HMRC seems to be a law unto itself. Another inept quango making arbitrary decisions as it goes along
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Samizdata quote of the dayFebruary 11th, 2015 |
 21 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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And the Infernal Revenue Service on this side of the Pond isn’t much better.
Did you know they can say that they won’t take a court decision as precedent, and taxpayers can’t do a thing about it?
I dunno, I’m probably with HMRC on this one. We have that blithering idiot Margaret Hodge bawling at HMRC for “not doing its job”, while HMRC is (it seems to me) patiently explaining that despite £120bn being held by British citizens in Swiss bank accounts, this is not in itself illegal and is in many cases perfectly legal and hence it is not simply a matter of prosecuting everyone Margaret Hodge wants prosecuted.
Quote from the tax official in the lonked article.
Indeed, HMRC admits (under Parliamentray privilege) receiving stolen data. Evidence obtained unlawfully cannot be used in a criminal case, the rule of law is still recognised, at least by the courts, if not HMRC.
I rather assumed Carswell was actually complaining about the stolen data with the ‘law unto itself’ remark.
Good post.
And the tax authorities (both in Britain and in the United States) are cheered on by the media – especially the entertainment media.
Constantly “the rich” and “big business” are shown as the “bad guys”.
“The people” could have everything they want – if only “the rich” and “big business” were made to pay their “fair share”.
The Rule of Law?
A minor consideration – a mere cover for the interests of “the rich” and “big business”.
So many hold this view – including our brothers and sisters on the “libertarian left”.
How to convince people otherwise?
Only experience (not clever debating tricks)has a chance of doing this.
When, perhaps, the people of Greece are starving in the streets it is possible that the left (including the “libertarian” left) will reconsider their position.
Although they may still blame everything on “the rich” and “big business”.
But it will be an opening – a possibility of a change in the culture.
A staw in the wind……
When the Hollywoodheads observe the future collapse of California around them it is possible (just possible) that they will reconsider their “Progressive” position and stop making “the rich” and “big business” the baddies in almost every television show and film.
Britain?
Given how densely populated this country is, it is probably best not to consider the future.
The future when HMRC finally “achieve” the driving out of “the rich” and “big business” from the U.K.
After all the opposition is even MORE committed to arbitrary and lawless powers for the tax authorities.
Who, among those who can leave, would want to stay in a country where the tax authorities can do anything they feel like doing?
But they are not our brothers and sisters, and they are not even libertarians. They are like meat eating vegetarians. Stop paying attention to them, it is not like they actually matter.
I’m genuinely interested – at which zoo would one find living examples of the ‘libertarian left’, as I’d like to observe such creatures. They seem philosophically impossible to me, as any definition of left-wing tends to involve collectivism in some respect.
Left libertarians.
Tell you what, if they give us ‘liberal’ back then they can have ‘libertarian’.
Heh
( U.S.)Of COURSE I had to look up Quango.
Webster’s College: nope
American Heritage: nope
*sigh* Wiki-England and Ireland
Alan Pifer: in an essay on independence and accountability in public-funded bodies incorporated in the private sector.(which I have not read)
Wait…wait…independence (from um…what exactly?) AND “accountability” (to uh…whom exactly) and at what clearly defined um….consequence?
M. Thompson’s observation above concerning, but most certainly NOT limited to, the IRS department of the Treasury, seems pertinent here.
“Libertarian Left”? Good one. That term doesn’t exist, in actual practice, in the U.S. EITHER! (see: oxymoron/malapropism/”usage”)
Quango
So how is HMRC a “quango” (a “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization”)? Isn’t it an official agency of the UK government?
I am impressed that HMRC seems sensitive to actually following the rule of law (“you have to be able to prove those facts another way”) since it’s admittedly dealing with non-admissible stolen data. I wish that our own IRS were as fastidious.
Laird,
I think the term “quango” is used as a term of deprecation, describing something as a useless bureaucracy. Mr Carswell would certainly know the distinction, you are right that HMRC is an integral part of the government (or rather the Crown) established by Act of Parliament and with Commissioners appointed under Letters Patent. HMRC was formed from the Inland Revenue (personal, stamp and corporate tax) and HM Customs and Excise, dealing with those taxes. Merging two functions is, in a way, very un-Soviet, Lenin duplicated everything, this led to two organisations doing similar tasks, everything from management of production of children’s toys, Pravda and Izvestia even as far as having two Air Forces, with each organ watching the other as a potential rival.
On the ‘Libertarian Left’. I suspect that I could walk around central London for a week, asking everyone I meet if they have heard of the ‘Libertarian Left’, and provided that I wasn’t asking the Sage of Kettering, no one would have the faintest idea what I was asking, my behaviour being regarded as odd even by the standards of London. More people believe in UFOs.
Mr Ed, I suppose that explanation makes as much sense as any. Still, it seems unnecessarily sloppy, although perhaps it is a consequence of the Twitter 140-character limit.
But as to “Libertarian Left“, you must not travel too much in libertarian circles if you haven’t run across the term before. A lot of those people hang out in places like this and this. Like Paul, I have no use for them.
I strongly suspect that you could perform the same exercise with “libertarian ” and get similar results.
Wh00ps,
i’m pretty sure that there are 4 in London! 🙂
Watchman:
Somewhat off topic but I beg to disagree: that is probably true of any definition in the Anglosphere; but, contrary to what Brendan O’Neill seems to believe, the Anglosphere is not the whole of Western civilization.
I have given a lot of thought about this issue in the last few years, and have tentatively come to the conclusion that, pre-ww2, being “of the Left” meant basically to be opposed to the current ruling class.
By contrast, in the Anglosphere, being of the “left” has always meant, since the term came into use, to support giving more powers to the State, i.e. to the ruling class. (Though possibly not to the current ruling class.)
The first piece of supporting evidence that comes to mind is Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism, where M. (or his ghost writer) clearly identified the “right” with authority, the collective, and the State: pretty much the same things that the Anglosphere identifies with the “left”.
See also Herbert Spencer’s essay: The New Toryism. Not using the words “left” and “right”, but also showing how our perception of the world has turned upside down — or more precisely, the other way around.
The term ‘Libertarian’ can have the meaning of ‘small’, as in small government, so anarchists might think of communes as libertarian governments.
Whilst we’re on ‘terms’, Why don’t anarcho-Capitalists just call themselves Free Anarchists? ‘Free’ as in not being part of a commune, and ‘Free’ as in favouring free enterprise?
Well I’ve just read Kevin Carson ‘a definition of left libertarianism at one of Paul’ a links and if I drew a ven diagram of how much I agree with what he said and one of the overlap with any UK political party including UKIP I’d definitely have more common with him. I also found it genuinely intellectually challenging in that l actually had to take some time to think about exactly why I disagreed with the things I disagreed with. If we actually want to achieve a libertarian world rather than just moan about not being in one I think we’d be far more sensible to emphasise our points of agreement than disagreement.
Wouldn’t “vegetarian carnivores” be more apt?
There is nothing un-libertarian about being in a voluntary commune. The thing that makes it un-libertarian is if people get forced to be in the commune at gunpoint.