A fiscal miscellany

Back to talking about the economy again I’m afraid, and you know it’s got bad when even the BBC have noticed something’s wrong (H/T Penny Dreadful). Sadly it seems that the terribly dangerous deflation we should all worry about hasn’t happened, instead by printing a metric truck load of cash we’ve got inflation. Which really wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone, and at least we can inflate our debt (which ok screws over all of us that can’t just vote ourselves a pay rise) but at least the countries credit rate isn’t heading rapidly towards junk status like say … Continue reading

Spending our taxes

Just to follow up on yesterdays post on Tax freedom day, I realise I didn’t mention how much the EU spent. Thankfully due to an article brought to my attention by Penny Dreadful I can now correct this, as the Telegraph have all the gritty details all 9.2 billion of them! 9.2 Billion being the “Amount British taxpayers contributed to the EU in 2010.”, which makes the (presumably additional) “£3 billion Amount of ‘stealth taxes’ to be levied on Britons under European Commission plans to generate one third of the EU budget by 2020 using direct taxation powers. ” Quite … Continue reading

Tax freedom day

Continuing my grand tradition of being late to the part it would seem that yesterday was Tax Freedom day the day of the year when we on average stop working to pay taxes and start working for ourselves. A mere 149 days into the year and an average of 40.8% of our income gone and that’s the taxes paid. Of course depending on what you buy, how much your earn etc. you own personal tax freedom day may have been a while back or you may have yet a bit to go. Tax freedom day would be a lot later … Continue reading