ODE TO TAX

• How do I tax thee? Let me count the ways.
• I tax thee on your cars, homes and all I might
• Grab with my hands when not in sight
• For saving, working or owning a place
• I tax thee to the hilt almost every day
• In life or death, you’ll have to pay
• I tax thee freely as you strive for right
• I tax thee purely sometimes out of spite
• I tax thee with a passion so there’s no use
• Of non-dom statuses or off-shore trusts
• Your global wealth it is a must
• Crocodile tears but with my last breath
• I shall tax thee better after death.

Thank you Elizabeth Barrett Browning for poetical inspiration on this subject.

Saddo that I am, I sat down yesterday to list all the ways in which we’re taxed in the UK and within minutes almost filled a sheet of A4 paper. When you look at just how much is put away either directly or indirectly into the gaping Government maw, it’s enough to give you the heebie-jeebies! Don’t try this exercise at home without first downing a large glass of Southern Comfort, the list is scary.

Before putting pen to paper, I asked myself if it would be easier to just list all the duties, levies or taxes either alphabetically or in size/priority order but in the end I felt it would make more sense to lump them under a few broad categories as follows:

Work – From the moment you set foot in a workplace until retirement, the tax clock swings merrily back and forth, tick-tocking away in the background like an invisible money metronome. Income tax, national insurance contributions, online selling taxes, corporation tax, taxes on property/room rental, etc. Whether you own or run your own business, have a side hustle or simply work for someone, there’s no escaping taxes. I’ve been working almost continually since I left college – that’s 44 years of paying employment related taxes.

Spending – Not content with picking your wage pocket, what’s left to spend is then subject to a whole host of other insidious unseen levies or duties such as VAT which is applied like thickly spread butter to almost every product or service you acquire, be it essentials or sin taxes such as duty payable on booze, fags or gambling.  

Vehicles – Having squirrelled away a few pennies, the first thing most young people do after getting a job is to buy a car. What you don’t realise as you screech away from the forecourt leaving a trail of rubber on the tarmac, is that at the same time you’ve also signed up to a lifetime subscription to HMRC. Vehicle excise duty (road tax), fuel duty and insurance premium tax continue to erode your earnings until you can’t read the small print or realise that wasn’t the brake pedal. (Bang!) I passed my driving test at the age of 23, that’s 40 years of paying vehicle related taxes.

Property – After a car, comes a house although these days the chances of getting onto the property ladder before you’re 50 are pretty slim. When you buy or sell property, the Chancellor does a little rain dance. Whoop! Whoop! Another one bites the dust. Yeah baby! Rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of all that filthy lucre - stamp duty, council tax, capital gains tax (second homes) green energy levies (added to bills) flowing into the coffers. Honestly, young people are probably better off never leaving home and just living at their parent’s expense. Eventually, Britain will become like other countries where you have three or four generations living in their own familial commune to cut down on property or social care expenses. I stepped onto the housing ladder at the age of 20, buying a small flat jointly with my ex-husband so I’ve been paying property related taxes for over 42 years.

Savings/Pensions – So you’ve come to the end of your working life. In addition to shelling out a chunk of your hard-earned dosh in the previous four broad tax categories, you’ve somehow had a little left over to put away either into a pension or savings account for that retirement rainy day. Wake up and smell the coffee as your nice little nest egg is being eyed up by the tax magpie perched in the branches above. Yep, nothing’s sacred to these scavengers! There are taxes to be paid on share dividends, savings accounts (if interest is over £1,000 or not in an ISA) and every time you draw down on your pension pot, 20% is handed over to the Revenue. As I’ve said before, there’s little incentive to save for your old age – may as well have the best life you can whilst you’re young then live off the state.

Death – And the above last statement is vitally important if you want to limit the very, very, very last tax bill you and your loved ones may need to pay once you finally kick the bucket. When you die you transition from being an earthly taxpayer to being a heavenly one. Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes. Especially the Inheritance Taxes. 

