CITY AND SUBURBAN
A nasty surprise in the taxman's brown envelope it's a better deal, but not for you
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Here comes a fast one from the Inland Revenue. 'Employers,' the taxmen proclaim, 'you've probably heard of the Better Deal. Here's what you have to do now.' A better deal? Claiming a refund, perhaps? Not a hope. They will have to do more of the gov- ernment's work for it, at their own expense of time and money. When the new tax year starts in April, they must administer the working families' tax credit, Gordon Brown's brainchild, and another tax credit for the dis- abled as well. They already act as unpaid tax collectors through the Pay As You Earn sys- tem, which is reckoned to cost them £1,300,000 for every £100 million of tax it brings in. Now they will have to pay out the credits as well and become tax redistributors, shuffling everyone's money around every payday. 'Employers will be responsible for paying the tax credits to employees through their pay packet,' the Revenue warns them. Details will be on their way this month in the traditional OHMS brown envelope. They must school themselves, learn to get used to this deal, and wince at the thought that another deal is on its way. If they employ as many as six people, they will have to master and then to administer stakeholder pensions. They are already paying the minimum wage and complying with the working time direc- tive. They are providing maternity leave, and paternity leave, too, and they must soon let their staff stay at home and contend with domestic emergencies: 'So sorry I can't fly the plane, I'm waiting for the plumber.' After a year, employees acquire entrenched rights and may be there for ever. As with bank holi- days, governments love to be generous with other people's money.
Careers open to talent
THE regulators are there to make sure all these rules are observed. The health-and- safety hit squads have been joined by metric monitors, who will be arranging to prosecute anyone who sells a pound of cheese. Down at Canary Wharf, the Financial Services Authority is holding an open day in its 2,000- seater office, in the hope of attracting even more recruits. They will be getting in on the ground floor of a growth industry. 'The dynamic nature of the organisation,' so the FSA says of itself, 'facilitates and actively encourages future development of skills and career advancement.' For the ambitious careerist there could be no better deal.
Short on supply
IT IS a bad deal for the British economy, and for a Chancellor who likes to think that he knows how to manage it. There will be no more boom and bust, he keeps saying. To the International Monetary Fund this year he promised to pursue a pro-active monetary policy and a prudent fiscal policy — keeping tax and spending on a steady course but twirling the wheel of interest rates from time to time, or let- ting the Bank of England twirl it. Next, he told the IMF, would come the market reforms which would set the economy free to grow faster. We have heard that before, from Nigel Lawson, who called it freeing up the supply side. Government, so he argued, must remove the man-made obstacles that got in the market econo- my's way and stopped it working. Today's Chancellor talks the same language but turns out not to mean the same thing. The reforms he promised the IMF turned out to be a job lot whose net effect was to make life, and even capital gains tax, more complex. In his term of office, the supply side of the economy has become in many ways less free and less efficient. More and more man-made obstacles have been heaped in its way, some by his col- leagues and some by the Chancellor him- self. There will be a price to be paid for all this, in competitiveness and productivity, those twin abstractions so dear to his heart, and in prosperity, which is his pur- pose, or should be.
Zoning in on money
BANKS are where the money is, which is why Willie Sutton robbed them and why Michael Heseltine hustled them when the Millennium Dome was a bulge in his eye. One chairman was reduced to taking his telephone off the hook, and another stumped up in the private hope that a new government would cancel the whole pro- ject. The result is a Money Zone, with a video narrated by Trevor McDonald, interactive machines some of which are more active than others, and a million pounds in notes lent by the Bank of Eng- land. It may not sound much for the spon- sors' f12 million, but half of that came from the Corporation of London and some donors got away with contributions in kind. Only HSBC kept its hand on its wallet, arguing that its millennium project is the new single-span bridge across the Thames below St Paul's. That looks a better bet. Even bank-spotters like me will not feel irresistibly drawn to the Zone in the Dome. If you want to go to a money zone, I can recommend one, a square mile in extent and a few miles upstream. Access is easy, admission is free, there are no queues and the bars never seem to run out of champagne.
Postman's knock
THE good news for the patient house- holders of Fulham and Putney is that their Christmas cards are coming through. The bad news is that their bills are close behind. Last month the posties called an unofficial ban on overtime, but their quar- rel has been sorted out and deliveries are back to normal. It is nice to know that these dear old routines of the British workplace survive. Walking out, going slow, working to rule, once as common as colds, have vanished from much of the British economy, but they survive in the public sector, perfectly preserved, along with the unions whose members have been so intolerably provoked.
Poached or addled
PEOPLE used to be prosecuted for scrub- bing lions off the Egg Marketing Board's eggs. They could then be passed off as new- laid. As an exercise in brand management, these lions must rank with the Air Zulu tailplanes and Watneys' Red Barrel, and I cannot think the Min of Ag is wise to bring them back. Better to poach from Marks & Spencer, which puts eggs in pale green boxes and labels them 'organic'. Even the addled old marketing board never came up with an inorganic egg.
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