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A comment on HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat. Parent comment

Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by berdario on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:22AM (#36969385)
The concern of tax rules being unclear and causing confusion and distress is a real concern, but that's off topic.

Uber willfully misunderstood tax law to their advantage. Were most other taxi companies charging VAT as tour operator even before Uber started? If so, you would be right that this a concern of unclear rules and arbitrary application of them...

But that's not the case

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/should-taxi-firm...

> Given government spending is out of control

UK spending is barely above average for industrialised countries. After a decade of austerity, British people are getting poorer and poorer.

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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by gadders on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:39AM (#36969489)
There was no austerity. Government spending actually went up during that period.
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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by X0Refraction on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:57AM (#36969627)
Total spend or age adjusted per capita? Those are very different things when you have a growing and ageing population
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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by gadders on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:17AM (#36971231)
Total spend went up.
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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by berdario on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:59AM (#36969655)
You're wrong.

"Spending per cent of national income" it went down every year, from around 2009 until the pandemic.

https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainer...

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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by afavour on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @08:12AM (#36969775)
Sometimes I wonder about people who make such transparently incorrect statements like “there was no austerity”. When confronted with the data like you provided do they actually absorb that information? Usually it seems the answer is no but I don’t understand how you internalise it in a way that doesn’t conflict with your priors.
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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by gadders on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:09AM (#36971124)
Government spending actually went up during that period. See chart 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-spending-sta...

You can try and redefine austerity into whatever best fits your politics if you like.

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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by gadders on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:17AM (#36971237)
Well done on redefining austerity.
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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by dnh44 on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:45AM (#36969537)
P&G was able to argue in court that Pringles are a type of cake rather than a type of potato chip (crisp in the UK) which means VAT doesn’t apply to them. In the UK cake is sold free of VAT.

I guess my point is that there is clearly a precedent for success by doing this sort of thing. Unfortunately.

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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by 4ndrewl on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:54AM (#36969610)
Yeah, they look like crisps, but they're actually made from different flours, unlike crisps.
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Re:HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat by dnh44 on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @07:54PM (#36979514)
I know but even so to classify it as a cake rather than a crisp is absurd.
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