Hi David,

welcome to the forum and good luck with todays sales.

But...

on the last line though about paying no tax, nobody has done anything wrong.

despite the way some politicians and the red top media are speaking at the moment avoidance is not against the law, only evasion is.

If there is an issue with someone not paying tax and they are breaking no laws then it is a problem with the system, not the individual.

Also, personal view is that a progressive tax system is wrong. It should be a single rate of tax straight accross the board regardless as to whether one earns £5k or £5m as what is the point in attempting to better yourself if a greater percentage of your money is taken the more that you earn.

20% of 5k is £1k, 20% of 5m is £1m. Those making more would still be contributing much more but by simplifying tax the moral justification behind avoidance would be removed.

Oh well, at least we're not back in the dark old days of the 1970's. A freinds cousin was a drummer with a world famous rock band and his complaint was that in real terms he would need to earn £100 to afford to buy a mars bar.

It was that sort of media backed state robbery that caused the issues that exist today where people need to use specialist vehicles in order to retain a fair share of their earnings.

Google, Amazon, Starbucks... All great companies who pay what they need to and employ a great number of people meaning that taxpayers are not paying unemployment benefits for these people.

As I say, if the Government want these companies to pay more then change the tax system to shore up the discrepancies... Of course, change it too much and these companies will go elsewhere and those they employ will become a burden on a state taking even less in tax revenue.

Right, off me tax soap box,

that was fun,

talk later,

Shaun.

Thanks for the heads-up, Shaun.

Although I have said before that I don't like QuickBooks (and a recent-ish discussion on this forum in which I queried something specific about newer versions didn't result in my opinion changing), I thought considered this on my drive this morning, and decided to buy it.

A number of reasons, in no particular order: I can play with it and see for myself what's what in the software, and how it's changed since I last used it for myself (which was a long time ago) - and for that price, if I still don't like it and won't carry on with it, I haven't lost much. Having said that, even if the things I dislike about it still stand they're really only factors for businesses with a large number of transactions. For those with fewer, I could probably put up with it. (And being multi-company out of the box counts in its favour - no per-company tax (Hello, Sage *waves*)).

It'll potentially also be useful to me to bring myself fully up to date with how it works for the next time I'm called out to sort out someone else's mess and they happen to be using QuickBooks - the more familiar I am with it, the faster I can solve their problems.

The only downside: Amazon. Sometimes I get a valid VAT receipt from them, sometimes I don't. I tend to not use them for business purchases very often, so I've not looked at what I have had to see if I can discern a pattern. These days, the difference in price between Amazon and elsewhere has to be close to the VAT amount in order for me to buy from them, so if I don't get receive the right paperwork, I've not paid noticeably more than I would have elsewhere with that receipt - and if they do supply one, I've paid noticeably less. IYSWIM.

David: Hard luck, you posted too late - after reading Shaun's post, I didn't check the forum again until after I ordered. Your sale price given on the site, plus that discount code still makes your price marginally higher than Amazon's, but was close enough that it would have made the difference had I seen it first. However, now the deal is done I'm not inclined to change it. Sorry.

From memory, my biggest gripes about using it were:

Firstly, that it slowed me down when inputting because it had an approach whereby it gave the user a representation on screen of what they had on paper, and didn't support batch input screens like Sage's, which are grid-like (or spreadsheet like) in appearance, and offer useful shortcuts like F6 to copy the cell above, and shift-F6 to *incrementally copy*. This is also one of my gripes about the cloud-based offerings I've seen. If I'm entering a long list of payments (not against suppliers), for example, then I don't want a sodding on-screen representation of a bloody cheque for each one!

Note: This lack of batch inputting is the subject that was discussed hereabouts fairly recently and, from what I remember of the thread, it's still the case. (The ability to import batch data was mentioned, but there's a difference!)

Secondly, the VAT: It didn't cater for clients who routinely 'found' invoices and input them stupidly late: It didn't in any way mark or flag transactions that had been used on a VAT return, and so know to include such late transactions on the next: instead, if you looked at a previous VAT return again, the figures on that had changed to reflect the newly input 'old' invoices (!) and disagreed with the submitted figures. Easy to work around if you know what you're doing, but a damned stupid implementation. (I remember having a conversation with a VAT inspector about this. Around the time, they were recommending QuickBooks, but the inspector was more than a little cynical about it because of this problem, which he had found for himself during a previous inspection!)

Of course, I'm talking about Quickbooks from at least ten years ago - if it's changed a lot between 2008 and now, then it must be hugely different from what I remember. :p

(And as I said upthread, though, for much smaller businesses with only a small number of transactions, those problems are non-issues.)

Oh, yeah, and I've just remembered another issue I had with it - or rather with a support drone at the software company. I remember needing to do something urgently, but I couldn't access the software (a username in use error or something along those lines). Upon ringing the support number, the drone took the details of the problem and asked what version it was. It wasn't the latest version, so he suggested upgrading. I asked if that would solve the problem (especially bearing in mind I needed to access the data pronto) and he said "No, but it's a really good idea." Note the first word of that answer! Stern words followed, and he quickly gave me the correct solution (which is more or less the same solution to a similar problem that can sometimes crop up in Sage).

Entirely unrelated, I once visited the client in question and discovered that their IT guy had cannibalised the computer on which their accounts data was held for spare parts to repair other computers. Muppet!

I wonder how much tax a school leaver on £128.80 per week should pay so that the likes of Mick Jagger and Macca only have to pay the same?  Still, now I see why Shaun thinks so highly of Maggie ... shame about the Poll Tax, huh?

But I do agree with Shaun's point about Google et al.  If the Chancellor doesn't like people using the reliefs and exemptions available, he should remove them, not whinge about companies' lack of morality.  The law is amoral, so adherence to it must also be immune to criticism on moral grounds. 

... and we should all be aware of this.


Iain

Its the conservatives who have been working to take more of the lower paid workers out of the tax system.

The issue comes when you hit £100k and you start to lose your tax free allowance which disappears completely at 118880 so when people hit the £100k they need to be aware that a wage rise may actual see their take home go down rather than up.

When at that stage employing the services of an accountant to help keep one's tax bill fair (and I just know that you are going to pick up on that word, lol) is advisable.