It really takes the biscuit and smacks of double taxation thinking that you've paid taxes all your life out of your earnings or as a consumer then you have to pay AGAIN when you die.   You may be a 20% taxpayer in life but when you die, magically you move into a higher tax bracket (40%) if the grand total of all your worldly wealth exceeds a certain threshold.

The trick here is to ensure it doesn’t but even that is about to become harder if current revenue raising rumours are to be believed. How to limit your IHT bill? Here’s a few suggestions: Ensure you spend, spend, spend before dying. Buy nice clothes, splash out on expensive useless anti-ageing treatments, eat at the finest restaurants. Go to theatre, concerts, festivals. Don’t worry about dynamic ticket pricing as it’s doing you a favour by mitigating your IHT.

Employ gardeners, cleaners, chauffeurs, to help with daily chores. Pay them cash in hand. Give generously to charities – money or assets. Charities will take that old stamp or coin collection that’s been gathering dust for years off your hands. Financially help your children while you can. If you have grandchildren, pay for their university fees, driving lessons or house deposit. Take family holidays together in your old age with you footing the bill. There’s no tax law against that is there?

Your golden years are effectively a last chance saloon – make memories not money! Memories can’t be taxed. Your kids, grand kids, relatives will thank you for all those fun times had together and you can finally give a two fingered salute to the Tax Man with your dying breath safe in the knowledge your worldly wealth is less than the IHT threshold.

SHOESTRING FESTIVALS

Recently I stumbled across an online post on our neighbourhood website written by pensioners bemoaning the extortionate costs of going to festivals. There are still ‘silver’ revellers out there like me secretly pining for their misspent youth who’d like to keep on rocking but can’t afford to do so because cash is generally being saved for heating/food or carer costs. It really got me thinking that life’s far too short to spend all your time hoarding money for those sensible things. Occasionally, you just have to throw caution to the wind and go splurge on some fun.

This post is dedicated to all those oldies who’d love to go to a festival but think it costs way too much. Here’s how super-scrimpers like us did a day out at this year’s Victorious Festival on a shoestring budget:

EARLY BIRDS – Leaving it to the last minute to decide to buy tickets for most festivals is going to cost you more money plus there’s always the risk that any day tickets may quickly sell out. The majority of festivals start selling tickets almost a year in advance which enables punters to get entry at a discounted cost.

These days many people at festivals are not there specifically for the bands, they go along either as part of a holiday break or just for a cracking day out. Music just becomes an incidental background soundtrack to whatever else you want to do so unless you definitely want to go along to see a particular artist then just pick a day to suit and buy your ticket in advance.

Saturday's Line Up - Aug 25

CREDIT – Being a super scrimper I’m not one to advocate people getting into debt but there are ways to spread the costs of buying tickets. If shelling out a large chunk of dosh isn’t for you, see if there are instalment options you can take advantage of. A lot of festivals offer payment plans or failing that there’s always your flexible plastic friend. Buy tickets on a credit card then set up your own monthly direct debit to pay it off in chunks before the festival date.

TRAVEL – Aside from the entry ticket, the cost of getting there is likely to be your next biggest expense. Portsmouth is not a city that welcomes motorists. There are few free on-street parking spots, the car parks cost a small fortune for a day’s parking and even the festival’s own park & ride scheme is enough to make your wallet shrivel like an over-cooked roast potato.

Public transport usually derided for being costly or unreliable can actually work out fairly economical if you are retired. Senior railcards or National Express coachcards available for anyone aged 60 or over will get you a third off the price of a train/coach ticket plus let’s not forget free bus passes that allow travellers to travel off peak for nothing (or very little). The Government has capped bus fares at £3 each way and this too can be advantageous if you don’t live too far from the festival site.

