Sam Iles's Blog

Today I had to file a company tax return with the government. It was the most technologically awful experience of my life. Let me explain it to you.

First of all you log into the ‘Government Gateway’ and select that you want to file a Corporation Tax return. I clicked through a few pages, carefully reading what turned out to be irrelevant drivel. “I’ll start entering figures soon,” I thought. Not so.

The website eventually asked me to download a PDF saying that would be how I file my return. “No,” I thought, “the whole point of this was to file it online – not print a PDF and send it to them…”. But, I acquiesced.

My Mac opened the PDF in the wonderfully lightweight Preview.

The PDF was just a white page with the words “make sure you are using the latest version of Adobe Reader”.

Hmm. I acquiesced and downloaded Adobe Reader. All 450mb of it.

To my slight amazement the PDF prompted me to enter all my login information where it then validated itself (in the clear, I wouldn’t be surprised). I then had to clumsily click through pages of the PDF entering values. The only help provided was by clicking a ? which gave a popup with bold, unformatted and unpunctuated barely readable text.

After struggling through and entering lots of duplicate information while being offended with bright red errors and ugly green tones everywhere I had to validate the PDF with some ridiculous 16 step process of fiddling with deep Adobe Reader settings which basically gave the app root access to my Mac.

I then had to enter my ‘Government Gateway’ login info one more time, click submit and stare expectantly at a blank page for several minutes until – to my amazement – it declared that it had worked. It then advised me to print a copy of my billion page return which, surprise surprise, wouldn’t work on my Mac.

So there you have it. Submitting a company corporation tax return to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs through a macro-laden PDF.

Why don’t they just have a website? A website which could do have the sums for me, save my progress (why not let me enter it month by month throughout the year), actually function simply and operate like everything else on the website. I could code such a website in a matter of hours. Paying tax should be a simple process.

And, you just know that the government was scammed out of millions by some IT company for that PDF.

A PDF.

I’m sure the Pros and accountants have software which does this for them. And, no wonder. I’ll be buying that next year.

A PDF.

I think the rich should be taxed more. A lot more, in fact.

People often get upset by the idea of taxing the rich, for some reason.

Michael Arrington (a stupid man I know, but stick with me) wrote this in TechCrunch:

What I really didn’t understand until recently though is why so many rich Americans seem to loathe their richness as much as everyone else does. Many in Silicon Valley want to tax the rich into the middle class and let government spend and spend and spend. The super rich tech elite flock to Obama, joining in the call to screw the rich as loudly as all the rest.

What nonsense. For one thing, no marginal increase in tax for the super-rich would “tax them into middle class”.

Tax brackets work like this: let’s say the standard tax rate in 30% and then there is a 40% rate for people who earn over £150,000 then they don’t pay 40% of everything, but rather they pay 40% on everything they earn over £150,000.

To clarify, someone who earns £160,000 would pay 30% on £150k on 40% on £10k. Capisce? Good.

Do remember, in Eisenhower’s day the tax rate for people earning more than $1million was 91%. Yes, 91%. But that worked exactly as I just explained. You paid 91% on everything over $1m, not all of it.

So, let’s explore some more – with maths! Let’s use the Green Party’s policy of 50% tax rate for incomes above £100,000. At the moment there is a 40% rate for incomes over £35,000 (which would remain under Green Party policy). So, observe the following:

(Note: I realise now that I’ve forgotten to take into account the personal income limit, so the actual tax values will be slightly lower than they are here. However, the comparisons are still accurate, so it’s all good.)

Once you put that 50% rate into perspective you realise it really isn’t as drastic as it may sound on paper. In fact, it makes our tax system seem rather lenient. Why there isn’t a band for people who earn over £500,000 and over £1million I have no idea. Each year in the UK, 14,000 people earn more than £1million. That’s a lot of tax money. To Arrington’s point: these higher incomes with the new band of tax have lost a few thousand pounds at most – they certainly haven’t rocketed into middle class.

And let’s make one thing clear from a personal standpoint – this isn’t about raising more tax money. The last thing I want the government to do is raise tax. What I do want them to do, however, is reduce tax for poorer people. The smallest tax band is 20% and that’s for anyone earning from £0 to £35,000. In my opinion, there should be another band of 10% for income under, say, £20,000. That’s my belief: shift the tax burden away from the poor and towards the rich.

