The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year.

However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not.

Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.

It's the same evil math behind every other billing scam that sails under the flag of ignorance.

Speaking of ignorance, to all those people saying you forgot to fill out a form, there are several states that are known to be maliciously sloppy about this sort of thing. You file a form and they silently reject it or billing you anyway on some questionable pretext because they can. NY is one of them. Doesn't surprise me that IL is too since both states are kinda cash strapped.

I was traveling through the state and got on a toll road by accident without cash to pay the tolls, the toll booth employee said I could just pay online, pointing to a sign that said "missed a toll? pay online at <url>", so we continued our trip intending to pay the tolls online. At the end of the trip, I logged on to pay our tolls--the application insisted that we enter the specific toll IDs of each toll that we missed, even though we didn't know we were supposed to be recording any toll IDs. If you didn't know the toll IDs, you could use a map application to look up the toll IDs, but the map application would crash within a second of opening it and even if you managed to get a screenshot the resolution was so low that the text was indecipherable. When I called the support number, they told me that I would be fined triple the cost of the tolls if I didn't pay within a week, but I would be able to pay without knowing the specific toll IDs that I missed. When I asked the agent to tell me what tolls I missed (clearly they knew if they were going to fine me), they told me they couldn't tell me for another week. I pointed out that this would be after the toll deadline and they relentlessly tried to avoid acknowledging that simple fact. Eventually I sent them my best guess about what I owed with a letter stating what I had attempted and that I would contact a lawyer about any fines and never heard from them again.

Some years later, after moving to Chicago, I had to file state taxes for the first time. The state issued me a driver's license with a 12 digit number, but the state tax form only allowed me to authenticate with an 8 digit Illinois driver's license number (the other acceptable forms of identification didn't apply to me for reasons I no longer remember).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_Califor...

The main problems are a) logging into gov.uk to do it is endlessly tedious, and b) monthly?? I thought all the childcare reconfirmations and security questions were bad enough.

Also you're not forced to come back and read it again every month which is the real problem.

The system is run by employees of whatever agency handles taxes. Neither the employees nor the agency keep a portion of the taxes. If they do not have the money or will to fix it, people are supposed to pressure their representatives to give them the money and mandate.

If this truly came down to an intent to squeeze more money out of people than they owed, that would almost always come from the law's wording. Again, pressure the representatives.

The only times an agency would squeeze money is when it's funded in large part by fines or fees, or if an employee is committing fraud and pocketing some of the money.

There are also apparently canvassers paid by the county who go door to door checking for this?! I'm not the kind of person to typically nitpick about where my taxes are going, but...I retroactively and broadly apologize for every lighthearted jab I may have ever made about TV licensing in the UK. This is beyond dumb in comparison. And my condolences, the fact that this system leads to them harassing you in this way is completely insane.

Largely because unscrupulous restaurants had, I think they were called “zippers” to perma-erase revenue/transactions.

Some EU countries did a “if you don’t get a receipt, you don’t have to pay”, which erased the concept of a bar tab. During a drinking session with friends, you’d end up with a stack of receipts to pay as you got a receipt with each beer request.

Income taxes are a similar idea: employer pays on your behalf and then you do some manual or virtually automatic reconciliation at the end of the year. Canada is pretty much the latter where the gov already has all the info and you can import it into your tax software where most people don’t have to change anything.

I dunno why countries like sales taxes but low tariffs. Would be easier to tariff imports at a small number of points and let everything internal run free. Why have sales tax on local production.

The more “tax points” you create, the harder it’s going to be to enforce it all.

And that's especially ironic since the whole point of the "Low Value Purchase System" is to make selling to government less time-consuming for small businesses!

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governo...

Slide 1ish: State cares about emissions, take it very seriously if you want to keep your license.

