If you spotted someone wearing their clothes back-to-front on Friday, it was probably because it was ‘National Backwards Day’. Supposedly, it is the one day in the year when it is acceptable to walk backwards, or read backwards, or etirw backwards. Of course, it was Brexit Day too. Let’s hope it’s not a foreboding coincidence! Friday was also the last day to pay our income tax for 2018/19 to HMRC. The Weekly has long believed that Her Majesty’s Treasury would win a shed-load of brownie points if it just said ‘thank you’ to the nation’s hard-working tax-payers. Some might think it would be polite too. Well, our wish has been granted. Completely out of the blue, we received an email yesterday from Sajid Javid. This is what he wrote:
Dear The Weekly,
I just wanted to send you a quick email before I dash off to the team’s annual bash. Thank you so much for your income tax payment on Friday. It really is appreciated. With any luck I should collect about £180 billion from income and capital taxes again this year and I can see that your contribution is very generous. You should be suitably proud of your efforts. Well done.
Do you like the photograph I have attached of The Beatles with Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, back in the mid ‘60s? Under his Government, the upper rate of income tax was 98%. No wonder George Harrison penned his hit song, The Taxman with the iconic line ‘One for you and Nineteen for me’. But there is no room for complacency, is there? Everyone here at the Treasury wants you to redouble your efforts this coming year so you can give me us even more.
You probably want to know where your money is going. Well, after the cost of our annual staff booze-up, there’s not much left! (That was meant to be a joke, by the way). Total expenditure this year is budgeted to be £850 billion and 19% has been earmarked for the NHS and another 19% to Pensions. Next year should be even better for the NHS as we are expecting the PM to stand by his ‘bus-promise’ and deliver an extra £350 million a week. After Welfare (15%) and Education (11%), the rest are in single digits. I probably should point out that 6% goes to pay the interest on our loans. Hey Ho! It will be someone else’s problem at the time when the loans have to be repaid!
I see from your tax return that your business is involved in property. Good for you. We like property and we have been trying our best for you. I know we have ticked up stamp duty land tax quite a bit recently, and business rates are an issue. On the second point, to be frank, we don’t really have a clue how to fix it. And even if we did, we aren’t going to… as business rates yield about £30 billion per annum - a very nice earner for us. On the other hand, we have sold tons of buildings recently into the private sector, including Admiralty Arch and all those grubby railway arches. And we have been boosting the regional office markets by taking thirteen new regional tax offices (5.3 million sq ft). We want to be nearer our customers. And in the words of Gracchus in Gladiator (slighted modified)… ‘I don’t only want to be a man of the people, I want to be a man for the people.’
I have had a quick glance at your website and see you are all interested in sport. I’ll be honest with you. We could do better here. But, on the other hand, we do have all that lovely National Lottery money to fill the gap. Did you know that for the year to 31 March 2019, the Lottery raised £7.21 billion in sales, £1.65 billion went to projects (20% to sport), £4.13 billion went to prize-money, and £304 million went as commission to the retailers for selling the tickets. And… £865 million went in Lottery Duty. So you can see we are skimming it at both ends. We pay over less of your tax to sport and we receive a fat bonus back from the Lottery in the bargain. It’s a win-win situation. The Government wins both ways!
Between you and me, the Treasury is pretty anti-sport at present anyway. Most particularly, we have had a major issue with RBS where we still own 62.4% of their shares. We can sort of tolerate their share price tanking from 502p to 222p but their decision to end their main sponsorship of the Six Nations has caused all sorts of ructions with my staff. RBS was always able to guarantee us lots of free tickets for Twickenham but they have now dried up completely. Guinness are the main sponsors now and I am darned if I am going to support them after all the fuss the Irish have made over Brexit. And whilst I enjoy cricket, (where RBS are still the main sponsor), most of the matches at Lord’s are in the summer holiday period when, as you know, I like to disappear off to somewhere exotic. You may now understand why the Government was so cheesed off with Barclays in 2008. If we had bailed them out, as we wanted, we would have had VIP access to all the great Premier League football matches with free hospitality to boot. (Get the pun?)
Anyway, I hope you have found this email up-lifting. Remember 2020 is the year to get Brexit done. Trade deals? No problem. Trust us. We’re politicians. Please rest assured we love spending your money and again thank you for your most generous payment.
Warmest regards to the team.
The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP x
P.S. Please don’t forget to pay your interim tax payment for next year ahead of the 31 July deadline… not least as the Treasury’s summer ‘jolly’ depends on it.