Ship 741I offer this up as something swear-worthy
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39265847
UK Proposes All Paychecks Go to the State First
Published: Monday, 20 Sep 2010 | 7:57 AM ET Text Size By: Robin Knight
CNBC Associate Web Producer
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The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.
Sharon Lorimer
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The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.
Currently employers withhold tax and pay the government, providing information at the end of the year, a system know as Pay as You Earn (PAYE). There is no option for those employees to refuse withholding and individually file a tax return at the end of the year.
If the real-time information plan works, it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.
“The next step could be to use (real-time) information as the basis for centralizing the calculation and deduction of tax,” HMRC said in a July discussion paper.
HMRC described the plan as “radical” as it would be a huge change from the current system that has been largely unchanged for 66 years.
Even though the centralized deductions proposal would provide much-needed oversight, there are some major concerns, George Bull, head of Tax at Baker Tilly, told CNBC.com.
“If HMRC has direct access to employees’ bank accounts and makes a mistake, people are going to feel very exposed and vulnerable,” Bull said.
And the chance of widespread mistakes could be high, according to Bull. HMRC does not have a good track record of handling large computer systems and has suffered high-profile errors with data, he said.
The system would be massive in terms of data management, larger than a recent attempt to centralize the National Health Service’s data, which was later scrapped, Bull said.
If there’s a mistake and the HMRC collects too much money, the difficulty of getting it back could be high with repayments of tax taking weeks or months, he said.
“There has to be some very clear understanding of how quickly repayments were made if there was a mistake,” Bull said.
HMRC estimated the potential savings to employers from the introduction of the concept would be about £500 million ($780 million).
But the cost of implementing the new system would be “phenomenal,” Bull pointed out.
“It’s very clear that the system does need to be modernized… It’s outdated, it’s outmoded,” Emma Boon, campaigner manager at the Tax Payers’ Alliance, told CNBC.com.
Boon said that the Tax Payers’ Alliance was in favor of simplifying tax collection, but stressed that a new complex computer system would add infrastructure and administration costs at a time when the government is trying to reduce spending.
There is a further concern, according to Bull. The centralized storage of so much data poises a security risk as the system may be open to cyber crime.
As well as security issues, there’s a huge issue of transparency, according to Boon.
Boon also questioned HMCR’s ability to handle to the role effectively.
The Institute of Directors (IoD), a UK organization created to promote the business agenda of directors and entreprenuers, said in a press release it had major concerns about the proposal to allow employees’ pay to be paid directly to HMRC.
The IoD said the shift to a real-time, centralized system could be positive as long as the burden on employers was not increased. But it added that the idea of wages being processed by HMRC was “completely unacceptable.”
“This document contains a lot of good ideas. But the idea that HMRC should be trusted with the gross pay of employees is not one of them,” Richard Baron, Head of Taxation at the IoD, said in the release.
A spokesperson for Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was not immediately available for comment.
Ship 741My guess is the news outlet who reported this only did so due to sagging ratings, sales have probably been soft.
Ship 741It does seem the airport charges and fees are getting out of hand worldwide.
I believe the Germans just passed some egregious new tax for departing passengers, and the of course the UK fees for London (apparently to pay for T5?) are completely beyond the pale. What is it, 100 or 150 dollars to leave the UK now?
Ship 741In fact 4 engine airplanes have a greater chance of engine failure than twins…..twice as great as a matter of fact. Thats one of the reasons that quads divert more than twins……:)
Ship 741Yes I suppose there are some scenarios whereby the GE might beat the RR into service. That would be quite a change, but the 787 program is already way off track time wise so its within the realm of possibility
Ship 741Thanks for posting the picture.
Uncontained engine failures are always big news to those who care about the industry and really follow things. This is NEVER supposed to happen. Its quite rare for established engines. Thank God the chunks departed away from the airframe, and the other wing engine.
Ship 741The GE airplanes were always scheduled to be certficated second.
According to this site:http://nyc787.blogspot.com/this engine failure has huge implications for the 787 program and RR.
Apparently it was destined for airframe number 9, and Boeing had intended that airframe to help complete the flight test hours, along with some others. Boeing apparently always intended for additional airplanes (beyond the 6) to help fill out the flight hour requirement for certification.
Furthermore, some engine re-design may be necessary.
Ship 741Chirp Chirp Chirp.
Its very quiet around here…..One can hear the crickets chirping on this forum since the explosion in the test cell……and it seems that just yesterday (actually it was a few weeks ago) on another thread nationalistic fervor ran amok with people patting themselves on the pack about how great Rolls Royce was.
