A literal tax take.

The UK government plan to do what Cyprus did and simply raid everyone’s bank account to pay its bills. Under the guise of ‘chasing tax cheats’, the taxman will be able to take as much as he wants from your bank account, any time he likes. No court order or justification required because the taxman never, ever gets it wrong.

If there is an error and your bank account is emptied by mistake, you can hire an expensive lawyer to start the lengthy process of getting it back. Oh wait, no you can’t. Your bank account is empty. Your mortgage is in default, your are being chased by energy companies for unpaid bills and the council want their pocket money too.

The killer in this scenario is – you didn’t actually owe any tax. Think that will stop them?

Don’t worry about the council going short. As soon as they get this in place for the tax office, the councils will be able to do it too. The first you will know of being fined for smoking in your own home (whether you smoke or not) will be when the money vanishes. Left your bin an inch too far from the kerb? Well, you must have because there is a debit on your account marked ‘bin fine’.

Dammit, this IS Panoptica! I had envisaged all money on implanted chips. Nobody ever knows how much they have, how much they are taxed, how much they are being fined… when the chip stops working that’s it till payday. In Panoptica that’s just a threat. The chip never stops working because there really isn’t any actual money at all. The whole place is bust and run on illusion. Step out of line and your chip is remotely disabled. Show proper contrition and it works again because the officials give you ‘a loan’. You are now in debt – but there never was any money. Nobody loaned you any, you don’t have any, but that debt will be recalled if you don’t toe the line.

The one remaining step in the real life version is to take away your knowledge of what is in your bank account. That’s it. The ‘money isn’t real’ part happened a long time ago. Contactless cards exist, implanting the chip is the next and very easy part.

This is the justification for random (it’s HMRC, everything is random) raids on bank accounts –

Britain is being robbed of around £35billion a year by cheats who fail to pay their taxes and others who find ways of avoiding them, according to HMRC.

No it isn’t. This is like a mugger complaining that he is being robbed every night because some people refuse to hand over their wallets.

The government does not need that money. They use it to pay lobby groups to tell them to do what they wanted to do anyway. They give it away to the EU, loaded into the now-useless fleet of coal trucks hitched to daily trains to Brussels. They give it to countries who don’t need it, don’t want it or who will use it to buy a new gold-plated Bentley for some minor official who will then use it to run down poor people. It benefits nobody except Cameron who can puff out his pigeon-chest and preen his feathers while he meets despots covered in expensive jewellery – and he never connects their roaring wealth with the money he gives to their poor, deprived country. Because he is an idiot. “And the animals looked from Cameron to Blair, and Blair to Cameron, but already it was impossible to tell the difference”.

All the  money they get in tax is wasted and the tax system is one of the biggest wastes of all. It is insanely complex and there is no need for any of it. A simple flat tax would do the job far better. It would be harder to find loopholes and if the system was cheaper, it would not need to steal so much tax in the first place.

If you reduce the tax rate, it becomes pointless for the rich guys to pay armies of accountants to dodge it. As it is, they can save much more tax than the cost of the accountants. If the accountants cost more than the tax the rich folk would just pay the tax. If the system was simpler and easier to understand we would not need to trouble accountants at all.

Take your total income. Subtract ten thousand, your tax-free allowance. Subtract legitimate business expenses. Divide the remaining amount by five to get your 20% tax amount. Send that amount to the tax man.

You could even train a politician to do it, given an infinite number of politicians and an infinite number of calculators. The rich would not bother trying to dodge that simple tax, whether by avoidance or evasion. It just wouldn’t be worth the effort.

The only way it would ever really work is if Cameron had the man-parts to really and truly cut the waste from the system. He never will because he’s a waster too. All those quangos and fake charities and lobby groups he pays are a big part of the reason so many people don’t want to pay tax. Bonfire of the quangos? Vote me in and I’ll give you a bonfire of the quangos all right. You will be able to see and smell it for miles. Vlad the Impaler was just too bloody soft.