Slide 2ish: State gives no fucks either way about "safety" inspections, they don't affect squat and aren't worth the money so far as our studies and stats can tell

Slide 3ish: If it wasn't obvious, "safety" is your blank check to sell work and in return the state expects you to take emissions seriously.

The rest of the slides were technicalities and requirements and the final slide was a recap of 1-3.

I too am glad I was exposed to such things early on.

When I left, people were advising me to become a vendor, which was what a lot of people did as a retirement plan. You'd go to the secret portal and fill out the inscrutable forms, then give them to someone who you probably knew at the special time. Then the state would order things from you, and you would simply order them from Amazon or Uline or whatever. There was also a trade in minority and female figureheads (to white male businesses) to get you prioritized.

a/k/a regulatory capture. Large established vendors can afford the staffing to deal with this, small startups either cannot or they miss an obscure step in the process and they are excluded.

Every single time they replace an old system with something else they all manage to add additional complicity. Don't know if you get to use HERA in your department but it is a complete pile of mess.

I think the correct way would be a one-click link in an email though!

In another European country where I work (Finland) it’s as you describe but it’s still more than doing absolutely nothing that I did in the UK.

They're to make sure employees ring up the sale (and don't pocket the money)

and now I understand they're for the government too, to make sure taxes are paid.

The other thing I have to do is enter deductions like moving expenses, tuition, charitable donations, medical expenses, etc., which the government doesn't have direct access to.

Well, they are complaining about having to login monthly to file a zero report.

Yes, I agree its bureaucratic, but that's no excuse for not reading the damn contract !

If they read the contract they signed up to, perhaps they would have decided "fuck that" and not bothered signing up in the first place.

P.S. Reading contracts is a good thing, because I bet this guy also missed all the juicy indemnity and liability clauses, some of which are unlimited for "interesting" things such as unlimited indemnity for third-party Intellectual Property claims against the government related to what you supplied them:

     10.5 If any claim is made against CCS for actual or alleged infringement of a third party’s intellectual property arising out of, or in connection with, the supply or use of the Offered Deliverables (an "IPR Claim"), then the Supplier indemnifies CCS against all losses, damages, costs or expenses (including professional fees and fines) incurred as a result of the IPR Claim.

Unless a new breed has been named, or an /s was missing, I'm not sure they will be very successful in their recovery attempts.

Give the local producers of any size a bit of subsidy instead a dog’s breakfast of programs to accomplish the same with a ton of friction.

Probably wouldn’t work well in China, but here in Canada…

It's generally correct: If you're self-employed / sole trader and operating outside IR-35, there's no way the HMRC can know how much you were paid as they don't have the info, so they can't know how much tax you owe.

In other situations for payrole / salary (like PAYE for example) they do have the info, as companies have to submit it, so generally people in those situations don't have to submit tax returns (unless they have significant capital gains).

I do think it's a bit annoying you have to declare tax on interest since 2016 if it's over £1000 - previously banks would take it out automatically, and this is still done in other countries (NZ for example).

It's not wrong to over-quote a shitty customer by an amount that'd make you willing to deal with their shittiness. That's totally fine on your part actually, since either they take the bid and you make money, or they don't and you don't have to deal with them.

Just because it's in the contract doesn't mean you can't complain if it's a stupid waste of time.

The only way I can increase prices is if I stop having an advertised price and go to a pure ‘contact us for pricing’ model. I can either be mass market at commodity prices or I can target governments at inflated costs but I can’t do both. We’re the last hold out in my niche and eventually we will have to leave the commodity market.

For a start they would be better of complaining to their MP instead of ranting about it on the internet. At least there is a remote chance their MP is in a position to do something about it.

Complain on blog: several letters to MPs of different districts, all of whom can now say that their constituents are writing to them and complaining about the same thing.

I don’t know the inner workings of Parliament but this is pretty basic for any remotely democratic government system. One person who cares a lot is less valuable than a lot of people who only care a little.

Writing about it there is a lot more likely to have a positive result than writing to his MP.