Why banks are scared of Greek exit from the euro

Target 2 is a payment system that links banks across the 17 members of the eurozone.

Each time money is transferred betwene the member countries of the Euro, the trade is settled through Target 2. However no real money transfers take place.

Imagine that a German sells his Greek villa to a Greek for 1 million euro. What happens is his bank receives a 1 million euro credit with the Bundesbank. The Greek bank has the same sum deducted from its account with the Greek central bank.

The two central banks then have to square off the 1 million euro through Target 2. But those trades are reallty just IOUs.

Until recently the sums owed by each country's central bank were more or less in balance.

However, so much money has recently been pulled out of Greece that it now owes the rest of Europe 107 billion euros. If it leaves the euro, that sum would be wiped out. It would take out the entire capital of the European Central bank five times over.

Greek exit form the euro would have catastrophice effects of the banking system.

Over 2000 civil servants use companies to avoid tax

Public sector government department including, HMRC, HM Treasury and the Debt Management Office (DMO) has published details of key individuals engaged off payroll in their department in response to the review of the tax arrangements of public sector appointees.

The data published details the individuals’ job title, specialism, type of organisation that payments are being made to, engagement length, total cost of engaging the individual and whether the contract has been ended and/or the individual brought onto payroll since January 31st.

The data is available from HMRC and

HM Treasury.

Taxation of controlling persons

On the back of the review of the tax arrangements of public sector appointees, the Government has launched a consultation into the engagement practices of controlling persons. It proposes that a provision is introduced to ensure that controlling persons have income tax (PAYE) and National Insurance deducted at source by the engaging organisation. The closing date for comments is 16 August 2012.

The purpose of this consultation is to explore whether this is a necessary and appropriate way of achieving this aim and to test whether the provision is sufficiently targeted and without unexpected detrimental effects.

Further details are available from HMRC.

NHS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17755552

This is why the NHS is in need of radical reform............

Do as I say............

Do as I say, not as I do............

I spoke to a very agrressive lady from HMRC yesterday about the tax arrears of a client of mine. She basically said that as he was "well paid" he should have the money and should pay the tax straight away and not by installments (completely ignoring the fact that his profit is a paper one and that in cash terms he made a loss because customers are very slow in paying!).

How ironic then, that yesterday to OFT told off Wonga.com for chasing their debtors vigorously and refering to their employment status (apparently if you Wonga.com and are employed in the public sector, they see that as a guaranteed income that means you should have the money to be able to repy them).

One rule for HMRC and another rule for everyone else it seems............

30% tax

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18137548

This is actually a half sensible idea

Business Secretary out of touch

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18142544

This shows how out of touch the Business Secretary is - with restrictive employment laws heavily biased in favour of the employee is it any wornder that businesses are slow to employ people at the first signs of the green shoots of recovery??