Coming from Chichester, we drove to a location closer to Portsmouth with cheaper all-day parking then took the bus into the city. £12 for four single bus tickets (2 adults) plus £2.50 to park for 24 hours. Although it has a really good bus station, Chichester does not appear to have a night bus to Portsmouth or anywhere. More’s the pity really because night buses are a great way to cut congestion and allow motorists a night off. Perhaps Stagecoach should take a leaf out of Nottingham’s book and put on special festival buses during the Victorious weekend. They have special buses to Goodwood events from the train station so why not to the annual Victorious festival?

FOOD & DRINK – Yep, a festival pint and some nosh are going to make a large dent in your bank balance. Price for a pint at Victorious around £7.50 and food prices somewhere between £11 and £18. As you can’t bring in any food or drink then a couple of tips to keep the grub bill down. Firstly, the most obvious one is to have a hearty carb heavy breakfast before leaving home or get down to Portsmouth early and visit the local ‘Spoons’. Having fuelled up in advance that leaves a smaller hunger window to satisfy later on in the day.

Sharing is caring at festivals especially when it comes to meal times. We normally do a reconnaissance lap of all the food stalls on arrival, mentally noting prices and seeing if what’s on offer could be shared. Meals such as pizzas, fish n chips or pots of pasta are good for this. Cheaper to go halves than fork out a small fortune for fatty unhealthy foods, the sort that would be on the Obesity Police’s most wanted list.

Festival site map

On the other hand, water is FREE as you can bring in empty drinks bottles then refill from the numerous drinking fountains dotted around the festival site. As most of us oldies are on medication then alcohol tends to be a thing of the past. Plus, when it’s mega hot also leaves you feeling dehydrated. We limit festival pints to a maximum of two which we also share.

BUDGET BEFOREHAND – If the thought of all this scrimping does your head in then setting up a kitty at home so that you can set aside a few quid every month may be a better idea. Putting a fiver a month into an old jam jar for a year should give you enough cash (£60) to cover a meal plus a couple of pints.

GETTING HOME – I know I’ve already mentioned travel but if you are using public transport then best to check before going to the festival if there are any changes to normal services. The last train or bus home may depart well before the headline act finishes and is likely to be rammed with booze fuelled revellers so bear this in mind. If you are using the no 23 bus service back towards Havant then head down to Southsea Parade Pier so you can catch the bus at the start of its route. This bus makes it way from Southsea through Portsmouth then onto Hilsea and Havant, a very popular route with festival goers. Older revellers or those with kids tend to leave the festival site around 9pm which makes catching the bus a most interesting bun fight.

Just totting up what was spent for our Saturday at the Victorious Festival. This list should give you an idea of what it might cost one person for a fun day out:

• Saturday advance day ticket - £70
• All day parking - £2.50
• Bus to & from car park - £6
• Pot of crumble & ice cream - £8.50
• Pint and a half of cider - £12
• Large fish and chips - £10.50
• Coffee and slice of cake - £8
• Total cost of day out £117.50

Works out at approximately £10 per month over 12 months if you are going to budget across the year which is really not unachievable for most people even those on a pension.  I know £118 is still a lot of dosh for many but as mentioned before on this blog, if you really want something that badly then it's all a case of trade-offs or sacrifices.  Just making a small change in your daily spending habits could enable you to have festival fun.

We could have slimmed down our bill by leaving out the crumble, coffee and cake but hey, even super scrimpers have got to have some small indulgences in life.

Neighbours – get that old pickle jar out now and start putting away your spare change then you too can go to next year’s Victorious Festival. Yep, the super early bird tickets are already on sale. Hurrah!!

Next year's date - hurry super early bird tickets now on sale

UNDERPANTS TAX

The minute she walked in the joint. Pah Pah!

I could see she was a gal of distinction, a real big spender.

Tax raising? No not mine.

She hasn’t got a clue what’s going on in our minds.

So let us get off to Dubai. Pah Pah!

I don’t pop my purse for every migrant in the sea.

