Author: Juno Dawson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014313714X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
“Superb and almost unbearably charming, Her Majesty’s Royal Coven… expertly launches an exciting new trilogy." —The New York Times Book Review "Talk about a gut punch of a novel. …A provocative exploration of intersectional feminism, loyalty, gender and transphobia [that] invites readers into an intricately woven web of magic, friendship and power." —The Nerd Daily A Discovery of Witches meets The Craft in this epic fantasy about a group of childhood friends who are also witches. If you look hard enough at old photographs, we’re there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple. At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right. Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215055231
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
In 2011-12, 20 million phone calls to HMRC were not answered. It cost the callers £136 million while they waited to speak to an adviser. And, against its target of responding to 80% of letters within 15 days, the department managed to reply to just 66%. Officials are beginning to realize that good customer service lies at the heart of any strategy to maximize revenues while cutting costs. Callers will no longer be forced to use the more expensive 0845 numbers. Other planned changes include the resolution of more queries first time and a call-back service where this is not possible. However, HMRC's new target of answering 80% of calls within five minutes is still woefully short of the industry standard of answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds. Just how the department is going to improve standards of customer service, given the prospect of its having fewer staff and receiving a higher volume of calls, is open to question. HMRC plans to cut the number of customer-facing staff by a third by 2015. At the same time, the stresses associated with introducing the Real Time Information System, Universal Credit and changes to child benefit are likely to drive up the number of phone calls to the department. HMRC is also to close all of its 281 enquiry centres which give face-to-face advice to customers. HMRC considers that it will be able to improve service standards by using its staff more flexibly. It may need to put in additional resources, though, to avoid the kind of plummeting performance we have seen in the past
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215078764
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
HMRC's action against tax avoiders continues to be unacceptably slow. The Liberty scheme, for example, began in 2005 and was closed down in 2009, but it has taken until 2014 to take this case to a tax tribunal. Up to £10 million of the total £400 million tax at stake may not be recoverable because in 30 cases HMRC failed to start inquiries into personal tax returns within the 12 month statutory deadline. HMRC should report on the progress it has achieved by using new powers granted by Parliament and show that it is using its existing powers with sufficient urgency. Recent changes to the UK tax regime have been challenged by international bodies like the OECD and European Commission as constituting 'harmful tax practices'. These changes make it easier for global companies to avoid paying tax in the jurisdictions where they make a profit. HM Treasury and HMRC should provide details of progress in identifying and addressing the ways that international tax structures are exploited, and set out the actual costs and benefits of recent changes to the UK's tax regime. It is amazing that HMRC made a £1.9 billion error when it established its baseline and set targets for its compliance work. This means HMRC has been overstating the extent to which its performance on compliance yield has improved and it inadvertently presented misleading information to Parliament. Astonishingly, this significant error in a key performance measure went undetected by HMRC's own system of governance and internal audit for three years
Author: Great Britain. Treasury
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780115601071
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 114
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Book Description
This new edition incorporates revised guidance from H.M Treasury which is designed to promote efficient policy development and resource allocation across government through the use of a thorough, long-term and analytically robust approach to the appraisal and evaluation of public service projects before significant funds are committed. It is the first edition to have been aided by a consultation process in order to ensure the guidance is clearer and more closely tailored to suit the needs of users.