If tax was paying for the military, the police, the fire service, the hospitals, fixing and building roads and bridges… fine. But it’s not. All those actually useful things are being cut. Instead we get ‘change4life’ and ‘five-a-day’ and ‘units per week’ and ‘ooo, no, you can’t burn half a gram of leaves next to that idling double-decker bus, it’s bad for the child who lives five streets away’ and the bastards think this is democratic governance and money well spent! They really do! That Miller wench was on the radio today, having finally got her coat, saying the scandal was ‘a distraction from the achievements of this government’.

What? Every government in living memory and beyond has delighted in any form of distraction from what they are ‘achieving’. She was not a distraction. Distractions focus attention elsewhere. She was focusing attention on the government and what a bunch of money-grabbing, self-serving gits they really are. We are not supposed to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Cameron said he was sorry to see her go and hoped she could come back when all the fuss had died down. Yes, he really said that, the Tefal-headed twat. Such is his contempt, he sees no need to hide his intention to bring back one of his favourite arrogant harridans when he thinks the drones have forgotten about her. Out of touch? More like on another planet.

I wish he was. I wish they all were. Venus is nice in the summertime, and I’m sure we’d all be happy to pay the tax for that expenses-paid trip. We’d even add in enough for a camera to film the whole thing and – hell, why not – we’ll even give them parachutes. It’ll make the camera last longer than the Venera probes did.

Oh, but the taxman will have rules while raiding your bank vault. Rules that make it all okay.

Under the proposals, which will be subject to a consultation, HMRC will be able to take all the money that a person owes in tax out of their bank account, subject to two key rules.

It cannot take the full amount unless the person would have at least £5,000 left across all bank accounts after the tax debt has been paid and the money can only be taken if HMRC has contacted the person at least three times about the unpaid tax bill.

They will stick to those rules rigidly. Haaahahaha!

Read that second part again:

It cannot take the full amount unless the person would have at least £5,000 left across all bank accounts …

Clever, eh? If it means you would be left with less than £5000, they cannot take the full amount. They can take a lesser amount, less than what they consider to be the full amount, and if that leaves you with £1 it’s still ‘within the rules’.

I already have less than £5000 total cash anywhere. Lately I only rarely go above £1000. Soon I will fill in a tax form and expect a refund.  Oh, I have loads of stuff but not much in cash. It’s safer that way. Stuff can be sold or, if the drones ever realise money is worthless, traded. Cash though, not very much. I doubt I will bother amassing much more from now until the day I die. Money is no use, it’s less real than Satan anyway.

I also earn very little and have to stay self-employed, even if I never see another microbiology job, because of the books. They make about £100 a year but as long as they are on sale I am self-employed and will have to fill out a tax form every year. Unless Hollywood takes on one of the books or I write a real corker, this will mean a tax refund every year. I like that. Tax, to me, is like storing pennies in a jar and taking them all out once a year.

So really, this new Bankrobbing Law means little to nothing to me. But then it is not designed for me.

Look again –

It cannot take the full amount unless the person would have at least £5,000 left across all bank accounts after the tax debt has been paid and the money can only be taken if HMRC has contacted the person at least three times about the unpaid tax bill.

They assume that they have the right to take the tax and if they send you three letters, they can then rip it out of your account. Even if you rebut the letters. Even if you declare their demands invalid. They don’t need to debate about it any more. They send three letters, you respond with three ‘no’ letters, they raid your savings.

No, this is not aimed at me. This is aimed at Captain Ranty and the Freemen on the Land.

A movement that has been growing, that has been right all along and that is really starting to worry the tax thieves.

The taxman is not going after Stirbacks or Goggle or any of the others it has always given a free pass. This law is to clear up the problem of the Free. No more debate, no more discussion, no more admissions of fraudulent demand for money not really owed.

No, they send three letters and whether you respond or not, they rip it out of your hoard.

If you are following the Freeman ways, turn your money into gold bars and build it into the floor of your kitchen. Any fake cash you have in banks will soon be raided.

Oh, and if you sneer at Freemen and the wealthy, keep in mind that the tax office has a legend on the wall. ‘Our name is Legion of Idiots, because our errors are many.’

Once this gets under way, you will see random sinkholes under bank accounts all over the place. Could be yours. Could be mine.

Mine won’t sink very far.