Warren Buffet, the billionaire investor recently wrote (I know this is in America, but it’s still relevant to the UK):

Last year my [tax bill] was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Think about that. The guy who made $39,877,839 in one year pays 17.4%, whereas his staff who are on normal salaries pay up to 41% a year. What possible sense does that make?

Warren adds:

I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

He makes a brilliant point. People often complain that higher taxes for the rich will stop people becoming doctors or lawyers and we’ll all die and… have insufficient legal representation, or something. This simply isn’t true. People become doctors to become doctors. They will still do it if they’ll have to pay a few extra hundred pounds of tax because the bottom line is they will still make a lot more money by becoming a doctor than if they’d chosen to work at Tesco to avoid that tax. The very idea that doctors would just disappear is nonsense.

I’ve only discussed a few ideas about higher taxes for the rich here. There is still more to talk about. And, please don’t berate me in the comments or the Twitter or whatever for something which I haven’t discussed here.

Still, I hope you’ve learned something and have realised that higher taxes for the rich are actually very good.

Electronic tattoo ‘could revolutionise patient monitoring’

Well this is funniest thing I’ve read all year.

It starts with monitoring ‘patients’, perhaps. Heart beats, that kind of thing.

Then, they track what meds you’ve had to make sure you’re sufficiently drugged up at all times.

Then, they get a GPS to, y’know, make sure patients are safe.

Then, they become permanent tattoos. Going to hospital? Leave with a tracker.

Then, they get administered at birth to, y’know, make sure you always take your meds and we know where you are.

Then, we congratulate George Orwell for being spot on.

I’ll die before I let anyone tattoo a tracking device onto me.

On the 26 February 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1970, in which they condemned the actions of Gaddafi and his regime and seized (stole might be a more apt word) all of Gaddafi’s and his family’s assets. They also commissioned a report to look at the human rights situation in the country, due to be completed by ‘around June 2011’. They agreed that no military action would be taken until the report was completed.

However, just two weeks later, they passed Resolution 1973, which did authorise military action. They didn’t bother waiting for the report.

Well, the 90-page report has just been released, right on schedule. It has been severely under-reported by the media, as always. Perhaps as a testament to the fact that I have nothing better to do, I copied the report to my Kindle and read the whole 90 pages. It was very interesting.

Initially, the report explains what happened during the protests, in which they say Gaddafi’s forces used live ammunition on peaceful protestors. They make it clear that they are sure of this. And, I can agree: we all saw the footage of the protests.

But that’s all they have evidence of.

After that, the report delves into areas of the actual civil war (which, let’s face it, it is a war now) and talks about the human rights violations which are occurring there now. Throughout the 90 pages, their formula is this:

• Explain the violation of human rights;
• Name the source as either a “few, unidentified individuals” or Western news sources like CNN and Fox;
• Briefly mention that they actually have no evidence of these violations and that they are probably not true at all, but lament that it is still “cause for concern”.

And that really is all they can do. In fact, in their conclusion, they say there is no conclusive evidence of these widespread human rights violations which we hear about and that the Libyan government is actually doing fairly well, considering they are locked in a civil war.

Of course, this is a boring conclusion for the media so they have all jumped on the rape aspect which we have been hearing so much about in the media.

The allegation (or even fact) put forth by Western media is that Gaddafi has been handing out Viagra and condoms to his soldiers so that they can systematically rape women in Libya, and that the soldiers have blindly agreed.

The report, however, speaks somewhat to the contrary.

Firstly, they say “Reports of rape committed by Government forces have been recounted by numerous persons with whom the Commission met. The Commission had the opportunity to speak with only one victim of rape”. These means that “numerous” people relayed to them rumours of rape, but that they could only find one actual victim. To me, one person does not seem like conclusive proof.

All of the other reports, they confess, came from “other persons”. All in all, the report alludes to five separate cases of rape reports, four from people other than the victim and one from the victim.

Then, they move onto an angle never reported by Western media: that the rebel forces have been raping women. Here, they have two direct sources from women reporting this (more than of rape by Libyan soldiers) and two more indirect reports. Essentially, that’s five for Gaddafi and four for the rebels. To me, this hardly paints a picture of an evil Gaddafi sat in his bunker passing out Viagra to his soldiers. In their conclusion on this section, they say “the Commission received but was unable to verify individual accounts of rape,” and note that more investigation will be needed before any proof can be ascertained.

