UK Proposes All Paychecks Go to the State First

Update at bottom.

That’s the headline on a CNBC story and these are the first two paragraphs:

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.

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.

Cameron’s first order of business tomorrow should be to fire whoever proposed this.

HT to Tom Palmer and Gary Chartier.

Update. This just in from fellow blogger Tim Worstall:

David,

[Re] Your posting about the HMRC suggestion that all paychecks should be routed through them so that the correct tax could be deducted.
There’s one reason why it really won’t happen (thankfully, my reaction upon first hearing about it was to explode into Anglo Saxon epithets).

HMRC is the most unionised workforce in government….quite possibly in the UK. The union is PCS and the General Secretary is a chap called Mark Serwotka. He is an unreconstructed socialist (proper socialist, not Obama insult style socialist).

While politicians generally have the intellectual firepower of wet lettuce they, even they, are not stupid enough to give such a man/union control over the paychecks of the entire nation.

I know for a fact that this has been gently pointed out to the Cabinet…..

Tim Worstall