an au-pair from some strange place is much cheaper than a real job employing a local person.
The civil servant believed that if you could set employment costs for an employee, against personal tax, it would have substantial benefits. Obviously, the job would have to be real and tax, National Insurance and minimum wage regulations were all observed.
If we take the mother’s help/gardener/carer case, it probably would create a lot of jobs, especially if sharing was allowed. The tax system might become a little bit more complicated, but an awful lot of people earning a good salary, might decide to employ someone full-time rather than rely on trying to fit caring for an ageing parent around a full-time job.
A lot of these jobs might be for people, who are in groups, that find getting worthwhile jobs difficult. We have a lot of young people who don’t have jobs. Surely, there are people who might like to employ them personally. As an example, since I have moved here, I might have benefitted by having someone help me with sorting out this house. There would have to be a foolproof payment system to ensure tax was paid, but surely this could be put on-line.
In some ways, one of the biggest advantages would be in the creation of new businesses. Often people try to start their new business by doing both jobs at the same time. The outcome is often poor and the business fails, and often the personal relationships with it.
You could of course, setup a proper company, with employees from day one, but how many start-ups can sustain all of that expense.
Suppose you have a reasonably well-paid job and have this idea for a better widget or a new way of doing something. Often you need to research the business well before starting. So say perhaps for a year, you employed a bright graduate and asked them to check your feelings, do some design or programming or whatever. After that year, it might mean that the business was non-viable, and you would have to let the employee go. But at least they’d had a hopefully interesting job for a year and you’d got the tax relief. Or at least part of it.
Imagine too, you are a self-employed decorator, accountant, software programmer or whatever. If the system was made simple, you would think about getting help in busy periods or when you need it much earlier and more often.
You can go through lots of scenarios and do the sums.
The measures may well be fairly neutral to the tax system, but of course unemployment benefit would drop. I suspect, it would also help a lot of people to have better lives and pensions.
The real loser would be the black economy.
One of the reasons the system was never even considered was that the Treasury’s model of the economy doesn’t include the black one. Incidentally, at the time at least one of the major banks model did. They got the economy right and the Treasury didn’t.
With all the arguments about the temporary fifty per cent tax rate, child care costs, caring provision for the elderly and unemployment, it appears to me that the current personal financial system has failed.
Perhaps we should think the unthinkable.
One Problem With Televising Courts
This is a true story and some would think it would be good television. I don’t! But it illustrates the fact that a lot of cases contain things that really shouldn’t be broadcast. After all, our court system is open and anybody can go and look if they are interested.
My late wife was a barrister and once she was prosecuting a man for a sexual assault. She could hear a rustling behind her in the public gallery and quick look confirmed that a teacher was bringing in a class of school children to see how the court worked. She carried on, but her next question to a witness was not very appropriate. “When did you first notice that the defendant had an erection?” She then heard shrieks of laughter from behind her and then a lot of whispering as the children were quickly escorted out.
I bet those kids never forgot their first day in court!
She would repeat this story every time, televising courts was mentioned, to show how you can never be sure what will happen and how do you ensure that justice is fair and correct to all parties.
Who Would Want To Watch Court TV?
Having seen the odd case in a Court of Law, I can’t understand why anybody would want to watch it on television. It must only be for the same freak show reasons, that people watch crap like Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent, basketball and American football. I’m thinking of setting up a channel where you can watch kettles boil or paint dry. It would be a lot more exciting!
I suppose if it was funded by advertising, Court TV might get them out of programs worth seeing.
But I won’t be watching!
I Don’t Think Prudence Will Call Alistair “Darling” Anymore!
I never took Alistair Darling seriously, as the name was given a very hard going over in Blackadder.
He at last seems to have shown some backbone in standing up to the that bully, Gordon Brown, in his memoirs according to many reports today. Here is the one from the BBC. I like this quote about Brown.
Gordon Brown was so deluded as prime minister that he was adamant one of the worst economic crisies in history would be over in six months.
How did NuLabor let such an idiot get the top job? I suspect that many saw the writing on the wall and Brown was holding the parcel when the music stopped.
Everything Everywhere
Mickey Clarke is one of the presenters of the BBC’s early morning business program, Wake Up To Money.
He remarked that he’d never heard of the mobile phone company, Everything Everywhere.
I hadn’t until a few weeks ago, noticed them either.
It does seem that they haven’t done much to successfully raise brand awareness.
Are The Welsh Preparing to Invade?
Dai Greene yesterday won the 400 metres hurdles in Daegu.
With a name like Dai, he has to be Welsh and of course is.
So when the his event takes place at Stratford over the 3rd to the 6th of August next year, will there be a shortage of leeks and daffodils in London?
The big question is where are they going to park the dragon? The problem is that East London and the Olympic Park in particular, has lots of rivers, canals and water in general. So will this put the fire out? Or do dragons have waterproof fire?
The I Wouldn’t Do That Party!
Peter Allen on BBC Radio 5, used that nickname for the Labour Party.
But it is true! After all, Prudence got so much of our policies into a mess to buy votes generally or in Scotland. If they were in power they’d still be digging the hole in the budget like maniacs. After all in their view it’s better for the country if Labour is in power, rather than we’re all broke.
Luckily, most of the good people of the United Kingdom, have more sense than Prudence and his ilk.
I’ve Now Got a Buy-to-Let by the Winner of the Carbuncle Cup.
I own a buy-to-let flat close to MediaCityUK. I suspect that I can now advertise it as close to the winner of the Carbuncle Cup, which is the award for the ugliest building of the year.
I have a feeling that we’ll see the BBC gradually relocate back to London to save money anyway.
Who’d want to live in Manchester? Not even Manchester United supporters, as they seem to live in Surrey!
After Ruining Horse Racing and Cricket Coverage, are Channel 4 Now Doing It With Athletics?
I have not watched any of Channel 4’s coverage of the World Athletics Championships in Daegu, and it seems according to this article in the Guardian, I’m not missing much, by listening on the radio.
They try too hard to make sure they get the advertisers, that they ruin the product. They did this with horseracing and now it has been dumbed down so much I don’t watch.
In the end, there is only two ways to show quality sport; either-free-to-air without advertising or by subscription. I know Sky has adverts and they can be irritating, but their presenters are generally professional. Comparing Sky coverage of the Champions League, with that of ITV, is much more than a matter of chalk and cheese.
We won’t have to worry for long though, as events like the Athletics World Championship will be available on a quality basis over the Internet in the near future for a fee. And hopefully for a fee that has two levels; one with advertising and one without.
Do We Need To Close More Hospitals?
I’ve believed that we have too many hospitals for a long time. Often politics mean that the needs of getting votes come before the needs of good healthcare. No-one would ever get elected, if they were in favour of closing their local hospital.
When I lived near Newmarket, we had two hospitals at the same distance away, Addenbrooke’s and Bury St. Edmunds. The first is a world-class facility and the second is a typical general hospital on a cramped site with bad transport links.
No-one ever chose to go to Bury St. Edmunds and I always remember once turning up at A & E there in the middle of the night to find no-one waiting, but it still took me three hours to be seen. The whole hospital should have been down-graded years ago. This is unlikely to happen, as the powers that be in Bury still resent the fact that Ipswich became the county town, when West and East Suffolk were merged. So we all pay extra through our taxes for local vanity.
So should we close more hospitals? Lord Cross who used to run the NHS, apparently thinks so according to this report on the BBC.
The Anonymous Widower 