David Cameron: Taxes will rise unless we can raid bank accounts

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/10819885/David-Cameron-Taxes-will-rise-unless-we-can-raid-bank-accounts.html

David Cameron: Taxes will rise unless we can raid bank accounts

David Cameron claims he will "have to put up taxes" unless tax officials are given draconian powers to raid people's bank accounts

Taxes will have to rise unless officals are given new powers to raid people's bank accounts, David Cameron has said. Photo: Alamy

By Steven Swinford
3:28PM BST 09 May 2014

Taxes will have to rise unless officials are given new powers to raid people's bank accounts, David Cameron has said.

The Treasury select committee warned that allowing HM Revenue and Customs to remove cash from bank accounts without court orders is "very concerning" because of its history of mistakes.

The committee said that taxpayers could suffer “serious detriment” if officials are able, either by mistake or through an “abuse” of power, to take money from people who have done no wrong.

Mr Cameron yesterday claimed that the alternative was to "put up taxes". He told Sky News: "We have a choice here. If we don't collect taxes properly and make sure people pay their taxes properly we look at the problems of having to raise tax rates. I don't want to do that, so I support the changes the Chancellor set out in the Budget which is to really say that not paying your taxes is not acceptable.

"It is very clear that they can only do this if there is a debt of over £1,000, they can only do it if there's £5,000 or more in the account after this has been completed. The general principle – do we want to pursue every avenue of making people pay their taxes they are meant to pay before we put up taxes, because that's the alternative – absolutely, yes we do."

The policy yesterday faced further criticism from chartered accountants, who said that money should only be taken from people's accounts with their agreement or a court order.

ICAEW, the body representing accountants, said that there is "considerable concern" among its members about the measures, which could be open to "mistakes and misuse".

Under the planned new measures, tax officials will have an automatic power to take money from a bank account when the holder has failed to act on four formal warnings requiring payment.

Currently officials can only remove money in this way with the permission of a magistrate or judge.
The Treasury insists that safeguards will ensure that the new power is only used against those who have repeatedly refused to pay their taxes.

But the MPs say in their report:

“The ability directly to have access to millions of taxpayers’ bank accounts raises concerns about the risk of fraud and error.

“This policy is highly dependent on HMRC’s ability accurately to determine which taxpayers owe money and what amounts they owe, an ability not always demonstrated in the past. Incorrectly collecting money will result in serious detriment to taxpayers.”

The Revenue has faced repeated criticism over the accuracy of its tax records and its handling of sensitive personal data.

Jim Willie Bombshell: Saudi Royal Gold Ransacked in London to Prevent Default!

Have they proven there was any gold there to begin with?  -AK

http://investmentwatchblog.com/jim-willie-bombshell-saudi-royal-gold-ransacked-in-london-to-prevent-default/

Jim Willie Bombshell: Saudi Royal Gold Ransacked in London to Prevent Default!
March 1st, 2014

“There will be no easy heads-up alert on the quick changes to the gold market. When the gold price starts rising, it will mean that China no longer has been given the big wide berth in high volume cheap gold purchases. A rising gold price will internally mean that the banks are breaking, at the same time the Chinese are to be frustrated. The Boyz are stealing all the Saudi gold now, left unprotected in London and Switzerland. The Saudis (and all Arabs) are the new targeted victims for stolen wealth in order to keep the system going. A massive disruption is coming.”

The rehypothecation of official gold accounts has entered a new phase. The gold owned by defenders of the Petro-Dollar is being seized, confiscated, pilfered, and stolen for the unspoken purpose of continuing the fiat paper currency regime with the tainted debauched USDollar at the center.

The Saudi gold in London will be totally gone in a few more months. To be sure, it is going mostly to China.

The Saudis are being gutted.

………

“The Boyz are stealing all the Saudi gold now, left unprotected in London and Switzerland. The Saudis (and all Arabs) are the new targeted victims for stolen wealth in order to keep the system going. A massive disruption is coming.” The Arab Spring might have an ulterior motive to create enough disruption and chaos, so that their gold can be stolen from central banks. Notice the oil wealth from Iran is being converted to gold, which angers the Anglo-American duo.The rehypothecation of official gold accounts has entered a new phase. The gold owned by defenders of the Petro-Dollar is being seized, confiscated, pilfered, and stolen for the unspoken purpose of continuing the fiat paper currency regime with the tainted debauched USDollar at the center. The Saudi gold in London will be totally gone in a few more months. To be sure, it is going mostly to China. The Saudis are being gutted. They will likely be on the run soon, their gold bars cut loose. They might be hunted.”