Let me be clear: I am by no means saying that rape is not happening by Gaddafi’s forces. In fact, rape has been a part of every single war in human history. It has been reported in World War 1 and 2 (on both sides), in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars (on both sides), etc, and is probably happening in Libya right now.

The question is: is it widespread and is it an actual order from Gaddafi, as the media would have us believe? Surely these men are capable of carrying out rape themselves? Surely there is more than one source for condoms in Libya than Gaddafi himself? Perhaps Gaddafi has just urged his people to spread the rumour to drive fear into people…? Why doesn’t Western media pick up on these obvious points, but rather declare that any rape must have been sanctioned by Gaddafi himself?

My point is this: why do we see headlines like “Libyan Dictator Gaddafi Ordered Rapes to ‘Humiliate’ His Enemies” from ABC News and more plainly stating these allegations as fact, using the UN report as its evidence. As I’ve just explained the report, could anyone really justify such reporting?

Shouldn’t the article’s headline about this report be something like “UN Report Says Human Rights Violations in Libya are ‘Unproven’”? But, of course not, because that isn’t exciting (and, a cynic might say “isn’t what the government want people to hear”).

All in all, this report gives a very mixed response about human rights in Libya, about which it can find no evidence. Its sources are Western media and – as painful as this is – Tweets from people ostensibly living in Libya and it quickly covers every allegation it makes with, “but this is just an unproven rumour”.

I can’t help but wonder, if we would have waited for this report to come out before invading Libya (as was originally agreed) would we still have got involved on reading its contents? I don’t see how we could have justified it. And, I can only imagine that very reason is why this report is being kept quiet now.

Very often you will hear people from the UK and other similar small European countries putting up the argument that “but, China and India and the US are causing the problem – what can we do?” in defence of their lack of action on climate change. However, this is deeply flawed and plain wrong. Here’s why:

Let’s first look at oil consumption (a major source of climate change related problems):

What this actually tells us is that China and India use far less oil per person than we do. In my mind, climate change is about a global effort to reduce carbon emissions and how can we blame China or India when they are clearly far more efficient than us? Is it right that the biggest country should be the one which is blamed?

To put this another way: one of the countries which uses the least oil is the Vatican City. Would we therefore instantly proclaim the Vatican to be the greenest country in the world? No, we would assert that they use so little oil because they are so small and therefore percentages and ratios need to be applied. Apparently we forget this simple logic when dealing with our own countries and consciences.

And now coal:

Clearly coal stats paint the UK in a slightly better light. However, this is simply because we use far more gas due to our convenient proximity to it. (Natural gas still emits a lot of carbon dioxide, too, remember.) And, when compared to India we still lag behind.

Now, what is being done to reduce oil and coal consumption? The main aspect of the battle is to source alternative energy. Take a look at these figures:

Is there anything more damning than that? Can anyone still proclaim that the UK can’t make a difference?

In fact, if we look at China alone for a moment, you’ll see they really are outstanding. In 2009, they built a wind turbine every two hours – and they are still rapidly building them. At the current rate, China will get all of its energy just from wind turbines by 2030. And, at the current rate that they are installing renewable energy capabilities, they will be completely carbon neutral in energy production sometime in the 2020s. And to people who might say “this is just because China is rich and so on”, Germany, a country similar to the UK economically and environmentally, gets 17% of its power from renewables. When Germany and China are achieving 17% and the UK is getting just 6.7%, something is very wrong.

At the same time, our own government has set a goal of 30% renewable energy in the same time period as China will achieve 100%. Again, can we really be said to be so great? At the current rate, the UK looks set to be burning coal and God knows what else when every other country is using clean renewables. My point is simply this: the UK is not some innocent victim of climate change wavering powerlessly at the mercy of the Big Three. In fact, we are in many ways far worse than the others. China has a clear path to completely green energy independence whereas the UK has some vague, pointlessly low target which it looks set to fail.

What needs to happen here is for the UK to set a clear plan of how it will become energy independent and totally green. And, not just a plan to be carbon neutral by the year 3000, but an aggressive plan. Studies and science tell us that the UK could achieve all of its power needs by just micro-generation (that’s turbines and solar panels on homes) alone. Throw in a few central facilities and it is entirely possible.

Yes, it is expensive to embark on huge schemes of power generation. But, it doesn’t need to be. In my opinion, it should have been law a long time ago that new build homes must have solar panels installed on the roof. Imagine the impact this would have. The government should commit to installing solar panels on all government owned council houses. The government should be zero-rating VAT on micro-generation products like solar panels. In fact, they should be offering huge subsidies on these products.