Hey big spender,

Spend a little less on these.

Duh, duh, dee dum dah dah!!



I see the date for this year’s budget has finally been confirmed as the 26 November 2025, just a month before Christmas. Oh joy. Time to batten down the purse hatches for the next few months in case of any nasty surprises.

Desperate to raise revenue to plug an ever-increasing black hole (around 50 billion at the last guess), a black hole of such enormity that even Professor Brian Cox fell off his chair, the tabloid rumour mill has been working overtime spreading wild speculation as to where the tax axe will fall. Possible targets include pensions relief, ISA limits, inheritances and property taxes to name but a few.

All of these are fair game but I can foresee that increasing the tax take on any of these areas is likely to drive the nails further into the UK coffin to the extent they’ll be poking out the other side before long.

Reducing pension tax relief will discourage people from saving into pensions. Reducing ISA limits will discourage people from saving for their retirement. Tinkering with inheritance tax rules, gifts and limits will reduce wealth from being passed down to younger generations because us oldies will just blow all our savings on haircuts and holidays.

Property taxes – now there’s a can of worms you don’t want to open. Just ask Three Homes Rayner what happens when you try to get round things like paying stamp duty.

A Dr Tim Leunig has written a report suggesting that the Government might consider scrapping the current system of Stamp Duty and instead consider replacing this with a National Property Tax levied on a home’s value between £500,000 and £1 million.

Yeah, Tim great idea except did you stop to consider typical human behaviour if such a thing came about? Well, I can hazard a guess as to what might happen to the housing market if this did go ahead. To get round this tax no-one would be buying any high value properties so there’d be a glut of expensive housing stock that no-one would touch with a barge pole.

In contrast, the other end of the housing market would go into meltdown as buyers scramble to snap up all smaller less expensive homes making it harder for older folks to downsize or young people to get on the housing ladder. Increased demand for smaller properties would then push up prices. Eventually we’d go back to those days when people bought homes then lived in them all their lives becoming the asset rich, cash poor pensioners frequently mentioned in the tabloids.

If Council Tax went the same way ie based on any accrued equity in the value of property rather than on an ancient rateable value this too would have repercussions. For starters no-one would be incentivised to carry out home improvements for fear of increasing the value of their house. No DIY, no trade for builder’s merchants or jobs for tradespeople. No changing boilers, fitting solar panels or heat pumps as no doubt these too add value to properties by making them more eco-attractive so causing impact to energy industry and climate change. Housing stock would all go to the dogs.

Agreed that perhaps Council Tax bands could be reviewed with a few more added to cover more expensive properties (Mansion Tax) but anything else would be over-complicating matters. Who would be working out how much value has been accrued from one year to the next? How would postcode variations in property values be accounted for? Just makes my brain hurt thinking about it.

To add to all these wild rumours, I’d like to propose a potential new area for revenue generation – an Underpants Tax. Everyone wears pants so why not tax them? The more pants you own, the higher the rate of tax levied. You could even charge more for luxury designer pants.

The Biased Broadcasting Craporation sent out roving reporters into the community to garner feedback from locals regarding this newly proposed Underpants Tax.

Posh middle-class bird, Miss Portia Ofchips from West Sussex said ‘Dahling, lingerie is so last year. I like to think of myself as an AbsTena lady, not wearing knickers thus saving myself the bother of having to fill out all those tiresome tax returns. Ciao dahling (air kiss). I’m late for pilates.’

Sir Rich Gitsorwatt from Higher Nether Regions expressed outrage at the proposed Underpants Tax. ‘Preposterous! A tax on under garments, whatever next. No-one wants their low hanging fruit clacking about unfettered like a pair of thigh castanets. Y-fronts are a fundamental human right that should not be exploited for cash.’

Looks like my suggested Underpants Tax is likely to be just as unpopular as raiding pensions, property or anything else. Best to just let Reevonomics take their natural course. Bring on the budget!