http://www.silverdoctors.com/jim-willie-bombshell-saudi-royal-gold-ransacked-in-london-to-prevent-default/#more-39444

ZEROHEDDGE.COM: Europe Considers Wholesale Savings Confiscation, Enforced Redistribution

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-12/europe-considers-wholesale-savings-confiscation-enforced-redistribution

Europe Considers Wholesale Savings Confiscation, Enforced Redistribution

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/12/2014 21:28 -0500

• European Central Bank
 
• Eurozone
 
• fixed
 
• Meltdown
 
• Punk'd
 
• Reuters

At first we thought Reuters had been punk'd in its article titled "EU executive sees personal savings used to plug long-term financing gap" which disclosed the latest leaked proposal by the European Commission, but after several hours without a retraction, we realized that the story is sadly true. Sadly, because everything that we warned about in "There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis" back in September of 2011, and everything that the depositors and citizens of Cyprus had to live through, seems on the verge of going continental. In a nutshell, and in Reuters' own words, "the savings of the European Union's 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says." What is left unsaid is that the "usage" will be on a purely involuntary basis, at the discretion of the "union", and can thus best be described as confiscation.

The source of this stunner is a document seen be Reuters, which describes how the EU is looking for ways to "wean" the 28-country bloc from its heavy reliance on bank financing and find other means of funding small companies, infrastructure projects and other investment. So as Europe finally admits that the ECB has failed to unclog its broken monetary pipelines for the past five years - something we highlight every month (most recently in No Waking From Draghi's Monetary Nightmare: Eurozone Credit Creation Tumbles To New All Time Low), the commissions report finally admits that "the economic and financial crisis has impaired the ability of the financial sector to channel funds to the real economy, in particular long-term investment."

The solution? "The Commission will ask the bloc's insurance watchdog in the second half of this year for advice on a possible draft law "to mobilize more personal pension savings for long-term financing", the document said."

Mobilize, once again, is a more palatable word than, say, confiscate.

And yet this is precisely what Europe is contemplating:

Banks have complained they are hindered from lending to the economy by post-crisis rules forcing them to hold much larger safety cushions of capital and liquidity.

The document said the "appropriateness" of the EU capital and liquidity rules for long-term financing will be reviewed over the next two years, a process likely to be scrutinized in the United States and elsewhere to head off any risk of EU banks gaining an unfair advantage.

But wait: there's more!

Inspired by the recently introduced "no risk, guaranteed return" collectivized savings instrument in the US better known as MyRA, Europe will also complete a study by the end of this year on the feasibility of introducing an EU savings account, open to individuals whose funds could be pooled and invested in small companies.

Because when corporations refuse to invest money in Capex, who will invest? Why you, dear Europeans. Whether you like it or not.

But wait, there is still more!

Additionally, Europe is seeking to restore the primary reason why Europe's banks are as insolvent as they are: securitizations, which the persuasive salesmen and sexy saleswomen of Goldman et al sold to idiot European bankers, who in turn invested the money or widows and orphans only to see all of it disappear.

It is also seeking to revive the securitization market, which pools loans like mortgages into bonds that banks can sell to raise funding for themselves or companies. The market was tarnished by the financial crisis when bonds linked to U.S. home loans began defaulting in 2007, sparking the broader global markets meltdown over the ensuing two years.

The document says the Commission will "take into account possible future increases in the liquidity of a number of securitization products" when it comes to finalizing a new rule on what assets banks can place in their new liquidity buffers. This signals a possible loosening of the definition of eligible assets from the bloc's banking watchdog.

Because there is nothing quite like securitizing feta cheese-backed securities and selling it to a whole new batch of widows and orphans.

And topping it all off is a proposal to address a global change in accounting principles that will make sure that an accurate representation of any bank's balance sheet becomes a distant memory:

More controversially, the Commission will consider whether the use of fair value or pricing assets at the going rate in a new globally agreed accounting rule "is appropriate, in particular regarding long-term investing business models".

To summarize: forced savings "mobilization", the introduction of a collective and involuntary CapEx funding "savings" account, the return and expansion of securitization, and finally, tying it all together, is a change to accounting rules that will make the entire inevitable catastrophe smells like roses until it all comes crashing down.

So, aside from all this, Europe is "fixed."

The only remaining question is: why leak this now? Perhaps it's simply because the reallocation of "cash on the savings account sidelines" in the aftermath of the Cyprus deposit confiscation, into risk assets was not foreceful enough? What better way to give it a much needed boost than to leak that everyone's cash savings are suddenly fair game in Europe's next great wealth redistribution strategy.