The government should be offering home insulation for free, to reduce to amount of required energy. Such a programme would cost £4bn a year for a few years and create 80,000 jobs and, may sound like a lot of money, but is actually a fraction of the UK’s energy expenditure now. Energy production from wind turbines costs exactly the same as new nuclear, so can hardly be argued as expensive. Also, something like solar panels are improving all the time. Every month, they become cheaper and more efficient (like all technology) and really do represent the future. However, the change needs to begin now. It is more than conceivable that the UK could be getting 100% of its energy from increasingly advanced green technologies by 2030. However, it really does have to start now.

Vaccines are an odd topic. I’ve briefly expressed some views before but thought I should write a blog post to explain them further.

Vaccines – basically – are good. They can eradicate disease and save lives.

They are also rather dangerous and are where drug companies make most of their money.

Therein lies the problem. Vaccines are for making money and many companies will stop at nothing to make that money.

There are some crazy conspiracy theories out there. My favourite has to be that the government puts RFID chips into vaccines and uses it to track humans. This is entirely within the realms of the scientifically possible. But I don’t believe it.

What I do know, however, is that vaccines are unlike any other product in existence. If I plan to buy something, I research first and make an informed decision. Vaccines are different. Parents get their children jabs because they are told to by doctors (who in turn tell the government (or, vice-versa, a cynic might say…)).

It is so easy to pay a doctor to say something. Very easy. This is well documented as happening within every industry, because people always blindly trust science.

(A few months ago, for example, a group of scientists released a report saying chocolate was healthier for you than fruit. The mainstream media ate this up (pardon the pun) and all ran stories on it. A few days later, it was discovered that said report was financed by Hershey’s – the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer. Needless to say the media didn’t report this revelation at all.)

If science says you need a vaccine – you get a vaccine. Study after study (all financed by the companies who made the vaccine) conclude the vaccine is essential and safe. The government blindly agrees.

We also know that vaccines are the most important product to drug companies. They all openly admit in their investor information that this is the case. Take Alzheimer’s. 500,000 people in the UK have it. So, if I make a drug to cure it 500,000 people buy it from me. If, however, I make a vaccine – then all 65 million people in the UK buy it. This is obvious. And, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just worth understanding why vaccines are so important.

Vaccines safety is also dubious at best. There are many reports of vaccines making people very ill (such as the recent emergence that the miracle vaccine for the dreaded swine flu plague causes narcolepsy).

Vaccines don’t require anywhere near the same safety testing rigmarole regular drugs experience. A normal drug takes years of testing before it’s approved but vaccines take just months.

And – perhaps my favourite facet of vaccines – by decree of the Supreme Courts of the United States of America (and, soon the United States of Europe, I’ll wager) companies can’t be sued if the vaccine kills you or doesn’t work. Literally, they can’t be sued.

Imagine the protection this offers them: the can literally fill a vaccine with water or arsenic and nothing will go wrong for them.

My point is simply this: vaccines are not inherently a scam or evil. Just think about this: vaccines are perhaps the only product in the world which has a potential customer base of six billion, people blindly buy without knowing what it is and a product which carries complete legal immunity (pun, sorry). I just find it fascinating that a product can command such a high number of users because the company who makes it tells you to. Vaccines are literally the best product in the world – from the company’s point of view.

This video from CSB news is abhorrent.

In it is discussed the “inevitable” retaliation terror attack due to the killing of Bin Laden and the ‘fact’ that terrorists are expected to aim for “soft targets”. Soft targets are classed as shopping malls, museums, grocery stores, places or worship, stadiums and the rest.

The security ‘expert’ advocates and predicts security check points at every soft target, not just airports.

That means going through a scanner whenever you enter, well, anywhere.

Their theory is that terrorists wanting revenge for Bin Laden’s death will turn to attacks “less dramatic” than 9/11. This, obviously, makes no sense and goes against every rule of terrorism.

Some guy from something called Security Inc. says, “there have to be security checkpoints entering all soft targets for the safety of all people”.

Also present is the requisite member of the public who “doesn’t agree”, who turns out to agree totally (are people really that stupid to ignore this stuff?).

Once again, a fictitious threat is being used to remove just about any freedom you have left. sigh

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