Bitcoin Forum

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Looks like the UK is trying to be like the US.

bullish on bitcoin

Yes, this came in at the last budget. Precisely why I can no longer hold more than £5000 in fiat at any one time in the UK.

Now when the headline reads "Taxman has power to seize your Bitcoins..." then I will worry :)

IF this does get let into legislation and some of you do ignore the HMRC's letters they post you (they send 4 warnings)

then keep in mind these bits of info

"HMRC said the 'direct recovery' powers could be used to take money from joint accounts. "
"Only people who owe more than £1,000 should face the confiscation of money from bank accounts, and only if they would have at least £5,000 left afterwards."

meaning:
1. dont owe more then £1k tax
2. dont have more than £5-6k in any 1 bank account
3. dont have multiple accounts with the same bank (spread it out over different banks)

Do you know if this power had been granted? Or does it require new legislation?

as the last poster quoted, still in consultation stage.

one other thing to be concerned with is the merging of national insurance contributions to become "earnings tax"  thus if your employer does not pay in contributions or you as self employed dont pay the contributions, that can then also be used by HMRC to raid your bank account once the totals owd get large enough.

the reason i say this is that NI contributions have more error variance on if a employer pays the right amount, then compared to the error variance of income tax they pay HMRC through the PAYE system

basically employers get NI wrong more so then income tax, and most employee's/self employed dont realise it. but then with this new HMRC proposal, it will make the employee accountable to fill the deficit and not the employer.

other news which makes things worse is that government want to give employers tax breaks*1., meaning yep you guessed it. while employers dont pay as much "earnings tax" on behalf of their employee, employee's are left to 'fit the bill'

*1. http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/article/employment-allowance-2000-nic-break-unveiled/539156

Well, as an ardent tax resister in the UK, this is something I will need to keep my eye on. But as I suspect I will have moved elsewhere before it becomes an issue I won't lose much sleep on it.

All being paid for with our taxes haha

Sounds like nonsense, people dont have money or assets generally.  Most of UK is in debt like USA and so on, its companies which have money or banks so this rule would be extremely unpopular with potential lenders to people.

Theres no reason to do this over garnishing wages and normal confiscation

Thanks for the info. Russian banks are looking  good now :D