CORNER BOOKCASE - PART III

Tractor! Generally shouted out loud in a Wurzely accent every time we see one busily trundling down narrow country lanes carrying loads of hay large enough to feed the bovine population of West Sussex. Our tractor tally was significantly boosted this weekend as we slowly wound our way past field and hill bearing painted shelf unit to its final resting place in Somerset.

Tractor!

Getting a long bookcase into a car proved challenging. Wood is not like a sponge ball that can be squeezed into tight gaps, there’s no give whatsoever so trying to shoehorn it across the front and back seats of a Ford Focus is a feat worthy of Houdini himself. It reminded me of the last time I bought a smaller sized pair of stretch jeggings, wondering why my face had turned purple as I attempted to squeeze my thunder thighs into a fabric tube only wide enough to accommodate an octopus tentacle. Size matters.

And this is particularly important when you arrive at the other end of your journey if what you’ve carefully carted across at least 4 counties then has to travel up a set of stairs. Stairs that might be narrow. Stairs that have twisty landings or low ceilings or newel posts with knobbly bits that stick out. Yes, that kind of stairs.

After a great deal of huffing, puffing, to me, to you and almost blowing the house down, the bookcase finally reached the home office, cheerily greeting its other half already being put to good use by my son.

Assembly of the corner unit couldn’t have been easier. Firstly, put ready-made plinth into position along the front of the existing skirting board at right angles to the first unit. The plinth has not been secured in any way because the weight of books plus it being butted up tightly to the other plinth should keep it from moving.

Hello old friend

Next step – carefully lift bookcase onto plinth taking care to push it back fully so that it minimises any gaps between wood and wall.

To secure this bookcase to the wall, six small right-angled brackets painted blue are being used. Use two brackets underneath each end of top, middle and bottom shelves. Screw one side of the bracket into the wooden shelf using screws small enough not to pierce through. Screw the other side of the bracket into the wall using long masonry screws.

Small metal brackets to hold unit against wall

Now the other half, bless him, is not the JR Ewing of the DIY world as he hates drilling into anything harder than a jam doughnut and as we’ve discovered – there’s bricks and there’s bricks. In this instance he can be forgiven for splashing out on yet another power tool – a meaty SDS drill. SDS drills with SDS drill bits can apparently slice through the hardest masonry like a hot knife through butter so well worth the money particularly if you’ve got a number of projects likely to need this level of hammer action.

SDS drill for those tougher than usual bricks

Using your brackets to help mark up hole positions, lift the bookcase unit off the plinth to drill holes and fit raw plugs ready for securing.

Once wall holes drilled, replace bookcase and secure in place with long masonry screws. There! That’s never going to fall down even with a few weighty tomes on it.

Secured to the brick wall

Having secured the bookcase, time to turn thoughts to the plinths. I’ve designed the corner unit so that the plinths themselves are slightly smaller than the bottom shelves with a view to fitting a front fascia that matches the existing skirting boards. Visually, this will look like the skirting runs continuously round the room below the corner unit.

Making the plinths look like skirting

Luckily, a close match was found in Wickes to the existing skirting board which has a profile called ‘Torus’ and is approximately 12 cm high. One 2.4 metre length is enough to cover the front of both units but you can work out how much you’ll need by adding all the linear measurements of each section together.

Double sided skirting - Torus & Ogee profiles

Of course, it’s never just going to be a case of chopping up a bit of skirting then sticking it onto a plinth because there’s the corners to be accounted for. In this case both an internal and external corner. Give the other half a gold star for making his own mitre box out of two pieces of scrappy timber because his plastic box wasn’t as tall as the skirting. Genius!

Home made mitre box same height as skirting

Working out how to mitre the corners of the skirting

With skirting pieces cut to size and corners mitred, it’s simply a case of a couple of coats of primer followed by white gloss then sticking them onto the plinths but that’s a job for another day.

Skirting fascia ready to prime then paint