AIMS Accountants for Business
AIMS Accountants for Business
In an attempt to answer this question I decided to do some research. I found blogs and forums of people discussing similar questions. The reality is; maybe it’s easier to list things that aren’t taxed.
Think about your normal working day; you wake up (paying council tax), you drive to work (paying car tax, road tax, insurance premium tax, fuel tax and value added tax), you have a coffee before work (and pay value added tax for drinking it in the coffee shop), you receive your payslip during the day (paying National Insurance and Income Tax), and the list goes on. And this is before you dig deeper and look at the absurd tax laws, like the Jaffa Cake which went through rigorous testing to prove it was a cake to maintain a tax free status.
I think absurd tax laws have a very British feel to them. Taxing a sandwich when it’s hot and not when it’s cold sounds bizarre, but these strange laws have always existed. In the 18th and 19th century there was a tax on the number of windows a house had to determine its social, cultural and architectural force, which is why many older properties still have them bricked up.
The list of absurd taxes goes on, like the tax for digging a hole (aggregate tax) and then a tax for filling it in (land fill tax) or a more recent tax on energy drinks that enhance performance or recovery. It seems the list of taxes in the UK is growing and therefore so too are the number of loopholes.
My conclusion is this; I have no idea how many taxes there are in Britain especially when you start counting the absurd ones. My only advice is to seek professional advice and don’t take the absurd laws too seriously.
You can find out more about what we do on our website.
If you like the way we think – you will like the way we work.
AIMS Accountants for Business are the largest independent association of professionally qualified accountants in the UK specialising in accountancy for small, local and independent businesses. AIMS are no ordinary accountants and we are more than just number crunchers! Find your local AIMS Accountant.