I would submit that RR wasn’t as good as everyone claimed, and yet is not as bad as this embarrassing failure would indicate. For the record, it appears that the engine that suffered the uncontained failure (politically correct engineering parlance for “explosion”) was destined for ZA012, a production airplane:
http://nyc787.blogspot.com/
“In an article by Flightblogger, the newest 6 week deay has been prompted by a lack of the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines for the ninth 787 (LN 9, ZA102) as well as subsequent RR powered 787s that would be used in the flight test program. This aircraft was to be used for ETOPS testing as well as functionality and reliability testing using production standard engines. Furthermore, Flightblogger says that the uncontained failure of the engine was an engine that to eventually hang off the wing of ZA102 and power that aircraft. This engine is a package “A” engine.”
D’OH!
Ship 741AF has been so bad for so long, I wonder how they continue to stay in service. Unconsciously, I always place them in the “quasi-state run” category that several European carriers seem to enjoy in their nationalistic countries. Lacking that as an explanation, ie., “indirect” state support, I’m at a loss to understand how they maintain their standing as a respected world carrier.
Ship 741Unflattering nicknames aside…perhaps it was the cost associated with the third engine that helped pushed plane out the door?
Anyone know facts rather than just rumors, employee “scuttlebutt” and not to funny jokes aside?
Aircraft with more than 2 engines don’t seem to be too popular these days.
747s are fairly scarce (and not seen on many runs anymore where they used to be common), A340s haven’t set the world on fire with sales records, and the A380 is in a class by itself.So rather than continued speculation…and badmouthing an airplane few here have direct knowledge of…
Did AA and other MD-11 operators say why they retired them?
I have never seen any public comment on why they retired them. You make a good point, and I agree with you to a point. The twins are/have definitely taking over.
However, not being an economist or accountant, I’m not qualified to quantify the amortization concerning replacing payback. I’m not sure I worded that correctly, but what I’m trying to address is the marginal efficiency gain of the twin versus the tri against the fact that the tri is an owned asset. If a 777 cost $200 million, how long would it take to make that up with the marginal fuel savings difference? It seems to me that the MD-11 investment cost was hardly amortized. We arent’ talking Singapore or one of the Middle Eastern carriers here…..:), they seem to change airplanes every few years just because they can.
Ship 741Sorry, I normally trip-out after the first sentence. Not question dodging. I love the MD-11 and NO, I do not think a grounding is justified. Anytime a 737/A320 has an accident I don’t think that justifies a grounding either. Obviously by your authoritive posting you already know what the cause of the LH hull loss was so why don’t you tell us (of course, you could always wait for the official report)
I’m sorry that I sounded so authoritive. (is that a word?). I’ve stated at least twice that it APPEARS that this accident was due to a fire in the cargo. You make a good point that perhaps I and others have jumped the gun and should wait on the report. Perhaps it will be more conclusive than the Swissair MD-11, which to my mind really didn’t tell give us much firm information. All we REALLY know about that one is that another passenger MD-11 crashed.
I would argue that love of an airplane type pre-disposes one to a reasoned view of it’s attributes. I neither love or hate it, emotion doesn’t enter into it…for me the record suffices, and the record is not worthy of love.
Ship 741Also note that in 10-20 years of service, no passenger MD-11 was lost in a landing mishap.
As noted, there has been at least one passenger accident, and many incidents, on the MD-11, all the more remarkable since it had so few years in passenger service, far less than 20 at major carriers.
For example, both American and Delta both retired their MD-11 fleets at a ridiculously young age. American only operated the beast for 11 years and Delta 12ish. That is almost laughable, considering that both have 767’s that are approaching 25 years old. Both have 757’s that are over 25 years old. How old are the AA MD-80’s? They clearly didn’t get the service life from the airplane that they were expecting. IMHO on the basis of the number of incidents the airplane experienced, they got scared of the airplane and retired it prior to a major accident.
Ship 7416lightmech: And you dodged the quesion again. Is there a point at which grounding is justified? That was the last sentence of my post,did u not read that far?
Scorsch: thanks 4 the info on the Lufthansa pilots. I thought ALL airline pilots bid by seniority. LH is a little different though, witness their ETOPS reticience. There is already a lot of training and awareness of the MD-11 quirks, but the incidents seem to keep happening. Granted, different scenario in this latest incident.
Ship 741I have posted that IMHO there will be additional landing accidents on this airplane type. To those of you who feel that the grounding is unjustified at the current time, I pose the following question: at what point (how many more accidents) is grounding justified?
Ship 741Nothing really changes the fact that the MD-11 has a HORRIBLE safety record, the worst of any modern airplane, and worse than many of the previous generation of airplanes. Accidents will continue to happen on the airplane not because of the environment (flying freight at night or on long distances), or because I said so, but because it is poorly designed. The only hope is that Fedex may voluntarily retire the airplane soon, as most passenger carriers did unbelieveably quickly, far more quickly than almost any other modern airplane. Perhaps Fedex is showing their hand now by buy NEW 777’s, they have almost never bought new airplanes before.
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