Ed Balls - always gets a receipt...

[Osem]

Ed Balls has come under fire for suggesting people should get a written receipt for all transactions, even small gardening jobs.

The shadow chancellor said he always asked for a written record, even if it was just for £10 to cut a hedge, because it was the "right thing to do".

On Sunday Mr Balls told BBC Radio 5's Pienaar's Politics that people should ask for a record of paying somebody, even if it was for small jobs like cutting a hedge, because they have a "legal obligation" to pay tax.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31480231

Anyway:

But Mr Duncan Smith told BBC Breakfast Mr Balls's comments demonstrated
"Labour's complete lack of understanding of how business works and how people get by".

Cash payments are not dirty. In case you had gained the opposite impression, paying a self-employed person in cash for doing a job around your house or garden is completely legal.

Furthermore there is no legal obligation on you to keep a record of the payment, or to account for it to anyone at all. It is your money and you can do what you like with it.

All UK tax obligations lie with the self-employed person you are paying. As a matter of fact, a tradesman is not obliged to even offer you a receipt.

I wonder if his apparent obsession with getting receipts for all and sundry is more to do with the fallout from the MPs' expenses scandal than anything else. Whatever the case, it does go to show just how out of touch this 'man of the working class' is with the lives, finances and obligations of ordinary people in real world.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-children.html

http://order-order.com/2010/05/04/ed...xpense-abuses/

[Ramrod]

That was my conclusion. He seems totally ignorant about how the world operates. Or possibly he's talking rubbish and he knows it.

[alanbjames]

i can imagine him asking the local milkman for a reciept for a pint of milk.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Ramrod

That was my conclusion. He seems totally ignorant about how the world operates. Or possibly he's talking rubbish and he knows it.

A real man of the people then eh?

Make you wonder who votes for these people doesn't it.

[rhyds]

This reminds me of the whole VATMOSS uproar a few months ago. Basically anyone selling electronic "items" online (anything from knitting pattern PDFs to accounting systems) is now expected to either register for VAT and keep full records, go through a "marketplace" who take a percentage to do exactly that, or stop all together. A lot of paperwork for absolutely no benefit.

[Osem]

Unsurprisingly Miliband is already seeking to distance himself from Balls' nonsense and get Labour back on track with their message that only they will be tough on tax 'evoidance' by the rich despite doing precious little about it when they were in power for 13 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31485579

Ed Miliband has tried to neutralise the debate over whether people should get a written receipt for all transactions - even small £10 gardening jobs.

The issue has been hotly debated since Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls called for people to get such receipts because it was the "right thing to do".

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the suggestion was "absurd".

Quizzed on his attitude to tax, Mr Miliband said hedge funds were "more important than the hedge cutters".

"And I think that has been the clarity of view right across the shadow cabinet," he added.

Apart from Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, that is... It's laughable really.