Bonanza for Government my Arse!!

If as a working person you acquire through your hard work and diligence enough money to secrete away, either for old age or to fund help your family when you have died, good luck to you. Well done, I admire your hard work and thrifty nature. If you as a average person see the way the tide is turning and decide to bank offshore, to keep more of your hard earned money, again good luck to you. I do not begrudge you your money, I do not envy that you have more than me.

What I do abhor, is the Tax man, or HMRC (Her Majesty's' Revenue and Customs)he is a thief, a bully and a drain on everyone! He produces nothing, he has more powers than the Police, to all intents and purposes he is the strong arm man of the government.

Now through hard work and savings if I bought a villa in Spain, or any other country, and decided to rent the villa out, I am expected to pay tax on that money! Can anyone tell me why? I saved and paid tax on the money, I used it to buy a holiday home in a warmer climate, and am able to rent it out in order to recoup some of the money I have invested. I took the risk, spent the hours researching, looking at properties, spending time and effort to buy a decent place at a decent price. So why should I give any money to Mr Brown? He has had no input, not loaned me the money, yet he expects a cut? If I use my money to buy another property in another country, who's business is it, no-ones, just mine!

We as a population are expected to clear our debts, if we borrow we have to repay, we pay tax on our earnings, tax on our loans, tax on our insurance, etc, ad infinitum, there is no item in this country that we do not pay tax on,either indirect or direct.

Now if I won the lottery, and decided that I like the idea of my money, won fair and square, to gain me interest above what the UK banks pay, then I too would consider offshore banking, notwithstanding the fact that, the UK banks have an obligation and a duty to inform the tax man of how much money is in your accounts, which I personally think is abhorrent, my money is my money, not the governments or Mr G Browns. Because we are apart of the EU, now even the EU banks have to give details of UK peoples accounts to the UK Taxman. See I cannot work out why I have to pay tax on money earned in another country. It is pure and simply greed, the government wants as much of our money as it can get, it has no reason for taxing that money, as long as it is not brought into this country.

Now in order to try get people to admit that they have money outside of this country, invested and working for them, the HMRC has decided to offer an amnesty for people with offshore accounts. This is what pisses me off about the government, always chasing the small fry and never going after big business, because as we all know every bully is a coward at heart. I bet every penny I have got, that Mr Blair will pay less tax than he should on the reported millions he will earn on his retirement from the PM's job. I expect every penny he earns will be declared!!! Yeah right, he will employ tax consultants, lawyers and accountants, who will enable him to keep more of his money than we can. There lies the problem, there are ways and means of getting out of paying tax and if you can afford to pay for the information, you can do it, and there is nothing the taxman can do about it. After all a tax can never be retrospective, so changes to the tax system can only come into effect on the day they are made law.

Taxation has been around a long time in one way or another, Income tax has only been around since the 1700's, when it was brought into being to pay for a war. But seeing how much they could get off us, the government decided to keep it going. Over the years it has steadily risen, sometimes reduced, by never actually gone down, as figures have been fiddled, to make it look like your paying less.

So what does our tax actually get us, what do we get out of paying it? Not a great deal really, free and just society, yeah right pull the other one.

As it happens I have not got property in Spain, but it is my intention someday to buy abroad, and when that day comes I will not tell the taxman anything.