VAT

Deijavoo

http://prog.teamrock.com/news/2014-12-24/matt-stevens-to-close-store-over-crazy-law-change

At least it may now filter out a lot of shite where people only get into music to make money. The results may be more Sex Pistols or The Fall rather than Motley Crue or Poison. 

Still, it feels like another obstacle for musicians. 

ICBM

Alternatively, perhaps all musicians should go out of their way to sell tiny quantities of VAT-liable music online, and so create such a mess that the VAT rules become unenforceable as well as uneconomical to collect.

Since that's the point of the original threshhold for small businesses - not that the government thought they shouldn't pay, just that it wasn't sensible to collect it because the admin cost outweighed the benefit.

Scotland beat the Poll Tax by mass non-payment...

mart

ICBM said:

....

Scotland beat the Poll Tax by mass non-payment...

It's a bit off topic, but I don't think this statement remotely holds water. I was living in Aberdeen at the time, and what was abundantly obvious was that Thatcher couldn't give a monkeys what the Scots felt and knew (post Ravenscraig) that she could get away with not giving a monkeys. The protests in London ended the poll tax, not anything North of the border.

Having said that, I like your vat plan!

ICBM

mart said:

It's a bit off topic, but I don't think this statement remotely holds water. I was living in Aberdeen at the time, and what was abundantly obvious was that Thatcher couldn't give a monkeys what the Scots felt and knew (post Ravenscraig) that she could get away with not giving a monkeys. The protests in London ended the poll tax, not anything North of the border.

No. The protests in London were minor in the grand scheme of things and would have been ignored just as every other protest or riot is ignored.

The reason the Poll Tax was abandoned was the government's realisation that England would follow the example set by Scotland only in even greater numbers, and the whole system of tax collection would then collapse. Trying it out on Scotland was their mistake - if they hadn't done that, the non-payment campaign probably wouldn't have got going in England before the tax was even fully introduced and they might have got away with it.

It's very important for governments to remember that taxation is only possible with the acceptance of the people, but they don't like that to be too widely known. I was living in Scotland then too, and I'm proud to have been part of bringing it down.

Deijavoo

ICBM said:

Alternatively, perhaps all musicians should go out of their way to sell tiny quantities of VAT-liable music online, and so create such a mess that the VAT rules become unenforceable as well as uneconomical to collect.

Since that's the point of the original threshhold for small businesses - not that the government thought they shouldn't pay, just that it wasn't sensible to collect it because the admin cost outweighed the benefit.

Scotland beat the Poll Tax by mass non-payment...

Is there anything you can't do?  That's a great idea. Now to organise.