TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 10th December 2010
The Christmas Tax £283
The holidays are nearly here and whether you’ve finished wrapping your presents or you tend to go for the Christmas Eve mad dash approach, we all look forward to being generous and visiting loved ones. But this year we will all be hit harder than ever by Chancellor Osborne the Christmas Grinch.
This week we released a report showing that the tax burden is higher than ever, as the Treasury dampens our Christmas cheer. An average family faces a tax bill of a massive £283 on the presents, fun and festivities of the Christmas season. The taxes rack up when we celebrate, with excise duty on alcohol rising year on year, the Chancellor cashes in when we have a tipple. With visits to friends and family, there’s a fuel duty on quality time. Lots of the papers picked up on our report sharing our findings with their readers:
City AM: Ebenezer Osborne
Daily Mail: Christmas spending to land families with £300 tax bill
Politics.co.uk: 'Osborne the Grinch': Your £283 Xmas tax bill
Yahoo News: Osborne the Grinch': Your £283 Xmas tax bill
Express & Star: Homes face £300 festive tax bill
Scottish Daily Express: Christmas will cost us £283 in tax
Shropshire Star: Homes ‘face £300 festive tax bill’
Galloway Gazette: Homes 'face £300 festive tax bill'
Peterborough Today: Homes 'face £300 festive tax bill'
With the unfair VAT hike due to kick in next month, the Government are going to give us a big fat hangover, squeezing taxpayers with this tax rise. We will strongly oppose the VAT increase, which breaks promises made by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and his Deputy, Nick Clegg, before the election. Implementing a VAT rise is not only unfair but a bad idea, hitting the poor disproportionately hard. Take a look at our VAT video here.
The cost of the ECHR
We released a new research report on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which makes for worrying reading. The costs of complying with the ECHR are continuing to mount up and there are more examples of legal complications and disagreements where opinions are ignored. National newspapers highlighted the outrageous cost of the ECHR, giving Britain a huge bill.
Our new research, based on a detailed investigation of cases that the British Government has lost under the ECHR, provides new insight into the vast cost of complying with the court’s decisions.
The paper highlights:
- The cost of complying with judgements under the ECHR is £2.1 billion a year, with an additional £1.8 billion in one off costs. The total cost to date is £17.3 billion.
- The growth of a “compensation culture” fostered by the Court is now costing a further£7.1 billion a year, £25 billion to date.
- 80 per cent of all judgments (246 out of 331) Britain has ever lost under the ECHR have been reached since we signed the Human Rights Act.
Within the Human Rights Act there are some laws and amendments that Britain may have chosen to take on itself, but it is not fair to be forced into other laws which aren’t supported by the public and which are hugely costly. Dr Lee Rotherham outlines the problems, costs and solutions of the ECHR, to read the full report click here.
MailonSunday.co.uk: Human rights laws cost Britain £42bn in rulings and payouts
Worldbusinessnews.net: UKIP - Probe Finds Huge Spend on Human Rights
MailonSunday.co.uk: Cost of human rights
New ways to keep in touch
We are now connected to hundreds of you on facebook, it's great to have your feedback on the reports we launch and the stories coming up. It is also brilliant to read your comments on our blog posts, we write them when we are impassioned, so to know they have hit a nerve really encourages us to pursue the topic and represent your opinions. So if you haven't already, please do join our facebook page.
We are very grateful to everyone who took the time to fill in our recent survey. It's great to hear your opinion. Prize winners to be contacted next week!
Supporting the TPA
If you are a fan of the work we are doing, highlighting waste and inefficiency in the public sector to the media and pressuring the government to reduce taxes, we would really appreciate your support. If you feel passionately that these issues are important, your donation will help us to continue. We your help we will hold the Government to account on behalf of taxpayers across the country who want lower taxes.
If you'd like a standing order form contact info@taxpayersalliance.com
Or visit our website
We keep closely in touch with our donors, providing them with up-to-date information on our campaign and inviting them to events. If you want to discuss this further please do contact us.
Best of the Blogs
Burning Our Money: Non Job of the Week - Andrew Allison with news of six-figure salaries at the Student Loans Company
Campaigns: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (waste that is) - Josh Mead with the first of what will surely be many, many tales of festive waste this Christmas.
Campaigns: On your bike at 20p a mile - Charlotte Linacre on the bizarre new MPs' expenses claims showing a lack of common sense or efficiency.
Campaigns: Scrap the Fibre Tax - Dominique Lazanski on how the little-known Fibre Tax makes a mockery of the Government's attempts to deliver the Digital Economy
GrassRoots: Council pensions and the staff 'merry-go-round' - Andrew Allison uncovers the public sector redundancy swindle, job hopping that doubles the bill for taxpayers.
Economics 101: Surprise tax raid undermines corporation tax cut - Rory Meakin says the best anti-avoidance measure is a tax cut. The lower the tax rate, the less incentive there is to find loopholes.
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