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198837259
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102981308
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
HM Revenue & Customs has improved its approach to tackling error and fraud in tax credits but has not yet achieved a sustainable reduction in the level of losses. In 2009, HMRC announced a target to reduce error and fraud to 5 per cent by 2010-11, down from 9 per cent. HMRC missed this target. Error and fraud losses for 2010-11 were just over 8 per cent, amounting to almost £2.3 billion, around £850 million higher than if HMRC had achieved the target. HMRC has been innovative in how it tackles error and fraud, developing a wide range of activities to tackle specific types of risk and monitoring their effectiveness. HMRC believed it was on track to meets its target, but had overestimated the impact of its activities to tackle error and fraud. It estimated that it had prevented £1.4 billion of error and fraud in 2010-11, but has revised this to under £500 million. HMRC has not yet developed an effective response to stop error and fraud recurring after it has corrected a claim. It has also been less effective in tackling certain types of risk, such as the misreporting of hours worked by claimants. Despite HMRC increasing the number of checks to tackle error and fraud, there remain a substantial number of incorrect awards at the end of each year. In 2010-11, in the case of 1.4 million awards, claimants were paid more than they were entitled to
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215087763
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 21
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Book Description
We recognise the achievement of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in increasing the amount of tax collected while also reducing its running costs over the last 5 years. However, we are concerned that it has made little or no progress on a number of important issues that this Committee has raised before. Despite this Committee's previous recommendations, HMRC still does not report on how much cash was received as a result of its compliance work or on the scale of aggressive tax avoidance which exploits loopholes in the law. HMRC also continues to avoid publishing information on the scale and nature of tax reliefs that would assist Parliamentary oversight of this area of the tax system. The standard of customer service also remains unacceptable. We are particularly disappointed by HMRC's failure in this area given that people are more likely to pay the right tax when they find HMRC easy to deal with. We also remain extremely concerned that HMRC's work has led to too few prosecutions of individuals for tax evasion and that there is, therefore, no credible punishment to deter people from breaking the law in this manner.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Treasury Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215042941
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
This Treasury Committee report considers HM Revenue & Custom's past work in ensuring tax compliance and concludes that while progress has been made, there is still work to be done. HMRC defines the tax gap as the difference between tax collected and the tax that should be collected (the theoretical liability). The theoretical tax liability represents the tax that would be paid if all individuals and companies complied with both the letter of the law and HMRC's interpretation of the intention of Parliament in setting law (referred to as the spirit of the law). Enabling voluntary compliance is the most efficient way of closing the tax gap, and HMRC must ensure that all those who wish to comply with their tax obligations are able to do so. Part of the process of encouraging voluntary compliance is demonstrating that HMRC treats all taxpayers fairly, whether they are individuals, small businesses, or large corporations. The tax system should be simplified to make compliance easier. HMRC's recent announcement of ways it intends to improve its processes for settling tax disputes is a step forward in the context of wider questions needing to be answered about the accountability structures of HMRC. HMRC's calculation of the tax gap is flawed and risks focusing the minds of its employees on the wrong task: maximising revenue at all cost rather than ensuring that all taxpayers pay the right amount of tax.
Author: Glen Loutzenhiser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509959459
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1401
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Book Description
This is the 10th edition of John Tiley's classic textbook on revenue law, covering the UK tax system, income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax and corporation tax, as well as incorporating sections dealing with international and European tax, savings, charities, and - new to this edition - value added tax and stamp duties. The new edition has been comprehensively revised and fully updated with the latest case law, statutory and other developments, including the Finance Act 2021. The book's companion website provides bonus chapters on investment intermediaries, pensions, charities, and the UK's value added tax and stamp duties. The companion website will also supply annual updates to the print edition as well as study questions to help students navigate this complex subject. The book is designed for students taking modules in tax law in the final year of their law degree, or for more advanced courses. It is also a valuable resource for academics and professionals in the field. It provides an account of the rules as well as citation of the relevant literature from legal periodicals and some discussion of, or reference to, the background material in terms of policy, history or other countries' tax systems to give readers a contextual overview of the subject. Accompanying online resources for this title can be found at bloomsbury.pub/tileys-revenue-law. These resources are designed to support teaching and learning when using this textbook and are available at no extra cost.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215035875
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
The Government published a consultation document "Export Control Act 2002: 2007 review of export control legislation" in June 2007 (further details can be accessed at http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page39910.html). This report contains the Quadripartite Committee's own review of export control legislation, along with its response to the Government's consultation document. The Committee concludes that the Export Control Act 2002 has provided a sound legislative basis for controlling and regulating the UK's strategic exports but with gaps and shortcomings. It also welcomes the Government's review as a constructive process that addresses many of the issues the Committee and other parties have raised over several years, and praises the improvement in the volume and quantity of information that the Government provides. But the review does not mention HM Revenue and Customs, the department that enforces the controls; and it ignores the EU dimension despite a significant part of the export control regime being derived from EU legislation. The Committee makes nearly 100 recommendations and observations on the review and the operation and effectiveness of the UK export control legislation.
